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food court for lunch; which means I will not be able to eat Flaming Wok five days a week for lunch. That’s a good thing, I guess. My waistline will shrink, my wallet will grow, but can see my MSG withdrawal making me impossible to work with.
— Now that I think about it, no more A&W for breakfast, either. You can’t start the day without some good, wholesome, grease.
If you’re thinking that the gripes mainly have to do with food and booze, well, you’ve just discovered the only two true motivations for journalists.
On to the Skate!
IT’S GAME TIME
Canucks-Oilers, 7 p.m., Rogers Arena
Who would have predicted this? The Edmonton Oilers and Vancouver Canucks, first and second, respectively in the Pacific Division. What had annually been a meeting of cellar-dwellers is now must-see hockey.
Sure, the Canucks have scored fewer than all but three teams in the league, while the Oilers are at the other pole, leading the NHL with 27 goals, but finally, for the first time since what feels like the Cretaceous or Ed Willes’s 10th birthday, these two teams are relevant.
Well, for now at least.
It’s pretty apparent that the talent disparity between the two rosters will begin to exert itself soon enough, if it hasn’t already. The Canucks have dropped three in a row after their inspiring 4-0 start to the season, while the Oilers have won four straight after dropping their opener to the Sabres.
Goal-scoring — as Jason Botchford wrote about Tuesday — remains the biggest challenge for Vancouver. For comparison, Edmonton’s forwards have twice as many goals as the Canucks’. When they need a goal, they turn to Connor McDavid. When the Canucks need one, they turn on Sportscentre.
“We’re not going to be a power offence team, that’s just the way it is,” said Vancouver captain Henrik Sedin. “That’s the way we have to win. We have to realize that.
“We’re not really doing the things we need to do structure-wise to create offence. We’re leaning to the offence a little bit too much, and trying to create turnovers at the wrong spots and cheating a little bit. If you do that, a lot of times the puck is going to end up in our end and we have no juice to get going the other way.
“We have to rely even more on our structure, but when we turn a puck over we’ve got to go.”
ICE WHINE
The headline on today’s Province was almost as controversial as the last year’s “Goat Medal Winner.” The media seems to kick Jake Virtanen when he’s down. Right now, he’s likely struggling through an injury, but lobbying for more ice time to show he’s NHL-ready.
Give the kid the ice time! He’s earned it.
10/4 GOOD BUDDY
Interesting to see the similarities between Edmonton’s Drake Caggiula and Troy Stecher as they start their pro careers.
The University of North Dakota teammates both turned heads in preseason, with Stecher, of course, becoming the darling of the Canucks training camp, while Caggiula did the same in Edmonton — even if people couldn’t pronounce his name. (It’s cuh-JOOL’-uh).
Stecher will probably be a bit busy during the game to say hi, as he’s going to be matched up against uberstar Connor McDavid.
NUGENT-HOPKINS: I’M NO WAIF
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins will never be mistaken for linemate Zack Kassian, but he can’t be dismissed as a lightweight anymore. The Oilers forward has blossomed into a 200-pound, two-way player who’s getting plaudits for being a shutdown player, and one who’s looking forward to a matchup with the Sedins, to boot.
“I take pride in that role, a serious one — it’s a challenge. I’ve also played against the Sedins more than some guys and I’m comfortable with it. I’ve talked since I came into the league about working on a two-way game and I’m going to keep doing it.”
SPEAKING OF KASSIAN
The former Canuck was on radio yesterday, talking about yesteryear. Patrick Johnston has the audio in yesterday’s Canucks 9-to-5, but a telling quote is this:
“I was definitely going on the wrong path and there wasn’t anything made me realize that until that car accident. I enjoyed Vancouver, I enjoyed my teammates, great group of guys. I wish I had my mindset now.”
SCOFFLAWS! EACH AND EVERY ONE OF ‘EM
The Oilers have run afoul of local bylaw officers after Jordan Eberle was featured dangling his legs over the “End of the World,” the local name for a series of abandoned concrete pilings left from the long-closed Keillor Road, in a pregame video.
The pilings and the surrounding area is unstable, and the bylaw officers have worked for years through signage and $100 fines to discourage people from the area.
“It’s going to degrade the efforts we’ve made, with all of the enforcement we’ve put in place,” said Sgt. Greg Komarniski, with the City of Edmonton’s community standards branch.
“Nothing says ‘deep Edmonton’ better than rich, famous people openly flaunting doing things the rest of us get fined for doing. It’s so meta, it’s absolutely perfect for an Oilers promotional video,” one resident commented on the story.
IS THIS SO WRONG?
The NFL portion of the internet had a meltdown Wednesday when footage from before last Sunday’s Patriots-Steelers game showed Ben Roethlisberger and Tom Brady exchanging pre-game pleasantries, before Big Ben asks if he could get a jersey sometime soon.
Now, was this so wrong? Players aren’t allowed to be fans? Well, it extends to hockey, too. Capitals defenceman Karl Alzner asked Zdeno Chara for a stick during a game, and now plans on getting one from Connor McDavid.
“I’d like to get Connor’s (McDavid) and it’s better to go right to the source. I tried hard last year but it was my understanding they were keeping all of his stuff because he was a rookie. … I figure I’ll wait until Connor’s roaring down on me, then I’ll ask. Nah. It would be between a whistle or something. But if there’s no good point in the game, I won’t ask. I like to get the guys who’ve been around for awhile, because I respect them and all that, but I always try to get the rookies, too.”
Even Alzner’s most-famous teammate, Alex Ovechkin, is in on the action; the two actually have a competition to see who can collect more. Alzner’s at 55, Ovie at more than 60.
TEAM IS A THIRD WHEEL
I must admit, I’d never thought I would have seen this coming. Team Canada goalie Shannon Szabados, the first woman to play in the Southern Professional Hockey League, was sent packing by the Peoria Rivermen. The reason? Her relationship with defenceman Carl Nielsen was being called”cancerous” and causing problems in the locker-room.
“They were always together and it became kind of weird,” coach Jean-Guy Trudel told CBC Sports. “Seeing the players in the locker room, I just saw the situation being heavy on everyone. It was cancerous toward the team. I coach 18 players here so I need to make 18 players happy, not just two.”
VINE IS DEAD, LONG LIVE VINE
When news broke that Twitter was slashing jobs and cutting Vine, the app for mobile video, sports fans took it harder than most. Few mediums were better at presenting sports highlights than the easy-to-load looping video clips.
And, predictably, the Vine tribute threads started popping up at all the usual places. Take some time — you’re going to need plenty — to scroll through the compilations of all their favourites.
SBnation, not once, but twice.
The Bleacher Report’s Vine RIP.
Deadspin remembered some Vines, and then remembered some more.
JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT COULDN’T GET ANY WORSE
The Greek is a self-admitted Brony. A what, you ask?
Yep, he’s one of them.
Well, now it makes sense why he’s a Trump supporter. Or maybe it doesn’t. Whatever. It just means there is now massive pressure on me NOT TO LOSE TO A BRONY.
Anyways, make sure to check out this week’s NFL picks between the Geek and the Greek, right here!
BAD NEWS, BEARS
Not long after Jay Cutler was anointed the Chicago Bears starter again, things began to appear strained in Chi-Town. And now, this: “Two different league sources say [head coach John] Fox had told friends he was done with Cutler.”
THE NFL NEEDS COMMON SENSE, NOT MORE RULES
I love the Player’s Tribune, and I love Richard Sherman. The Seahawks cornerback takes the NFL to task for their maddening inconsistency and off-target discipline in this week’s edition.
“The real problem with the NFL is the lack of a system of checks and balances. The commissioner simply has too much power.”
SPEAKING OF COMMON SENSE
I love Katie Nolan. Love this girl.
No, wait, wifey! I mean, I love her like a bromance. Yeah, that’s it. Put the frying pan down! *Thwang*
October is Domestic Awareness Month, and the NFL found itself in another “poop tornado” with Giants kicker Josh Brown. Nolan had a surprising take on the situation, which has blown up as big as Ray Rice’s.
SUPERTEAM, WHAT??
The San Antonio Spurs went into Oracle Arena on Tuesday and laid the smack down on the Golden State Warriors, the newest “super team” to grace the NBA after they signed superstar Kevin Durant in the off-season.
Key in that win was guard Jonathon Simmons. His story, in hockey terms, is better than Alex Burrows’.
He didn’t get any NCAA offers, playing at two junior colleges before landing at the University of Houston. He didn’t get drafted after his junior year, instead playing in the ABL (think of the aforementioned Southern Professional Hockey League). After a year or so, he paid — HE PAID! — $150 to attend a tryout for the Spurs D-League team (think AHL), playing there for $20,000 for two years before landing a $1.4M, two-year deal with San Antonio.
In NBA salary terms, that’s peanuts. Ball boys make more.
But there he was Tuesday, locking down Steph Curry and loudly declaring his arrival in the NBA. A great story.
LINSANITY RETURNS TO NEW YORK
Great piece from the Bleacher Report on Jeremy Lin and Kenny Atkinson, who was an assistant coach with the New York Knicks when Linsanity blew up the Big Apple. Both were unproven rookies trying to find their way in the league.
Now, Atkinson is a coaching prospect no longer — he’s the coach of the Brooklyn Nets, and his point guard is none other than … Jeremy Lin.
Fun fact about Lin? Read this tweet:
Jeremy Lin's mom took $ out of her 401K to get him thru NBA draft to make sure he had enough to eat, after she & dad were laid off. #TNYfest — Jo Ling Kent (@jolingkent) October 9, 2016
Sounds like it was a good investment.
SPEAKING OF A GOOD INVESTMENT
The NBA is awash in tributes to the technicolour sideline reporter Craig Sager, who’s battling leukemia, but Nike might have topped them all with these shoes. From Ebay:
“As part of this multifaceted initiative, the SAGERSTRONG Foundation partnered with NikeiD to create a customized, limited-edition “Sager Strong” sneaker, designed by Sager himself. The NikeiD Customized SAGERSTRONG Sneaker will be custom-made in the auction winners’ designated sizes at the close of the auction. Size choice range from 3.5 to 18.
A limited edition of one hundred pairs of the SAGERSTRONG sneaker will be made—complete with paisley-print panels, a seersucker tongue tab and multicolored laces.”
HE’S NOT ON FIRE … BUT HIS CARS ARE
UFC fighter Anthony Pettis had three of his cars torched in his driveway, Tuesday morning at his home in Milwaukee.
The alleged arsonist has not yet been caught.Singer Asha Bhosle's daughter Varsha commits suicide
Varsha Bhosle, the daughter of renowned singer Asha Bhosle, reportedly committed suicide today by shooting herself.
According to initial reports, Varsha had shot herself in the head, but it was not revealed where she had obtained the weapon from. Varsha shot herself at the singer's residence in the 'Prabhu Kunj' building in Peddar Road, the same building in which singer Lata Mangeshkar also lives.
Times Now reported that there was a licensed weapon present in the singer's residence which Varsha had used to shoot herself.
She has not left behind any suicide note, Additional Commissioner of Police (South) Krishna Prakash said, adding police are trying to find out in whose name the pistol was registered.
Prakash said Varsha's maid servant Deepali Mane knocked on the door of Bhosle's house around 10 am but no one answered.
Worried, she contacted Asha Bhosle's driver who told her that Varsha might be sleeping. After some time the maid went to the flat again but nobody opened the door.
The driver then entered the flat through Asha's elder sister Lata Mangeshkar's adjacent flat and found Varsha lying in a pool of blood on a sofa. Police were called in and Varsha was taken to a nearby hospital, where she was declared brought dead, the officer said.
Bhosle was reportedly not at the residence at the time of the incident and was in Singapore attending an event. Her aunt, Lata, was also reportedly not at home at the time of the incident.
Her body was to be taken to the JJ Hospital in south Mumbai for a post mortem.
Varsha, who was 56-years-old had worked as a freelance journalist in the past.
She was married to and later divorced freelance sports writer Hemant Kenkre and reportedly had a history of depression, CNN IBN reported.
Varsha, was Asha's daughter from her first marriage to Ganpatrao Bhosle, and she retained her surname even after her mother married legendary music director RD Burman. Varsha used to divide time between her mother's house, their residence in Khar and her brother's house, given Asha's extensive travel schedules.
In 2008, she had reportedly attempted suicide by consuming sleeping pills, but had been rushed to hospital and was subsequently saved. However, family members had said it was due to an adverse reaction to medication she had taken. However, she had been seeking psychiatric care for a significant portion of her adult life.
Varsha had sung for a few films and had written for a range of publications during her career as a journalist. (Here is a link provided by Rediff on a piece written by her on her mother)
Police said they had learnt that Varsha wanted to start an orphanage with famous fashion photographer Gautam Rajadakshya, who passed away last year. Varsha, who was said to be very close to Rajadhyaksha, was distraught after his death and was under medication for depression.
Asha Bhosle has cut shot her stay in Singapore and has taken a flight back home.
with inputs from PTI
Updated Date: Oct 08, 2012 18:07:55 IST(Image: Jaime Chirinos/SPL)
It’s not just humans that still feel the effects of a trauma many years later: ecosystems do too. Thousands of years after human hunters wiped out big land animals like giant ground sloths, the ecosystems they lived in are still feeling the effects.
Many ecosystems rely on big animals to supply them with nutrients, mostly from dung. “If you remove the big animals from an ecosystem, you pretty much stop nutrients moving,” says Chris Doughty of the University of Oxford.
Doughty and colleagues simulated the distribution of phosphorus, a nutrient that plants need to grow, in the Amazon basin in South America. This area was once home to spectacularly large animals, including the elephant-like gomphotheres and giant ground sloths.
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But 12,500 years ago, around the time humans moved into South America, these huge animals all died out, hit by a double whammy of being hunted and a changing climate. Nowadays the Amazon is still home to a huge diversity of animals. “But these extinctions cut out all the big animals,” says Doughty.
Dung shippers
It seems the mass extinction had a profound effect on how phosphorus is spread around the Amazon basin. Nutrients are released when rocks are eroded, and then get distributed onto flood plains by rivers. In South America, the most phosphorus-rich soils are found near the Andes mountain chain in the west, and the rivers flowing from it – especially the Amazon.
Using the relationship between animal size and nutrient distribution seen in living animals as a guide, Doughty estimated how much phosphorus South America’s larger extinct animals would have transported 15,000 years ago, before they started to decline.
The model suggests that megafauna would have spread nutrients 50 times further in the same time than animals today do. Or to put it another way, killing off the massive animals reduced the movement of nutrients by 98 per cent. This is because big animals carry a disproportionately large amount compared with small animals as they travel further in search of food, and keep that food in their guts for longer.
Doughty compares big animals to the arteries that carry blood around the human body. “When you get rid of big animals, it’s like severing the nutrient arteries.” He thinks the same thing happened in North America, Europe and Australia, where most big animals have also been wiped out.
“The idea that herbivores redistribute nutrients is not new, but the scale of this thinking is much, much bigger,” says Tim Baker at the University of Leeds in the UK.
Enduring effect
If Doughty is right, the Amazon is still changing in response to the extinction. He estimates the spread of nutrients will keep getting patchier for another 17,000 years, although the effect will likely be dwarfed by the impacts of deforestation and climate change in the short term.
In the absence of massive herbivores, humans now dominate the movement of nutrients. But we do the opposite of what the lost animals did. “These megafauna would disperse nutrients, whereas humans concentrate them,” says Doughty. We spread fertiliser on small plots of productive farmland, and keep large animals like cows fenced rather than letting them roam freely. “There are probably more nutrients because of people, but they are very poorly distributed.”
In a separate study, the team estimates how much large animals help to spread nutrients around in Kruger National Park in South Africa. The park is divided into a nutrient-rich basalt area and a nutrient-poor granite zone, but elephants and rhinos transfer nutrients between the two, helping plant growth in the granite zone. Wiping out these animals would have a severe effect. “You would see nutrient distribution drop by about 50 per cent,” say Doughty.
Journal references: Nature Geoscience, DOI: 10.1038/ngeo1895; PLoS One, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0071352On one thing we can all agree: Australia’s housing market is FUCKED (It’s now the second worst housing cost : income ratio on the planet, just beaten by Hong Kong).
The average price of property in Sydney hit $1 million last year (that’s 12.2 times the middle income house’s annual income), and it’s not much better in Melbourne and every other capital city – unless you move wayyyyyy out – leaving a lot of us high and dry in undesirable living situations.
Maybe your mum gets all emotional when you and your mates are racking up on her antique dining room table at 4:10 am, or your dad cheers from the room next door when you finally break the sex-drought, or your flat mates are generally mental – whatever it is, you’d probably bloody love a place of your own…without a 30 year mortgage.
GOOD NEWS. You don’t need to move to a commune, partner swap and embrace a diet of lentils to bypass the bullshit cost of buying property in Australia; from Japan to Auckland, more and more people are wising up to recycling shipping containers into affordable, unique and pretty damn sweet micro homes.
THIS COULD BE YOU ^^^^
Whether it’s located in your parents’/rich mates backyard or on a piece of land you tricked someone into renting to you, residential independence doesn’t get much better or cheaper than a shipping container conversion.
Behold a list of cheeky hacks to get you shacked up in your own custom designed pad for under $20K, without having to wait months for local council development approvals.
Go on, fuck Australia’s impossible housing market right in the mouth.
1) GET APPROVAL
The trick with this is going through your state government’s laws. This is shitloads easier than going through local council and as state laws over ride local-you don’t need local approval (which can take many months) and get a green light within 10 days or so.
The NSW State Government saw the housing situation going from bad to shithouse back in 2009 and set up some secondary dwelling/granny flat legislation- they wanted to make housing more affordable and creatively named it “Affordable Rental Housing”. All the details are HERE.
But the main things to qualify for this sneaky approval are you just need to make sure your new pad is under 60m2 internal (the largest container is 40 ft and has a 28m2 floor- so you’ll be fine with even 2 of these bad boys) and the land must be larger than 450m2 and have a primary property (a house on a block…) Think the backyard of anyone who loves you, or even the backyard of the toothless bloke next door who you could ply with Tooheys OLD.
2) PLAN YOUR CRIB
Design what you want or buy plans off the net, somewhere like Premier Shipping Containers, Port Shipping Containers or Container Home. You’ll need to submit these to a public or private certifier (someone who’ll take a few hundred bucks out of your pocket but allow you to submit and get 10 day approval).
3) BUY, BUY, BUY
If you want to eco-warrior it right up and you’ve got more time than cash, go local and buy your materials on sites like Gumtree – classifieds are a treasure trove of cheap buys from people doing renos and selling off old windows, doors, lights etc. You can even get shipping containers for next to nothing.
OI MUM AND DAD, GIVE US SOME LAND?
4) GET GROUNDED
Work out your plumbing and put in your footings. These are basically concrete pillars in the ground or a full concrete slab (just get your plumber mate to do his work FIRST). You could also have stainless or galvanised legs built on the container, which will stop water/rust getting into the main chassis. That way, if your folks / the landowner starts shitting you to tears, you can simply pack up (onto a semi-trailer) and piss off.
5) DO THE SET-UP
Getting your containers home can mean craning, removing fences, you name it – some people pre-fab the container off-site, but that means loading it on and off a truck twice, which burns through your budget. Best do it in the backyard it’s going to call home.
WOULDN’T SAY NO.
6) THE FINAL TOUCHES
Use something like a plasma-cutter to cut holes out for windows and doors, then seal up the walls and roof with plywood (for some insulation) and to give it a nice cabin feel. To combat the heat in summer, a lot of people create a garden on the roof as an insulator / source of fresh herbs and self indulgent social media pics. Then it’s a matter of getting a sparky mate to connect up some lights and slinging a plumber mate a few slabs of beer to get a sink tap/toilet connected up.
All in all: pour as much time and cash into it as you like but, in it’s most basic form, this is a way to own a studio apartment at the cost of $20k and a few months’ work.
Photos: Supplied / Port Shipping Containers / Brett Boardman Photography / Andres Garcia Lochner for Benjamin Garcia Saxe.Get the latest news and videos for this game daily, no spam, no fuss.
Strong sales of the 3DS role-playing game Fire Emblem: Awakening have helped save the 22-year-old series from outright cancellation, the game's producer has said.
In an interview with Spanish magazine Hobby Consola (via the Serenes Forest forums), Yamagami said that Nintendo told developer Intelligent Systems that diminishing series sales could have made Fire Emblem: Awakening the last entry in the series.
"No doubt. Truth be told, [series] sales are dropping," said Yamagami. "The sales manager of Nintendo, Mr. Hatano, told us that this could be the last Fire Emblem. Due to this progressive descend on sales, they told us that if the sales of this episode stayed below 250,000 copies, we'd stop working on the saga."
"I remember when I came back from the meeting," continued Yamagami, "and told the team'my God, what are we gonna do?! The end has come!' Our reaction was clear: if this was going to be the last Fire Emblem, we had to put [in] everything we always wanted to include."
Nintendo hasn't formally announced whether there will be a follow-up to Fire Emblem: Awakening but previously stated that the game has sold over 240,000 copies in North America alone. When Fire Emblem launched in the UK, its limited-edition hardware bundle led to a 49 percent increase in 3DS sales.
For more information on Fire Emblem: Awakening, check out GameSpot's previous coverage.We have moved to a new website. You are being redirected!
Figure 1. Weekly Billable Hours
Figure 2 below shows weekly billable hours on a four and sixteen week moving average basis. The pattern is clearer when we smooth out the week to week variability. I've been billing fewer and fewer hours since I started working, although the decrease is more muted if you exclude 2011, which was an unusually busy year. If my bosses read this, I would just remind them that billing and productivity are not necessarily the same thing.
Figure 2 below shows weekly billable hours on a four and sixteen week moving average basis. The pattern is clearer when we smooth out the week to week variability. I've been billing fewer and fewer hours since I started working, although the decrease is more muted if you exclude 2011, which was an unusually busy year. If my bosses read this, I would just remind them that billing and productivity are not necessarily the same thing. Figure 2. Weekly Billable Hours (Moving Average)
Figure 3 shows a frequency distribution of weekly billable hours along with summary statistics. I bill 43.8 hours per week on average with a standard deviation of 11.8 hours. A quarter of the time, I bill 51 or more hours per week. The busiest week was 79 hours. Figure 3 shows a frequency distribution of weekly billable hours along with summary statistics. I bill 43.8 hours per week on average with a standard deviation of 11.8 hours. A quarter of the time, I bill 51 or more hours per week. The busiest week was 79 hours.
Figure 3. Distribution of Weekly Billable Hours
I was also curious to know if the week to week variability in my hours has changed over time. To measure this variability, I calculated the
I was also curious to know if the week to week variability in my hours has changed over time. To measure this variability, I calculated the standard deviation of billable hours over rolling four week periods. I then smoothed out the figures by calculated a sixteen week moving average of the four week standard deviations. The result is shown in Figure 4. While it appears as though the variability has decreased over time, the results are distorted by a spike in 2011. Excluding the spike in 2011, the variability is unchanged. My schedule is still generally unpredictable. In fact, the standard deviation over the last four weeks was in the top 15th percentile historically (including the spike in 2011). Figure 4. Standard Deviation of Billable Hours (Moving Average) (including spike in 2011)
(excluding spike in 2011)
This week’s write up is a little more personal than our usual topics. I thought it would be interesting to measure my work-life balance over time by plotting my billable hours since I started working. I work for a boutique financial advisory firm that specializes in infrastructure and energy finance. We mainly advise governments so our hours can be a little lighter than other finance professionals, but I remember my hours being pretty brutal when I first started. The last few years have been more reasonable. Let's see if my time sheets tell the same story.Tracking billable hours is one of the most tedious aspects of client-based work, as anyone who has had to fill out time sheets can attest. As it happens, I have saved (almost) all of my time sheets since I started working my current job back in April 2009 in Word Document tables. That’s about 79 time sheets.The source code for the data analysis can be found here We can start by plotting weekly billable hours since April 2010, when I started working as a permanent, full-time employee. As shown in Figure 1 below, there is significant variability in my hours from week to week, but the trend appears to suggest a gradual decrease in hours over time. Let’s smooth out the week to week variability by calculating rolling averages.An ounce of prevention in community health programs could save states hundreds of millions in health-care costs, a new study has found.
The report from the Trust for America's Health, a nonprofit health advocacy group, found that programs encouraging physical activity, healthy eating and no smoking were a better investment than those concentrating primarily on treatment.
The results are laid out in a state-by-state breakdown.The District, the researchers found, would save $9.90 for every dollar invested, or $57 million over five years. Maryland would save $6 for every dollar, for $332 million over five years, and Virginia would save $385 million -- $5.20 for every dollar spent.
The researchers arrived at their numbers by calculating potential decreases in several chronic diseases based on a $10 investment per person. They found that community health programs could reduce rates of diabetes and high blood pressure by 5 percent within two years and reduce the incidence of some forms of cancer and arthritis within 10 to 20 years.
"We've got to change the mindset from treating sick people to preventing illnesses in the first place," said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, who was scheduled to speak yesterday at an event marking the report's release.
The report, called Prevention for a Healthier America, emphasizes a major role for nonprofit community health programs such as the YMCA. It also advocates that state and local governments help create healthier communities.
Researchers endorsed such initiatives as increased tobacco taxes, smoke-free laws, nutrition labeling on restaurant menus and maintaining sidewalks as low-cost ways to encourage healthy living.
"What's been interesting is that if you make it easier for people to make better choices, they actually do," said Jeffrey Levi, executive director of the Trust for America's Health.
The researchers commended several innovative community health initiatives, including a children's program in Dallas that has led to healthier eating and increased physical activity among youngsters and the District's new Child Health Action Plan, which targets some of the city's worst health problems affecting youth.
However, the researchers found that many such programs lack funding, a chronic problem for many preventive health initiatives.
"People think preventive health care "pays off 20 or 30 years from now, but this shows you get the money back almost immediately, and then the savings grow bigger and bigger," Harkin said.The name or term "Peter" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Peter (disambiguation).
Voted "most likely to do a deal with the devil" five years running.
Peter Benjamin Parker is a photographer for the Daily Bugle newspaper under Editor-in-Chief Joe Robertson. Parker is also the friendly costumed hero Spider-Man. Spider-Man possesses the abilities of Earth arachnids, allowing him to fire thread-like projectiles from his wrists. These threads may be used to spin webs of near-limitless size, as well as to capture thieves and other assorted rogues in the selfsame manner as a spider entraps traditional insects. Those who wonder about his boundless strength would be advised to listen closely, as his spectacular might is the result of radioactive energy flowing through his very veins. The aforementioned web-like materials fired from his wrists can also be used as a means of swinging to and fro, meaning that those who wish to observe the Spider-Man in action can best do so by simply looking overhead. In addition, he is known to be primarily a nocturnal adventurer, appearing in the deep of night wherever evil is afoot. His alacrity is so great, his timing so amazing, he has been compared to a flash of light. Despite his best efforts and good intentions, it seems that his attempts at justice are often overlooked, and while other heroes may find celebrity and fortune, poor Parker is constantly in one hang-up or another. Regardless, the Spider-Man soldiers on; wherever there is a fight or ruckus or tussle, the Spider-Man can be found!
Sometimes he has a black costume, which he can control with his mind, and can shapeshift into normal clothes.
He's kind of a smartass.
“ Doom's robot army. Somebody did a full drive-by on 'em... ” —Luke Cage
“...in their own 'hood. What? I can talk "street"! ” —Spider-Man making a bad crossover that little bit more bearable, "Man and Machine, Part One"
Fiction
Marvel Comics continuity
Marvel The Transformers comics
Events from the UK-only comic stories are in italics.
In 1984, in order to get exclusive photographs of the new Decepticon fortress in Oregon, Peter Parker donned his Spider-Man costume and used his powers to sneak closer to the action. He intercepted Gears, who had been sent on a scouting mission, and attacked, thinking Gears was one of the invaders. When Skywarp threw a tank at a gaggle of unwary reporters, Gears saved them, convincing Spider-Man he was good.
Spins a web, any size
Doesn't work, now he dies!
Spider-Man teamed up with the Autobots to help rescue Sparkplug Witwicky from the Decepticons. Spider-Man noted that he has had many adventures in his long history as a superhero. Optimus Prime replied that he is sure tales of his exploits would be interesting... they could possibly even be described as amazing.
Spidey managed to get the Autobots past the army with a little subterfuge, which lasted about ten seconds. While the Autobots dealt with both the human army and some invading Decepticons, he and Gears made their way into the base. After dispatching the cassettes and Soundwave, the pair found Sparkplug, and Megatron! He used his webbing to completely mummify Megatron, but it didn't hold for very long. Megatron blasted a hole in the floor of their base, so Gears, and Sparkplug would plummet to their deaths. Webbing saved Spider and Spark, but couldn't hold Gears's weight.
Spider-Man was aghast that the Autobots would treat their comrade's apparent death so nonchalantly. He followed the Autobots back to the Ark, and Prime failed to explain in any adequate sense how Gears was neither dead nor alive right then. But Spider-Man couldn't stick around, so he left. Prisoner of War!
is a bad influence. Jameson was right, hea bad influence.
Megatron referenced Spider-Man as a reason to observe and wait instead of attacking: he's showed not all humans were helpless, so others might be useful to the Decepticon cause. The Enemy Within!
Buster Witwicky had a poster of Spider-Man in his room, perhaps as a reminder of the hero that co-saved his father. The Wrath of Guardian!
Later, Spider-Man had become an iconic figure wearing a different costume, featuring a red mask with a black spiderweb pattern. Noah Acton wears a T-shirt bearing his likeness, indicating either kid appeal or counterculture status. Decepticon Graffiti!
Combat Colin
Having been turned away from the Transformers' party, Colin and Steve called Spider-Man to invite him and his superhero chums to a party in the Combat Shed to celebrate Christmas 1989. Hanging from the ceiling, Spidey quipped that it was crowded. Christmas with Combat Colin
Classics
Classics continues from the continues from the Marvel US series, and does not include the UK stories or any subsequently published stories.
When an alternate Ultra Magnus threatened to destroy Earth with the power of his Terminus Blade, Spider-Man assisted in rescue efforts in Canada. Invasion
The Transformers cartoon
Kid, move your damn hand. We're interested in Spider-Man, not you.
In 1985, Spider-Man had become an iconic figure wearing a different costume, featuring a red mask with a black spiderweb pattern. T-shirts were made of his likeness!
...wait, is that Noah? The Autobot Run
Mini Mayhem!
Spider-Man was among the many super-heroes who threw a surprise party for Optimus, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of The Transformers: The Movie.
Some jerk in a Spider-Man outfit led a legion of Clone troopers to smash Bumblebee and Sideswipe's Star Wars Transformers: Crossovers toys.
Later, Spider-Man was seen waiting in line in anticipation for the live-action Transformers film. Mini Mayhem!
IDW Generation 1 continuity
As part of the Avengers, Spider-Man traveled to Latveria to investigate Doctor Doom's apparent attack on the neighboring country, Symkaria. Upon arrival, he and his fellow heroes found a dome-shaped structure emitting radiation and broke into it. Inside the building, they came under attack from automated laser turrets, and while Spider-Man was busy webbing them up and cracking jokes, he was suddenly electrocuted into submission and kidnapped by Runabout |
very proud of this and usually follows it up with something about coming to her with any questions because she knows everything there is to know about this company. Lady Lifer not only drinks the Kool-Aid…she makes it. She wears the company branded jacket in her day-to-day life and plans her vacations so they don’t overlap with office functions.
Lady Lifer is fiercely loyal, almost to a fault. Get in Lady Lifer’s good books by never saying anything bad about the company in her presence and occasionally drop hints about how you too will one day have your retirement party on the roof of the building. Whatever you do, don’t expect to be friends with Lady Lifer after you quit working there. She is very offended by deserters and takes quitting very personally, the same way someone would if you told them you think their child is ugly.
Earl of Oversharing
The Earl of Oversharing is the most entertaining person in the office by far. He really likes to tell stories, especially about his own life…but sometimes he goes too far. He frequently starts sentences with, “I know I shouldn’t say this in the office but…” or “This may be too much information…”. You may love being around the Earl of Oversharing. It really depends how comfortable you are with listening to stories about your colleague’s weekend debaucheries or a detailed play-by-play of their home birth.
One day someone will have the ‘office appropriate behavior talk’ with the Earl…probably after a conversation he had with Madam Mystery that went too far. After that, he will become less and less animated until finally, he’s just another rusty peg in the wheel that keeps the business going. His eyes will become soulless and eventually he will die (as we all do.).
PLEASE NOTE: There is no gender relation to these types – each one can be played by a guy or a girl. Personalities know no gender boundaries.
*Disclaimer: All of these observations were made using characters I have met in my past jobs, not current.Poor weather may have delayed the start of MotoGP testing activities at Aragon on Tuesday, but Repsol Honda were able to unveil this prototype version of the 2014 RC213V.
HRC used a similar tactic to great effect last season - the 2013 bike making its debut in July's Mugello test, then being raced by eventual title runner-up Dani Pedrosa from the following Laguna Seca round.
This time around Pedrosa is already leading the championship, by seven points from Yamaha's Jorge Lorenzo, with rookie team-mate Marc Marquez in third.
Yamaha, Suzuki and the satellite Honda teams, which tested at Catalunya on Monday, are also due to join Repsol Honda at Aragon.
The 2014 MotoGP regulations for official manufacturer entries require one less litre of fuel per race, down from 21 to 20 litres, and use of the control ECU hardware but freedom to continue developing their own software.
Don't miss out! The next round of the 2013 MotoGP World Championship takes place at Assen on June 27-29 - CLICK HERE to see ticket prices from the Official MotoGP Ticket Store.From the AP/Washington Post:
Clinton’s top priorities: Gun control and immigration reform. Could she deliver on either?
Anne Gearan and Paul Kane Article Last Updated: Monday, May 02, 2016 3:35am
Associated Press,
(c) 2016, The Washington Post.
With Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton’s campaign turning fully toward the general election, the candidate is speaking in increasingly strong terms about immediately tackling one of her party’s most challenging domestic policy goals: gun control.
Clinton says just as forcefully that immigration reform will be her top priority upon entering the White House.
Without a dramatic Democratic sweep of Congress, few Democrats or Republicans believe either of these giant promises has a chance in January. That puts Clinton in the somewhat tricky position of making promises that many doubt she could meet.
But the Clinton campaign believes that public opinion has shifted on these two nationally divisive issues, making them winners for her to talk about in the general election. There is even hope among some Democrats that if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee they could win enough seats in the House and Senate to put gun and immigration reform back on the table.
Privately, Clinton aides and allies are more circumspect, quietly prioritizing what is actually possible at the outset of a Clinton presidency – and which promises she would put on hold.
The campaign says there is no trade-off between immigration and gun control, and that she has not overpromised on either. There is plenty of time to decide what comes when, campaign chairman John Podesta said.
“That’s what the transition is for,” Podesta said, referring to the period between the election and the inauguration.
Clinton is campaigning as the candidate of continuity – preserving what Democrats generally see as President Obama’s gains and making changes on his domestic agenda only at the margins. She is also promising to fix and finish what he has left undone, and suggesting to different audiences that she could do so immediately.
Immigration reform, though anathema in the Republican presidential race, is still a better legislative bet than gun control, both Republicans and Democrats said. …
As a result, Clinton and her allies in and out of Congress are gradually building a legislative agenda that would focus on immigration issues in Congress while mostly relying on the executive power of the presidency to further gun restrictions that would have little chance of becoming law. …
She has been more specific about an overhaul of the immigration system at the outset of a Clinton presidency, promising to advance comprehensive reform that offers a path to full citizenship for illegal immigrants within her first 100 days.
“If Congress won’t act, I’ll defend President Obama’s executive actions and I’ll go even further to keep families together,” Clinton promised in January. “I’ll end family detention, close private immigrant detention centers and help more eligible people become naturalized.”
Clinton also has been mildly critical of Obama’s deportation program, promising to stop deportations of almost everyone, aside from violent criminals or terrorists. ….
Immigration and gun control are the issues she points to most frequently, and often with emotional stories and examples. …
Gun control and immigration met with interlocking fates early in Obama’s second term, when he and Vice President Joe Biden made a pitch for legislation strengthening background checks on gun purchases – and when the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” senators began work on a sweeping rewrite of immigration and border-security laws. …
Democrats ditched the gun legislation and pivoted to immigration reform. Two months later, the Senate approved the immigration overhaul on a bipartisan vote of 68 to 32. The legislation included a path to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants. It never went anywhere in the House. …
Clinton’s allies agree that immigration is more ripe for change, particularly if Republicans lose seats. But opposition remains fierce among the House’s more-conservative Republicans. Hopes for approving some version of that legislation in the House cratered two years ago when the sitting majority leader, Eric Cantor, R-Va., lost his primary contest to an underfunded, little-known professor whose main issue was Cantor’s support of legalizing undocumented children who were brought into the country illegally by their parents or relatives.
Ever since then, conservatives have vowed to thwart any effort by Clinton to move a sweeping immigration bill through a Republican-controlled House next year.
“The American people would have an absolute cow,” said Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., who defeated Cantor, openly laughing at the idea, because in most Republican districts immigration is a “70 to 80 percent issue” toward opposing any leniency. “I mean, it’s not even in the ballpark.”What is a cyst?
A cyst is a benign, round, dome-shaped encapsulated lesion that contains fluid or semi-fluid material. It may be firm or fluctuant and often distends the overlying skin. There are several types of cyst. The most common are described here.
What is a pseudocyst?
Cysts that are not surrounded by a capsule are better known as pseudocysts. These commonly arise in acne.
Who gets cysts?
Cysts are very common, affecting at least 20% of adults. They may be present at birth or appear later in life. They arise in all races. Most types of cyst are more common in males than in females.
What causes cysts?
The cause of many cysts is unknown.
Epidermoid cysts are due to proliferation of epidermal cells within dermis. Their origin is the follicular infundibulum. Multiple epidermoid cysts may indicate Gardner syndrome.
of cells within. Their origin is the. Multiple epidermoid cysts may indicate Gardner. An epidermal inclusion cyst is a response to an injury. Skin is tucked in to form a sac that is lined by normal epidermal cells that continue to multiply, mature and form keratin.
inclusion is a response to an injury. Skin is tucked in to form a sac that is lined by normal cells that continue to multiply, mature and form. The origin of a trichilemmal cyst is hair root sheath. Inheritance is autosomal dominant (the affected gene is within short arm of chromosome 3) or sporadic.
is root sheath. Inheritance is dominant (the affected is within short arm of 3) or sporadic. The origin of steatocystoma is the sebaceous duct within the hair follicle. Steatocystoma multiplex is sometimes an autosomal dominantly inherited disorder due to mutations localised to the keratin 17 (K17) gene, when it may be associated with pachyonychia congenita. More often, steatocysts are sporadic, when these mutations are not present.
duct within the. Steatocystoma multiplex is sometimes an dominantly inherited disorder due to to the 17 (K17), when it may be associated with congenita. More often, steatocysts are sporadic, when these are not present. The origin of the eruptive vellus hair cyst is follicular infundibulum. It may be inherited an autosomal dominant disorder due to mutations in keratin gene.
is. It may be inherited an dominant disorder due to in. A dermoid cyst is a hamartoma, a developmental error.
is a, a developmental error. The origin of a ganglion cyst is degeneration of the mucoid connective tissue of a joint.
is degeneration of the mucoid of a joint. Occlusion of pilosebaceous units ( hair follicles ) or eccrine sweat ducts leads to a build-up of secretions. This can present as milia.
of pilosebaceous units ( ) or sweat ducts leads to a build-up of secretions. This can present as milia. Occlusion of the orifice of a mucous gland can lead to a fluid-filled cyst in a mucous membrane (lip, vulva, vagina).
of the orifice of a gland can lead to a fluid-filled in a membrane (lip,, vagina). A milium is a pseudocyst due to failure to release keratin from an adnexal structure. The origin of primary milium is infundibulum of vellus hair follicle at the level of the sebaceous gland; a tiny version of an epidermoid cyst. The origin of secondary milium is a retention cyst within a vellus hair follicle, sebaceous duct, sweat duct or epidermis.
due to failure to release from an adnexal structure. The origin of milium is of vellus at the level of the gland; a tiny version of an epidermoid. The origin of secondary milium is a retention within a vellus, duct, sweat duct or. Pseudocysts in acne are formed by occlusion of the follicle by keratin and sebum.
What are the clinical features of cysts?
Epidermoid cyst
Epidermoid cysts occur on face, neck, trunk or anywhere where there is little hair.
. Most epidermoid cysts arise in adult life.
They are more than twice as common in men as in women.
They present as one or more flesh–coloured to yellowish, adherent, firm, round nodules of variable size.
of variable size. A central pore or punctum may be present.
Keratinous contents are soft, cheese-like and malodorous.
Scrotal and labial cysts are frequently multiple and may calcify.
Epidermoid cyst is also called follicular infundibular cyst, epidermal cyst, keratin cyst.
Epidermoid cyst
See more images of epidermoid cysts...
Trichilemmal cyst
90% of trichilemmal cysts occur on scalp; otherwise face, neck, trunk, and extremities.
Most trichilemmal cysts arise in middle age.
In 70% of cases, trichilemmal cysts are multiple.
They presents as adherent, round or oval, firm nodules.
. There is no punctum.
The keratinous content is firm, white and easily enucleated.
A trichilemmal cyst is also called pilar cyst.
Trichilemmal cyst
See more images of epidermoid cysts...
Steatocystoma
A solitary steatocystoma is known as steatocystoma simplex.
More often, there are multiple lesions (steatocystoma multiplex) on chest, upper arms, axillae, neck and scrotum or vulva.
, neck and scrotum or.
The cysts arise in the late teens and 20s due to the effect of androgens, and persist lifelong.
, and persist lifelong.
They are freely moveable, smooth flesh to yellow colour papules 3–30 mm in diameter.
3–30 mm in diameter.
There is no central punctum.
Content of cyst is predominantly sebum.
Steatocystoma multiplex
Eruptive vellus hair cysts
Eruptive vellus hair cysts are present in childhood if familial, and later if sporadic.
cysts are present in childhood if, and later if sporadic. Multiple 2–3 mm papules develop over the sternum.
develop over the sternum. The cysts contain vellus hairs.
Dermoid cyst
A cutaneous dermoid cyst may include skin, skin structures and sometimes teeth, cartilage and bone.
dermoid may include skin, skin structures and sometimes teeth, cartilage and bone.
Most dermoid cysts are found on face, neck, scalp; often around eyelid, forehead and brow.
It is a thin-walled tumour that ranges from soft to hard in consistency.
that ranges from soft to hard in consistency.
The cyst is formed at birth but the patient may not present until an adult.
Dermoid cysts
Ganglion cyst
A ganglion cyst most often involves scapholunate joint of dorsal wrist.
most often involves scapholunate joint of wrist.
These arise in young to middle-aged adults.
They are 3 times more common in women than in men.
The cyst is a unilocular of multilocular firm swelling 2–4 cm in diameter that transilluminates.
is a unilocular of multilocular firm swelling 2–4 cm in diameter that transilluminates.
Cyst contents are mainly hyaluranic acid, a golden-coloured goo.
Ganglion cyst
Mucous / myxoid pseudocysts arise in older adults on distal phalanx
/ arise in older adults on
They arise from distal interphalangeal joint, associated with osteoarthritis.
interphalangeal joint, associated with.
They often present as a longitudinal depression in the nail due to compression on the proximal matrix.
Myxoid pseudocyst
See more images of digital myxoid pseudocysts...
Labial mucous / myxoid cyst
A cyst in the lip may be due to occlusion of the salivary duct
in the lip may be due to of the salivary duct
They are also called mucocoele.
It is a soft to firm firm, 5–15 mm diameter, semi-translucent nodule.
Mucocoele of lip
Hidrocystoma
Hidrocystoma is a translucent jelly-like cyst arising on an eyelid.
arising on an eyelid.
It is also known as cystadenoma, Moll gland cyst, and sudoriferous cyst.
, and sudoriferous.
The common solitary translucent eyelid cyst is an apocrine hidrocystoma.
is an apocrine hidrocystoma.
Multiple cysts on the lower eyelid are eccrine hidrocystomas.
Hidrocystoma of eyelid
More images of hidrocystoma of eyelid...
Milium/milia
Milia are 1–2 mm superficial white dome-shaped papules containing keratin
containing
Primary milia arise in neonates (50%), adolescents and adults; they are rarely familial and sometimes eruptive.
milia arise in (50%), adolescents and adults; they are rarely and sometimes eruptive.
Primary milia occur on eyelids, cheeks, nose, mucosa (Epstein pearls) and palate (Bohn nodules ) in babies; and eyelids, cheeks and nose of older children and adults.
milia occur on eyelids, cheeks, nose, (Epstein pearls) and palate (Bohn ) in babies; and eyelids, cheeks and nose of older children and adults.
Transverse primary milia are sometimes noted across nasal groove or around areola.
milia are sometimes noted across nasal groove or around areola.
In milia en plaque, multiple milia arise on an erythematous plaque on face, chin or ears.
, multiple milia arise on an on face, chin or ears.
Secondary milia arise at the site of epidermal repair after blistering or injury, eg epidermolysis bullosa, bullous pemphigoid, porphyria cutanea tarda, thermal burn, dermabrasion.
repair after blistering or injury, eg epidermolysis bullosa, pemphigoid, porphyria cutanea tarda, thermal burn, dermabrasion.
Secondary milia are reported as an adverse effect of topical steroids, 5-fluorouracil cream, vemurafenib and dovitinib.
Milia
See more images of milia...
Vulval mucous cyst
A vulval mucous cyst is due to occlusion of Bartholin or Skene duct.
is due to of Bartholin or Skene duct. It presents as a soft swelling in the introitus of vagina: a posterior swelling is a Bartholin cyst and a periurethral swelling is a Skene cyst.
Comedo and acne pseudocyst
Comedones are pseudocysts formed by occlusion of follicle by keratin and sebum.
are formed by of by and.
The open comedo (blackhead) and closed comedo (whitehead) are small, superficial papules typical of acne vulgaris
(blackhead) and closed (whitehead) are small, superficial typical of acne vulgaris
Solar comedones arise in sun-damaged skin and are associated with smoking.
arise in sun-damaged skin and are associated with smoking.
Large uninflamed pseudocysts accompany inflammatory nodules in nodulocystic acne and hidradenitis suppurativa.
Comedones
Pseudocyst of auricle
Pseudocyst of auricle (external ear) follows trauma.
Pseudocyst of auricle
Complications of cysts
Rupture of a cyst
The contents of the cyst may penetrate the capsular wall and irritate surrounding skin.
may penetrate the capsular wall and irritate surrounding skin. The area of tender, firm inflammation spreads beyond the encapsulated cyst.
spreads beyond the encapsulated. Sterile pus may be discharged.
Secondary infection
A ruptured cyst may infrequently become secondarily infected by Staphylococcus aureus, forming a furuncle (boil).
Pressure effect
A dermoid cyst can cause pressure on underlying bony tissue.
can cause pressure on underlying bony tissue. A ganglion cyst can cause joint instability, weakness, limitation of motion and may compress a nerve.
can cause joint instability, weakness, limitation of motion and may compress a nerve. A digital mucous cyst may place pressure on the proximal matrix and cause malformation of the nail.
Malignancy
Cutaneous cysts and pseudocysts are non- proliferative benign lesions.
cysts and are non- lesions. Nodulocystic basal cell carcinoma is a common skin cancer that presents as a rounded nodule and may initially be mistaken for a cyst, but steady enlargement, destruction of the epidermis with ulceration and bleeding occur eventually.
cell is a common skin that presents as a rounded and may initially be mistaken for a, but steady enlargement, destruction of the with and bleeding occur eventually. Malignant proliferative trichilemmal cyst is actually a misnomer. It is an extremely rare tumour.
How are cysts diagnosed?
Cysts are usually diagnosed clinically as they have typical characteristics. When a cyst is surgically removed, it should undergo histological examination. The type of lining of the wall of cyst and the cyst contents help the pathologist classify it.
Epidermoid cysts are lined with stratified squamous epithelium that contains a granular layer. Laminated keratin contents are noted inside the cyst. An inflammatory response may be present in cysts that have ruptured.
that contains a. Laminated contents are noted inside the. An response may be present in cysts that have ruptured. Trichilemmal cysts have a palisaded peripheral layer without granular layer. Contents are eosinophilic hair keratin. Older cysts may exhibit calcification. The proliferating variety is considered a tumour.
. Contents are. Older cysts may exhibit. The variety is considered a. Steatocystoma has a folded cyst wall with prominent sebaceous gland lobules.
wall with prominent gland lobules. Dermoid cyst contains fully mature elements of the skin including fat, hairs, sebaceous glands, eccrine glands, and in 20%, apocrine glands.
contains fully mature elements of the skin including fat, hairs, glands,, and in 20%,. The lining of the wall of a ganglion cyst or digital mucous cyst is collagen and fibrocytes. It contains hyalin material.
or digital is and fibrocytes. It contains hyalin material. Hidrocystoma has a thin lining wall of eosinophilic bilaminar cells.
What is the treatment for cysts?
Asymptomatic epidermoid cysts do not need to be treated. In most cases, attempt to remove only the contents of a cyst is followed by recurrence. If desired, cysts may be fully excised. Recurrence is not uncommon, and re-excision may be surgically challenging.
Inflamed cysts are sometimes treated with:
Incision and drainage
and drainage Intralesional injection with triamcinolone
Oral antibiotics
Delayed excision biopsy
How can cysts be prevented?
Unknown.
What is the outlook for cysts?
Cysts generally persist unless surgically removed.The JD-U legislator even said that it should be investigated whether the pesticide found in the poisonous meals, which claimed 23 lives, was also made in Gujarat, where the government is headed by BJP's chief of campaign for 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
The JD-U legislator even said that it should be probed whether the pesticide was made in Gujarat.
The ruling Janata Dal-United (JD-U) on Monday made a sensational allegation against its former ally Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), questioning if the recent Bodhgaya serial blasts and the Chhapra mid-day meal tragedy had a Gujarat link.
During a debate on the adjournment motion over mid-day meal case, JD-U's Manjeet Singh said in the Bihar Assembly that the Opposition had not only conspired in the tragic deaths involving the lunch scheme run in government schools across the country, but even the timers used in Bodhgaya blasts were found procured from the BJP-ruled Gujarat.
The JD-U legislator even said that it should be investigated whether the pesticide found in the poisonous meals, which claimed 23 lives, was also made in Gujarat, where the government is headed by BJP's chief of campaign for 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
Earlier, the opposition parties created a ruckus in the House demanding discussion on the July 16 Chhapra tragedy leading to disruptions in its proceeding.
Sources in the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which has been probing the July 7 Bodhgaya terror attack case, had said that the timer used in the bombs planted at the Mahabodhi Temple were manufactured in Gujarat and the devices were brought to the Bihar town from Guwahati.
Also, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his party leaders have time and again alleged a political conspiracy behind the Chhapra midday meal tragedy.
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TESTIMONIALSTaleban in Transition: How Mansur’s death and Haibatullah’s ascension may affect the war (and peace)
Taleban leader Hebatullah Akhundzada.
The killing of Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansur in an American drone strike has deprived the Taleban of their official, and before that, de facto leader of six years. Mansur had shaped the movement profoundly – leaving it stronger militarily, but with more internal dissension. His successor, Mullah Haibatullah, is an austere, pious man with higher religious credentials than either of his two predecessors, but also a legalist theologian who has no military or leadership experience. AAN’s Borhan Osman assesses Mansur’s legacy and what we might expect from the new man in charge.
How Mansur was killed
According to Taleban sources in Pakistan, Mansur had been very much restricting his visibility and movement since mid-December 2015. Before going off the radar, he had met some of the Rahbari Shura members closest to him and delegated authority for day-to-day operations to his deputy and to the shura. He had already empowered the Rahbari Shura to play a larger role in decision-making and ordered it to convene more regularly than it used to. He told friends he would no longer be available, as he had used to be in Pakistan and spoke of the need for finding alternative bases for senior members of the movement. The sources are not consistent as to where, from Quetta, he shifted his base to, but all agree on his decreased visibility after December. Concerns about his security may have been triggered by the reported attempt on his life on 4 December 2015, but that is not certain.
According to the same sources, on 21 May 2016, Mansur wanted to meet some of his closest friends and senior members of the Taleban in a border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan to discuss some urgent and important issues in person. He had been communicating with the Rahbari Shura through other channels during the previous five months. On 21 May 2016, however, he drove back into Balochistan again to see comrades in person. He was targeted by a US drone within hours of his entry into Pakistan. Suspicions are running high among a number of Taleban cadres about Pakistan’s hand in the provision of intelligence to the Americans. Why Pakistan would have wanted to get rid of Mansur and why now is not obvious, but the mere fact that (parts of) the Taleban suspect Pakistan underlines the degree of mutual mistrust that has been brewing. The Taleban statement announcing Mansur’s death and the appointment of his successor hinted at the possible pressures Islamabad had put him under to enter peace talks. “He did not accept anyone’s offers of imposed and fraudulent processes; neither was he scared by threats; his determination remained unshaken by internal and external conspiracies and pressures.” [AAN translation]
Mansur’s legacy
Mansur has left behind a Taleban movement that he has shaped profoundly, an organisation, which is largely a product of his six years of de facto and official leadership. (Mullah Omar stepped back from the effective running of the insurgency in 2008, did not even see close comrades after 2010, died in 2013 and had his death revealed in 2015; Mansur went from the position of Kandahar ‘governor’ during the early years of the insurgency to deputy leader in 2007, de facto leader in 2010 and announced leader in 2015.)
Under Mansur, the Taleban went through a ‘modernisation’, which saw the transformation of the insurgents from a loose, rag-tag army to a relatively well-organised movement. The transformation had started with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in 2008 who had stepped into the day-to-day running of the organisation because of Omar’s need to stay hidden; Baradar’s vision culminated in the Taleban’s code of conduct or Layha of 2010 (also see the AAN paper on this topic here), the year he was arrested by Pakistan. Mansur followed, implemented and expanded that vision. At the core of this process was the establishment of an elaborate, hierarchical command and control system that involved shifting a patronage-based military structure to a rationalised army-like structure. This might have not been effectively implemented everywhere, but has anyway radically changed the way Taleban fighters operate. Like Baradar, Mansur was a strategist and further streamlined the movement’s overall structure into a quasi-state with 13 commissions and administrative bodies modelled on Afghanistan’s ministries and agencies. This relatively sophisticated administration brought about a level of centralisation that the movement had always lacked since it emerged in 1994 (apart from its years as the state 1996-2001). Mansur’s organisational skills were remarkable even before he moved into the leadership circle. His comrades from 2006-2007 when he was in charge of fighting in Kandahar say his units were highly organised, in contrast with other groups.
A divisive leader
Before looking in more detail at Mansur’s effective leadership, it is worth bearing in mind that he was not without doubters, even from among Taleban ranks. He was accused (including by fellow Taleban) of deep involvement in the drugs trade and of having non-drug-related businesses ‘on the side’. The allegation that Mansur was involved in narcotics, not only for funding the movement, but also for ‘personal financing’ has haunted his reputation ever since he was Taleban minister of aviation in the 1990s. Mansur was also accused of being worldly, of leading a rich life and travelling extensively and mysteriously. This set him in sharp contrast to Mullah Omar and many other Taleban leaders as well as the rank and file.
Mansur was also accused by critics within the movement of manipulating his authority to promote his fellow Ishaqzais, as well as non-Ishaqzai loyalists, while marginalising personal rivals within the movement. Mansur has probably stepped on the toes of many Taleban in his jockeying for power since he started serving in the leading positions eight years ago. The most prominent of those deeply discontent about what they believed was his nepotism were the two senior-most commanders of the movement, Abdul Rauf Khadem and Abdul Qayum Zaker, respectively the deputy and head of the military commission in 2010 (Zaker had recently reconciled with Mansur and Khadem was also killed in an air strike in February 2015).
Additionally, Mansur had a history of close relations with Pakistan, albeit one that seemed to have soured in recent months. His closeness with Pakistan seems to have been acknowledged even from the outset of the insurgency by the Taleban leaders, something they then used as an asset. When the Taleban’s first post-collapse leadership council was formed in summer 2003, Mansur was appointed as the man ‘in charge of liaison with Pakistan’, a covert role occupied ever since by Taleban members loyal to Pakistan.
Funding and fighting
Mansur, during his years of de-facto and official leadership, turned out to be not only discipline-savvy, but also business-minded (bearing in mind the caveats about personal finances just made). He centralised the collection of Taleban revenues, expanded ‘taxation’ and established a virtual monopoly over external fund-raising. He did so by appointing one of the most trusted of his people, Haji Gul Agha, a fellow Ishaqzai from Helmand to the position of head of the financial commission, after purging it of people he did not trust and sending official letters to the external ‘donors’ to pay only the people officially introduced by the financial commission.
He fired commanders who did not send revenues to the central command and appointed close confidantes to take charge of finances. In order to keep a semi-monopoly on insurgency activities on the battlefield, he also took measures to curb dissidents and stop the emergence of rival groups. He used co-optation and reconciliation and, if neither worked, resorted to brutally fighting the dissidents. For example, he tried hard to not enter into an open confrontation with the most staunch of his rivals, Abdul Qayum Zaker, by paying his expenses and constantly using go-betweens to try to reduce the tension. Similarly, when foreign militants moved into Afghanistan from North Waziristan in the summer/autumn of 2014, they were followed and closely kept in check by Taleban fighters along the way and at their final destination. In one case, when the foreign fighters, together with dissident commander Mansur Dadullah, openly went into opposition last autumn, Mansur sent the most brutal of his commanders to fight the dissidents in Zabul. When the biggest threat to his monopoly on the insurgency emerged in the form of an Islamic State (IS) franchise in early 2015, he first tried hard to stop it by talking to ‘IS Central’ in Syria through personal channels and then sent an open letter trying to dissuade the group from opening a new front in Afghanistan. When he failed to change the Islamic State’s stance, he actively fought its local franchise, sending the best of his forces.
Mansur also reshuffled the Rahbari Shura last year, bringing in a Tajik, Turkmen and Uzbek, who, together with the two existing Tajik members brought the number of non-Pashtuns in the movement’s highest decision-making body to one fifth (an all time high). Unlike the Taleban era in the 1990s, the Taleban now has a northern front, which is run and made up of local commanders and this has made it more sustainable. The active expansion of the insurgency in the north had started in 2008, and within three years, the Taleban were present in substantial parts of five northern provinces. However, under Mansur’s leadership the insurgency has expanded far more widely in the north, including to non-Pashtun or Pashtun-minority provinces. The capture of Kunduz city for two weeks last September and the escalation of fighting in Badakhshan underlined how consolidated the northern front has become, partly due to the leadership of commanders from local ethnic groups, an initiative which Taleban cadres credit Mansur with.
Mansur also tried to upgrade Taleban military training and infrastructure. In spring 2015, he established an elite force that was tasked to intervene in critical military situations and crush dissidents, called the qita-e montazira (literally: reserve force). It has been the most effective and well-equipped unit as shown (and reported on by AAN) in its fights last year. Additionally, the overall training exercises for Taleban became more diverse and were professionalised over the past three years.
Mansur presided over a period (when de facto leader, but even more so during his official leadership), which saw a record-level escalation in insurgent violence, with the Taleban responsible for the bulk of the civilian casualties. He took the war into urban centres, which caused massive suffering and casualties for the population. The Shah Shaheed bombing in Kabul, the overrunning of Kunduz and the Pul-e Mahmood Khan bombing in Kabul all happened during his 10-months reign as the official leader of the Taleban. Long before these bombings, the escalation of fighting had continued steadily in the wake of the drawdown of international troops in 2014. Many had wondered if Mansur (then the de facto leader of the Taleban) might use the drawdown as an opportunity to switch to a political settlement with the Afghan government and save the country from violence, which is now almost entirely Afghan on Afghan. However, he displayed no strong desire for doing so, and might well have wasted a reasonable opportunity for ending the war in Afghanistan. Of course, his failure to make peace a serious option was equally matched by the Afghan government (and US) mishandling of a desired peace process.
Diplomatic outreach
On a par with his ‘upgrading’ of military and administrative structures, Mansur also revolutionised the movement’s external relations. He was instrumental in opening the Qatar office in 2013, after he had persuaded Mullah Omar to agree to it in late 2011. Although the Doha-based political office never entered into formal talks with the Afghan government, it did engage in a series of track-II talks with various political actors, which helped the Taleban boost their image within some of the most influential political groups in Afghanistan, such as the mainly Tajik Jamiat-e Islami and the two Hazara Hezb-e Wahdats. In addition to Qatar, the Taleban under Mansur initiated |
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Weiss had shown no sign of emotion during the entire tirade, and was positive that it had only made Yang even surer that she didn't care for Ruby at all. But Weiss knew this was far from the truth. There were many things Weiss had never told her teammates, and she wouldn't start now. Weiss had decided that it was best to take her chances and leave, if only to get some fresh air before the tension suffocated her.
Slowly, Weiss pulled herself to her feet. Every inch of her body ached from staying still for so long, but she didn't care. She stood up fully, and waited for Yang to go back to yelling, but nothing happened.
"She must have fallen asleep." Weiss thought to herself.
She sighed as she pulled the blankets from her bunk and draped them across the sleeping girl, and quietly opened the door and walked out into the hall.
"I guess I could go get a late meal. It's been a long day." her thoughts continued on.
The heiress trudged down the hallway, stopping before she covered just ten feet. "I need to go see Ruby. I have to make sure she's alright."
Changing her course of direction, she made her way towards the infirmary ward. Upon reaching the door a few minutes later, she hesitated, not knowing what to expect, as she hadn't seen Ruby being carried out of the forest. Her hand reached for the doorknob, and slowly began to turn it, and paused.
"What if she didn't make it? What if she will never become a huntress? What if she hates me for not protecting her like I said I would?"
All of these fears became overwhelming as her hand began to tremble. Gathering her willpower, she forced herself to slowly open the door to Ruby's temporary room.
In an instant, her heart was shattered into many, many pieces. Everything Weiss had learned to keep herself from showing any weakness, failed her. Ruby was covered head to toe in gauze, and several whirring machines with long tubes ran into her body. Blood had seeped through much of the full body wrapping, and had started running down onto the bed, dying it a dark red. Blood bags hung from racks on both sides of her bed, keeping her from bleeding to death. One tube ran into her nose, forcing air into her lungs.
Ruby couldn't even breathe without a machine to help her.
Silent "No's" began radiating off of Weiss' lips as she took in every gruesome detail of her partner's current state. Rushing to her side, she saw that Ruby's face was still frozen in a terrified expression of pain. Weiss was mortified, glued to the spot where she stood. Her mind instinctively kept telling her to get over it, to accept what had happened. She could have done it had it been anyone but Ruby.
Ruby had held a special spot in Weiss' life for some time now. Her leader had such a carefree way of going about her role in the team, leaving it up to Weiss to pick up the slack. The heiress tried to train Ruby in her off time from classes, and she had made so much progress. Ruby had finally started acting like a leader, not afraid to give orders or set up a plan of execution upon being assigned a mission. But the childish girl had never once given up on who she was at heart. Whenever she could, she'd have as much fun as possible before having to get back to her duties. Over the months, Ruby had grown on Weiss, in a way she couldn't describe. But now, seeing her fearless leader in such a torn up state, shook her ice cold heart to the core. Weiss' eyes were closed as she bowed her head and clenched her fists. Her mind thought back to all of the things Yang had said about her.
"You're nothing but a selfish, spoiled, uptight bitch, and that's all you'll ever be!"
Weiss couldn't deny it either, but it wasn't her fault she was born into the most powerful company the world had ever seen.
She had been brought up as the heiress of the Schnee Dust Company, and as the daughter of a professional businessman. Her father has wanted a son, but being stuck with a daughter, he made do. He taught her to be cold, and take down whoever would dare stand in her way, and a part of that being to never become attached to anything, or it would lead to her immediate downfall. Whenever it seemed as though she would show any sign of caring towards anyone, her father would have him or her jailed, never to be seen again. Weiss hated her father, but could do nothing about her place in the world. Ever since, she had pushed everyone away from her, to keep them safe. It was better for them to hate her, than to be imprisoned at the hands of her father.
Snapping out of the horrifying memories, she opened her eyes to look at her hands, still clenched, and nails beginning to draw blood. The pains her hands were not near the anguish she felt in her chest. Looking upon her nearly-dead leader, she made a vow.
"Ruby… I know that all you wanted from the first day was to be friends, but I couldn't risk it. You would have been taken like the rest. I promise that when you wake up, I will be by your side and protect you no matter what happens to me. I want you to know that you are my first true friend, and that you are my best friend." Weiss spoke aloud, eyes closed tightly, resisting the urge to break down and cry.
"I promise that I will do whatever it takes to make this up to you, if it costs my life." Tears began streaming from the girl's eyes as she opened them, and placed her hand in Ruby's, and collapsed onto her knees by the bed.
"You're the only one I have ever felt this way about, you dolt! You can't just die like this and leave me with nobody left in my life!" Weiss laid her head on the edge of the bed, and began to cry, soaking the sheets with tears.
"Don't worry Weiss, everything will be alright." A calm voice spoke from the doorway. Weiss released Ruby's hand, stood up and spun around all in one fluid motion as she saw Blake smiling warmly looking at her tear streaked face.
"I won't say a word." Blake said. "But as soon as Ruby gets better, you have to tell her how you feel".The 1980s were the worst thing to ever happen to the perception of hockey fans. For a large majority of media, hockey in the 80s was what they grew up on, and because hockey for them is intrinsically tied to that time, expectations for point production for top players is completely out of whack with reality.
A huge percentage of fans and media still believe that first liners need to be point per game players, even though there are only a handful of players of that calibre in the league, and 90 slots for first-line players. So what made a first liner, or a second liner even, in 2014-15? And how do the Montreal Canadiens stack up? Going by point production, you'd be surprised
First-Line Centers
All situations range: 55 points to 86 points
Even strength range: 39 points to 60 points
By definition there are 30 centers in the NHL who are first liners, and the top scorers just aren't putting the puck in the net at the same frequency as they used to. The Canadiens do actually have a center who fit in this group this season, with Tomas Plekanec registering 40 even strength points (28th), and 60 total points (25th). While you can say that Plekanec isn't a high-end first line center, it would be entirely inaccurate to say he's not a first line center, especially since he takes some of the toughest minutes of anyone in that top-30 grouping.
First-Line Left Wingers
All situations range: 42 points to 87 points
Even strength range: 33 points to 59 points
The Canadiens have two first line left wingers, with Max Pacioretty being at an elite level with 51 even strength points (3rd), and 67 total points (6th), and Alex Galchenyuk at 34 even strength points (28th) and 46 total points (26th). Galchenyuk's ability to produce at a first-line rate with second-line minutes may be one of the main reasons why the Canadiens are hesitant to shift him to center, however generally speaking, centers produce more points overall.
First-Line Right Wingers
All situations range: 42 points to 81 points
Even strength range: 29 points to 55 points
The Canadiens once again have a player in this range, with Brendan Gallagher emerging this season as a first liner. Gallagher notched 39 even strength points (17th), and 47 total points (24th). As we discussed before, Gallagher isn't an elite producer, but he's possibly on his way to being one, especially if his powerplay work catches up to what he can do at even strength.
Second-Line Centers
All situations range: 39 points to 55 points
Even strength range: 31 points to 39 points
Most people likely wouldn't believe it if you told them an average second-line center is only a 45-point player, but that's the reality of the NHL. The Canadiens had one player who fit this category last season, with David Desharnais registering 37 points at even strength (34th overall, fourth among second-line centers), and 48 total points (40th overall, 10th among second-line centers). Unfortunately, Desharnais was given first-line ice time, and extremely favourable situations to score, so these results are still disappointing. But even so, his point production is that of a good second liner.
Second-Line Left Wingers
All situations range: 26 points to 42 points
Even strength range: 22 points to 32 points
The Canadiens had no one in this group, which worked out since Galchenyuk scored like a first liner, but most good teams have players on the third line who can produce like a bad second liner, which may give you a hint about the trouble in Montreal.
Second-Line Right Wingers
All situations range: 26 points to 41 points
Even strength range: 19 points to 29 points
The Canadiens had one player in this group, and you guessed it, it's Dale Weise. You're reading that right. Weise's season was far more luck than skill and isn't going to be repeated, but he spent most of it in the top-six, and rewarded Therrien's decision with a shocking 29 even-strength points (35th overall, fifth among second line right wingers), and 29 overall points (53rd overall, 23rd among second line right wingers) since he didn't factor on special teams. In many ways, Weise's outlier season saved the Habs' lack of depth in the regular season.
Third-Line Centers
All situations range: 31 points to 39 points
Even strength range: 24 points to 30 points
Lars Eller should make this list, but he didn't, largely due to a lack of assists. That will lead to many people saying he lacks hockey sense, when really he lacks linemates. Eller ranked 60th among centers in total goals, and tied for 34th in even strength goals, he's got offensive skill, but his points weren't up to third-line center par last year.
Third-Line Left Wingers
All situations range: 12 points to 25 points
Even strength range: 11 points to 20 points
The Canadiens had two players in this range, emphasis on had, because Jiri Sekac was among the best third-line wingers in the league at 20 even-strength points (63rd overall, third among third-line left wingers), and 23 total points (65th overall, fifth among third-line left wingers) but they traded him. Brandon Prust also stuck in this category, with 17 even strength points (71st overall, 11th among third line left wingers) and 18 total points (75th overall, 15th among third line left wingers).
Third-Line Right Wingers
All situations range: 12 points to 25 points
Even strength range: 11 points to 19 points
The Canadiens once again had two players in this range, the problem being that neither of them produced in that role. P.-A. Parenteau struggled with injuries for most of the year, but played a top-six role when healthy. Parenteau's 18 even-strength points (64th overall, fourth among third-line right wingers) and 22 total points (65th overall, fifth among third-line right wingers) were strong third-line numbers, but he played less than 100 minutes on the third line. Devante Smith-Pelly also put up solid third-line numbers, registering 17 even strength points (69th overall, ninth among third-line right wingers), and 20 total points (69th overall, ninth among third-line right wingers), but only one of those points came while playing on the third line in Montreal, with the other two occurring on the so-called first line after Pacioretty was injured.
Do the Canadiens have depth?
We know that the Canadiens don't play a system that caters to offensive creativity, or goals, or even shots on goal, so it's tough to judge how offensively capable the team truly is. However just judging based on the rankings here, the Canadiens have too many of their top end players at the lower edges of their tiers (Plekanec, Gallagher, Galchenyuk, Eller), and too many third-line forwards, or at least players that produce like third liners.
Keep in mind that these rankings don't account for games played, and the Canadiens were by far the healthiest team in the NHL last season. They had just a single player miss major time in Parenteau.
The Canadiens could always use an additional scorer, especially if they plan to move Galchenyuk to center, but the key to improving their offense isn't just personnel moves, it's a system change. You can't score if you don't put shots on net, and the Canadiens simply don't. And even when they do, they're most often from the perimeter.The first step is to wind the toroid. I found mine in an old computer power supply, and it works fine for me. Toroids are donut-shaped objects like in the picture, and can be attracted by a magnet.
You can find toroids in a few places. Old computer motherboards, XBOX and X360 motherboards have them (don't take them unless it's dead!). You can find toroids in computer power supplies, or you could buy them at your nearest RadioShack.
Take your two strands of wire, and twist the ends together. You don't have to do this, but it makes winding a little easier.
Thread the twisted end through the toroid, then take the other two ends (Not twisted together) and wind it once around the toroid. Don't twist the wires; make sure that two wires of the same color are not right next to each other.
Keep winding, making sure you wind the coils tight. It will still work if they are kind of loose, but it is better to have them tight.
Ideally, you want about 8-11 turns on your toroid. Even if you can fit more, don't put more on. Make sure the turns are spaced evenly around the toroid.
Once you wind around the whole toroid, cut off the extra wire, making sure you leave a couple of inches for soldering.
Strip some insulation off the wires, then take a wire from each side, making sure they are of the OPPOSITE COLOR. Twist them together, and then you're done with the toroid.Thomas Wells teaches ethics and the philosophy of social science at the Institute for Philosophy at Leiden University, and at the University of Witten/Herdecke.
Like cigarettes, meat and dairy packaging should include no nonsense factual warnings about the negative consequences of one's consumption choices.
Just as with cigarettes, exercising our sovereign right to free choice requires that we be adequately informed about the significant negative implications of our choices by someone other than the manufacturer that wants us to buy their product.
In this case, the significant consequences relate to living up to one's ethical values rather than safe-guarding one's prudential interests in long-term health.
But the principle is the same.
Ethical warning labels would inform consumers of the physical and mental suffering involved in producing the animal products they are considering buying.
I envisage labels like this: "This chicken's beak was cut off, causing it intense pain until its death." And: "This cow's calves were taken away and killed to keep it producing milk."
Servers of cooked animal products, from lowly hot-dog stands to the fanciest restaurants, would also have to include these ethical warnings prominently on their menus.
Like cigarette packaging in some countries, the ethical warnings might include full colour pictures of the living conditions of the animals your food comes from. The labels could be graded to reflect the conditions under which the source animals lived and died - for example, if they pass the requirements of the various animal welfare certification programmes. That would allow better but more expensive standards of animal welfare to be recognised and encouraged by consumers.
Many restaurants might prefer to pay more for their groceries merely to avoid having pictures of debeaked hens ruining the aesthetic of their menus.
Still there are limits to how positive such labels may get. Even an animal that lives quite well and is killed quite painlessly has still had its life treated as a commodity, and this should be acknowledged. For example: "This chicken was killed at 7 weeks of age. It could have lived up to 7 years."
My proposal may seem outrageous and paternalistic on first reading. But it seems to me that such ethical warning labels are not only permissible in a free society; they are actually required by the liberal conception of freedom.
The conditions of "free choice"
A liberal society is defined by its respect for individuals' free choices in their private personal domain. First, whatever is not illegal is permitted. Second, making some practice illegal in the first place requires a public justification for its necessity and legitimacy that even those affected can appreciate.
John Stuart Mill's "harm principle" provides an ideal benchmark for this. It is legitimate to ban behaviour that harms others and their freedom to live their own life, but it is illegitimate to ban behaviour that merely offends others - even if they are the "moral majority" - by going against their private moral beliefs. Thus, in a liberal society, people are free to decide for themselves whether to do things that others strongly disapprove of, such as following "weird" religions, or engaging in unorthodox sexual practices, or eating meat.
Ethical warning labels would need to be mandated by law. But they would not restrict people's freedom of choice because consumers would remain as free as before to buy those products. Indeed, they respect the "democratic" mainstream view of meat-eating as a private ethical concern about which individuals should make up their own minds, on the model of a consumer lifestyle choice.
Of course, ethical labelling would interfere with the freedom of manufacturers to present their products as they wish, and would therefore need to pass a public justification relating to that. But this is not a great challenge. Corporations are not persons, and so their freedom of expression does not deserve intrinsic respect and can be abridged on purely utilitarian grounds. Labelling laws are consistent with the liberal understanding of individual rights and hence permissible in a liberal society.
Indeed, most countries already have labelling laws compelling manufacturers to present certain kinds of information (like use by dates) in a clear way, and these are often justified by customers' interest in having easily comparable information available in their decision-making (like information about nutritional values on packaged food and restaurant menus).
Nor need such labelling laws relate to scientifically proven "medical" facts, as the campaign for GM labelling demonstrates. Nor need they only reflect the interests of the majority of the population, as warnings that products may contain nuts demonstrate. Justifying an ethical labelling law merely requires showing that it could significantly help people to make better decisions.
This brings me to why I think ethical labelling is actually required by liberalism. The idea that the free choices of sovereign individuals are trumps contains a complication. What counts as a free choice? One can't tell merely from the fact that someone chose X over Y (an outcome) that their choice was a free one (a procedural quality). Let us leave aside the "free will" challenge and adopt the liberal starting point that individuals are indeed more or less sovereign agents who are responsible for their moral character and can therefore make choices for themselves.
Nonetheless, there remains a question mark over whether particular choices that we make are really free in the sense of being our own. In particular, if we are not sufficiently informed about both the negative and positive implications of the options we are presented with, we won't be able to relate those options to our own values and interests. We can still perform acts of choosing in such cases - we still have the power of choice. But we would not be choosing freely because we would not be able to exercise our right to choose in a way that follows from the personal moral beliefs that make us, us.
This issue seems particularly problematic in consumer choice cases where two factors are present:
Where the negative consequences of consuming something seem very significant and thus have a prima facie call on the attention of the chooser;
where the manufacturer of a product has a strong interest in encouraging its consumption even at the expense of the customer's own interests, and has substantial power to misrepresent the product to the consumer in a way that undermines their ability to consider its negative consequences.
These factors were clearly present in the case of cigarettes, a poisonous product designed to be addictive and routinely advertised in a deceptive way. I believe they are also present in the case of animal products.
The problem of moral irrationality
Killing or hurting animals is increasingly alien to our modern values and sensibilities. We don't gather anymore in the public square to enjoy the entertainment of cats being set on fire. Indeed, pets and working animals enjoy a variety of legal protections against mistreatment or even mere neglect that would have seemed astonishing 150 years ago. News items about incidents of animal cruelty, like dogfighting rings, generate widespread public outrage and disgust. Animal welfare seems to matter a great deal to many of us.
Yet, while the strength of this social consensus against inflicting suffering on animals is a fact, it is also a fact that a great many of us continue to consume meat and dairy produced by an industrial factory system that, in the name of efficiency, inflicts far more suffering on each individual animal than 150 years ago.
There are two possible solutions to this puzzle. First, that we just hold inconsistent moral views - that is, the majority of us have freely decided that some animals in some domains deserve special protections (the ones in our homes, and public spaces like zoos), and also that "food animals" don't. The animal rights movement has tended to focus on this moral inconsistency as a problem of moral irrationality. Thus, moral philosophers like Peter Singer argue that meat-eaters should modify their moral views and beliefs by affirming the moral status of animal welfare in all domains.
The second alternative is that something external to ourselves may be preventing us from acting consistently by applying the strong moral views we have developed about the treatment of animals to the animal products industry. In this perspective, the problem is not that our moral reasoning has gone awry, but that our freedom to make ethical choices of our own has been infringed. This consumer sovereignty perspective is the basis for my proposal for ethical labelling.
The animal products industry has adapted to society's changing moral views about animals as well as to the technological possibilities of factory farming. Noting that most of us cannot bear to see animals suffer, they have endeavoured to seclude livestock and their slaughter from our gaze. When we go to a supermarket or restaurant we are presented with meat rather than with animals, and with deliciousness rather than with killing.
This is an obviously one-sided and deliberately deceptive presentation of the basic ethical facts about animal products that have a prima facie call on our attention. It undermines our ability to choose what we eat in a way that is consistent with our moral beliefs about the treatment of animals.
Ethical warning labels would allow people to make better informed and therefore freer choices by breaking open the controlled and biased information environment created by the animal products industry.
Response to objections
Some will argue that ethical labels would be coercive and thus undermine free choice. There are at least two routes to this conclusion which I will consider in turn.
First, the idea that such labels are designed to be emotionally manipulative and this actually undermines people's ability to make a rational choice. The problem with this critique is that emotions are an indispensable part of our moral reasoning. Indeed, the core ethical argument against eating animals developed by the modern animal rights movement associated with Peter Singer is that animal suffering is of the same kind as human suffering. His argument is a call for empathy across the artificial boundaries which restrict us from imagining and taking seriously the suffering of others. This is rather different from mere sentimentalism. It seems to me that truthful ethical warning labels merely suggest that act of imagination rather than enforce it.
In addition, one must acknowledge that the emotional manipulation argument goes both ways. Advertisers and restaurants produce sophisticated "food porn" that artificially inflates our lust for meat, and manufacturers tweak recipes to manipulate our sense of the deliciousness of animal products. If their emotional manipulation is permissible, surely turn about is fair play.
Most people by now have some understanding of the fact that the way livestock animals are kept is rather horrible, but in the moment when we make our consumption decisions this rather abstract knowledge must go head to head with the full sensory propaganda of companies that are only interested in making us buy as much of their products as possible. Just as with cigarettes, there is a strong case for presenting the negative side of the case at the moment of purchase just as forcefully as the positive case is now presented.
Second, it may be argued that there is an inconsistency between the public justification for such labelling laws (enhancing freedom of choice) and the motivations of those who would support them (to induce people to reduce their consumption of animal products).
The model here might be the introduction in some American states of laws requiring that women seeking an abortion first watch an ultrasound of their foetus. The Republican legislators behind these laws give a public justification for this kind of law in terms of supporting women's freedom of choice, but their actual motivations are, rather obviously, to reduce the number of abortions women have, in line with their private religiously based moral views that abortion is killing if not murder.
Likewise, although ethical labelling laws can be given a superficial justification in terms of free choice, they are really about a minority group (animal rights fundamentalists) seeking to impose their own moral views onto society as a whole in an indirect and illegitimate way.
This kind of partisanship is disappointing. Democracy should aspire to more than the kind of tribalism that rejects proposals merely because they come from the wrong party. Proper public reasoning requires focusing on the quality of the public justification for policies like ethical warning laws rather than ad hominem suspicion of the motives of people that support them. Objectors must show one of three things: that the concept of ethical labelling is inconsistent with a free choice model (principle clash); or else that it is likely to undermine it in the longer term (bad consequences); or else that, as in the case of abortion perhaps, the free choice model is itself inadequate (wrong theory).
Yes, the consequence of mandating ethical warning labels on animal products would likely be a dramatic reduction in their consumption, and this is certainly what many supporters of such a law would like to see. But this no more counts as evidence of coercion than the fact that a university education correlates with liberal political views and lower religiosity proves that universities are a conspiracy against the Republican Party.
Evidence that people change their minds is not necessarily evidence that their minds have been changed for them. Indeed, supporters of ethical warnings can fairly claim that they do not impose contentious moral views on other people, but only help people to better live up to their own existing moral views if they wish to do so.
Many meat eaters justify their lifestyle by reference to their ability and right to make their own free choices. But if they are already making a free and fully informed choice that follows from an ethical value system which rates the moral status of animals simply as "delicious," then it hardly seems that providing factual information about the suffering of livestock animals could affect their consumption behaviour. (Here they resemble smokers who genuinely don't care about living past 70.) Because these meat eaters are already choosing freely - according to their personal moral beliefs - labelling laws could not affect them.
Those meat eaters who would be affected by labels would be those who already suspect that their practice is morally wrong for them - that is, inconsistent with their own personal moral beliefs about how animals should be treated - but prefer to evade being confronted with that fact or find it hard to resist temptation in the moment of decision. (Here they resemble smokers who don't want to acknowledge that tobacco causes cancer.)
Ethical warning labels provide information at the right time and place to help such people live up to their own moral beliefs, but do not force them to. The burden of proof is on objectors to explain why this should be seen as suppressing rather than as supporting their freedom of choice.
Thomas Wells teaches ethics and the philosophy of social science at the Institute for Philosophy at Leiden University, and at the University of Witten/Herdecke. He blogs at The Philosopher's Beard.Jonathan Chait says that until Paul Ryan says he wouldn’t accept a nomination for Republican presidential candidate, we should assume he wants the gig.
From New York Magazine:
Begged by conservative talk-show host Hugh Hewitt to save the party, Ryan demurred:
I do believe people put my name in this thing, and I say get my name out of that. This is, if you want to be president, you should go run for president. And that’s just the way I see it … I think you need to run for president if you’re going to be president, and I’m not running for president. So period, end of story.
This statement is being reported as a firm denial of interest, but it should be understood in context. Ryan’s history is to acquire a reputation as lacking ambition even as he rockets up the ranks. His repeated denials of interest in serving as Speaker of the House were, in retrospect, merely a negotiation over the terms under which he’d accept the job. (Therebellious House Freedom Caucus, the counterparty to the negotiation, turned down Ryan’s demands. He accepted the job anyway.)
…
Sometimes politicians have reasons to stoke presidential speculation without having an intention to run. Maybe they’re gauging potential interest, or maybe they’re looking to attract media attention to elevate their profile. Ryan has no such motivation. If he wanted to rule out getting the nomination at the convention, he could simply state he wouldn’t accept it. He hasn’t.
Read the rest of the article here.Premier League football clubs have been accused of "unfair and exploitative" practices after advertising for young interns to work as highly qualified performance analysts without pay or expenses for 12 months on the website of a government quango.
As the government referred 100 companies for investigation by HM Revenue and Customs after a campaign group told ministers they might be breaking the law through their use of unpaid staff, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority also admitted it had suggested to an MP that she use unpaid interns to cover staff shortfalls.
Football clubs including Reading, Wigan and Swansea have all advertised for interns to work unpaid for an entire season to film training and matches, input data and analyse the performance of individual players.
The adverts appeared on the website of UK Sport, the quango that will receive £500m in exchequer and lottery funding over the next four years to fund elite Olympic sport.
While making clear it did not vet the adverts from sporting organisations appearing on its site, UK Sport said it would meet next week with campaign group Intern Aware to discuss the issue.
"It's not about the amount of money in the company, it's about the culture and if there's a demand for young people to break in then it makes it worse. Sport is a good example. Companies are thinking 'why bother paying someone if you can get someone for free'. It's not only exploitative but it's exclusive. How much must it cost to work in Reading for a year for nothing? They are narrowing it down to a tiny group of people," said Intern Aware co-founder Gus Baker.
"It's a waste. They are advertising for people doing a real job analysing first team performance and feeding it back in. I don't know why they don't want to pay to get someone decent to do that job for them. It's self defeating as well as unfair and exploitative."
In the case of Reading, it advertised for a "performance analyst intern for the 2013/14 season" with a postgraduate degree in performance analysis or sports science, experience of working in professional football and experience of using the main software packages.
It says the successful applicant will be required to work "unsociable hours" and "attend all first team home games and some away games".
Wigan, who play Millwall at Wembley in the FA Cup semi-finals this weekend and stand to benefit from a share of the Premier League's new £5.5bn TV deal if they avoid relegation, advertised for three unpaid interns for the entire season.
"Hours of work will be flexible and will include weekends and some evening work," added the advertisement.
Wigan, who declined to comment, have a customer charter that states: "The Club is an equal opportunities employer and is committed to an equal opportunities policy and actively works throughout the local community promoting social inclusion campaigns."
Swansea City, who have received plaudits for their careful housekeeping and an ownership model that gives fans a 20% stake, recently advertised for a highly qualified, unpaid performance analyst to work for 11 months, shortly before announcing a £2m dividend to its owners.
The issue came to light in the same week that Professional Footballers' Association chairman Clarke Carlisle called on clubs to break open football's "closed shop" and recruit from a more diverse range of backgrounds.
"It's incredibly difficult and about time people acknowledged that it [football] is a closed shop. People try to keep a lid on it but that's the truth," said Carlisle, who was speaking at a Kick It Out conference.
It was Intern Aware that prompted the junior employment minister, Jo Swinson, to hand the names of 100 companies – which have not been made public but believed to include several household names – to HMRC for investigation.
While companies are free to offer work experience, where this ends up amounting to a job – for example if hours and duties are set and the position lasts for a long time – companies are breaking employment laws if they do not pay at least the minimum wage.
Aside from the illegality, critics say the use of long-term, unpaid positions as an entry point to popular professions in effect excludes those without well-off parents or other means to support themselves.
MP Stella Creasy said she approached the IPSA to make the "business case" to add to her five staff, due to greatly increased casework and reduction in other advice services available to Walthamstow residents.
The IPSA accepted her case but said it was not their place to address shortfalls in other public services. The Labour MP said she was "gobsmacked" to then be told: "You could streamline your processes, you could delay responding to people, you could use generic responses, you could not respond to everybody, or you could use unpaid interns."
An IPSA spokesman said that it offered Creasy £3,000 a year extra on top of the normal £144,000 staffing budget for each MP but that she wanted more.
"Towards the end of the conversation somebody here said, 'Look, things you might look at are how you run processes in your office, can you streamline them, could you complement your staffing provision with interns?' She was also told that none of these were recommendations and we couldn't advise her how to run her office."
Reading FC argued that internships were a fact of life and enabled ambitious "youngsters" the opportunity to gain experience.
"Many young people, however well qualified, find it very hard to obtain their first job because they do not have experience. Internships give these youngsters the opportunity to gain practical experience, thus enhancing their job prospects considerably. This season we received countless unsolicited applications for internships and formalising the process has been of great benefit to both sides," said a spokesman.
"For many years, a huge number of organisations in all types of sectors have offered internships – for example it was said recently that 8 out of 10 new journalists started their career in this manner. Companies continue to do so because they give genuine experience in a work environment. Indeed, a number of young people with intern experience have gone on to become permanent employees at our club, and another one signed his full time contract just this week."NBCUniversal today announced that it's debuting a new "Super Stream Sunday" promotion, which will allow all U.S.-based users to watch 11 continuous hours of NBC content through the NBCSports.com website and through the NBC Sports Live Extra app on the iPad/iPod touch without the need for a cable subscription.Super Stream Sunday, which starts on February 1 at noon Eastern Time, will include Super Bowl XLIX, the Super Bowl XLIX halftime show with Katy Perry, and the Super Bowl XLIX pre- and post-game shows. It will also feature an episode of The Blacklist.Accessing NBC content through NBC.com or within the NBC Sports Live Extra app typically requires a cable subscription and authentication through logging into the service, but for the Super Stream Sunday period, no logins will be required, allowing everyone to watch the Super Bowl for free. NBC is running the promotion in an effort to make people aware of its TV Everywhere offerings, which offer television content on a range of devices with a cable subscription.While iPad and iPod touch users can watch the Super Bowl using the NBC Sports Live Extra app, NBC is not able to stream content to the iPhone as it does not have NFL live-streaming rights for smartphones due to an exclusive deal the NFL has with Verizon Wireless.Verizon Wireless and the NFL plan to introduce a Super Bowl Stadium app that will offer "exclusive in-stadium video content" that includes commercials and replays shown from four camera angles. Users not in the United States or Mexico can access the Super Bowl through the NFL's Game Rewind service NBC Sports Live Extra can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [ Direct LinkWhat looks like a golf cart and is capable of pulling 40,000 pounds of cargo, while operating quietly with zero emissions?
The world’s first hydrogen fuel cell-powered ground support vehicle is what. A ribbon-cut |
2016 presidential campaign lumbers on, is that this honoring of democracy in the breach is being normalized. And I’m not just talking about the way the media has made mega-donors like Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers, and Foster Friess celebrities, either. The anti-democratic spirit now infects what is supposed to be the apotheosis of American democracy: the presidential race.
Actually, let me amend that somewhat. The Democratic Party is hardly a paragon of small-d democracy, overall, but in this regard the difference between it and the Republican Party is quite clear. Right now, most rank-and-file Democrats are eager to see Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders debate. And the general response from Democrats to the entrance of Martin O’Malley, Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee into the campaign has either been positive, indifferent or, in Webb’s case, somewhat perplexed. On the Republican side, however, things are very different.
For one thing, ever since Mitt Romney lost in 2012 — in no small part because of nativist pandering — a chief goal of the GOP establishment has been to have fewer debates. In fact, at this point, giving voters fewer opportunities to hear from the men and women who would be their president is Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus’ primary legacy. Most Republicans seem to be OK with that, but a related attempt by party elites to restrict the number of debate participants has come in for criticism. (I should note, though, that the controversial proposal still allows for 10 debaters…which is a lot.)
Both of those decisions can be justified in pragmatic terms — especially if we keep in mind Republicans’ ironclad belief that a biased liberal media will always portray them negatively. Less defensible is an informal proposal being circled among elite GOP donors that encourages 2016 candidates not to argue with one another, if they can help it. According to the Associated Press, the visionary behind this idea is the aforementioned Friess, the backer of Rick Santorum who infamously recommended that women avoid unwanted pregnancies by holding aspirin between their knees. In fairness to Friess, he doesn’t explicitly request GOP candidates refrain from arguing; he only wants to be sure the campaign remains “civil.”
Yet as Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig has keenly noted, calling for more civility is often just another way to try to end the debate. The Associated Press says the pro-civility bloc among GOP donors points to Newt Gingrich’s attacks on Romney as a “vulture capitalist,” which they believe aided President Obama, who would go on to make a similar argument. But the example is self-refuting. Gingrich was hardly the first to come up with the idea of portraying Romney as a real-life Gordon Gekko; indeed, the Obama campaign was hitting the GOP front-runner on such grounds already. What Friess and company would have asked, in other words, is for Gingrich not to attack Romney, full stop.
It should be obvious by now that Friess is a terrible political analyst. (He’s spent his own money on Santorum, after all.) But even if we take Friess out of the picture, his basic argument, that Republicans should simply agree to disagree, is far from unusual among GOP elites. To some extent, that can be chalked up to their understanding that movement conservatism is not especially popular on its own terms. But I think there’s something else at play here, too. And it’s a consequence of Citizens United and the other rulings like it, which have made these unfathomably privileged men and women even more powerful.
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Simply put, Republican donors have, with good reason, begun to see the party as nothing more than a vehicle for their legislative ambitions. But since the GOP is so ideologically uniform to begin with, the battle to establish complete control of the party hasn’t been waged along policy lines. It’s been about politics. And since the party’s candidates have pledge to do what these donors want already, there’s a clear logic to the latter’s request that they don’t let their personal ambitions muck everything up. In essence, they’re trying to make the GOP primary more efficient — or at least as efficient as is feasible until they figure out how to entirely remove voters from the process.All the fun crafts for baby showers that involve diapers involve disposables! That’s no fun for the mamas planning to use cloth diapers and their friends who want to make a creative baby shower gift. Diaper cakes- a staple at most showers- are far more expensive when you use cloth diapers, so what’s another way to creatively use cloth diapers as a gift without spending $300 dollars?
I first saw the sushi baby gift idea on social media and knew I wanted to modify it in a way that worked with cloth diapers. Initially I thought using flats or prefolds as the rice would be perfect but this resulted in human head sized sushi rolls. Instead, I chose to use only cloth wipes for the rolls and believe it or not, the sashimi is made from a regular cloth diaper and soakers.
A GroVia Experience Package in Persimmon (or comparable cloth diaper in color)
Two packages of Thirsties Cloth Wipes
Small amount of black fabric (I used a remnant)
Diaper pins or tape
White Elastic (or yarn, thread, white washi tape)
Chopsticks
Decorative plate
You can watch this video for a long and rambling tutorial to see exactly how I make the sushi from wipes and the diaper sashimi if you need a little handholding. If not these pictures below should be of help.
[typography font=”Cantarell” size=”20″ size_format=”px”]How to make Sushi Rolls[/typography]
Start by deciding the colors you want in each roll, keeping in mind one wipe in each package needs to be used in reverse for the “rice.” I chose the celery color both times. Each roll contains 3 wipes- two colored wipes and one white. You will also want to cut a long strip of your black fabric for each roll.
Fold each colored wipe inward longways and have the edges almost meeting, then fold from left to right (not roll).
Take the white wipe and fold in half then wrap it around the two colored wipes tightly. Secure with a rubber band if desired.
Use that long strip of black fabric (I folded both sides in longways so I didn’t need to worry about cutting straight lines!) and wrap around the wipes. Secure using a safety pin, tape, or another method you prefer.
To make Sashimi you want the diaper to be the color of salmon or tuna which are both commonly eaten here in the US and the most recognized. The persimmon color was a perfect match and the fact that I could order packages that included two soakers per diaper was perfect for sashimi– one soaker is snapped inside the diaper and one rolls up to go beneath it as a pad of “rice.”
Snap in the soaker (or use a stuff pocket diaper, a cover with a prefold inside, etc) and make sure the diaper is on the smallest rise setting if it has a rise adjustment.
First fold the tabs in to the middle to make the diaper one long rectangle, then start rolling it in from the back. When it is completely rolled secure the tabs around one another. Velcro was the easiest for this but you can make snaps attach to themselves if they have crossover snaps OR use the next step to secure them.
Using the elastic, secure it in the back if possible or hold it tight while wrapping around several times. I chose 4 as the number of lines to be seen on top. I tied each end together.
Take the extra soaker (or prefold, flat, microfiber insert, etc) and fold it up to match the size of the sashimi diaper. Place your sashimi on top and take another strip of black fabric and wrap it around the center then tie underneath.
I made a total of two sashimi and four sushi rolls. You can also make a smaller, less expensive version of this gift by making 1 sashimi and 2 rolls.
I plated them on a white rectangular plate that I found at TJ Maxx for a very reasonable price. White plates are always useful and while it isn’t baby related it will be used more than a throwaway plate and makes for a pretty gift. The free chopsticks from a take-out order tops it off. You can opt to buy and wrap the plate in plastic to keep it together as well.
Who wouldn’t be excited to get this at their baby shower?! I mean… how CUTE is this?So you've won a lavish $900,000 house in the Hospital Home Lottery. Now what?
For a typical New Brunswick winner, the next step has become surprisingly routine — sell quickly at a deep discount.
The latest winner, 80-year-old Shirley Barton, who was awarded a $900,000 home in Rothesay in December, resold it in March for $565,000, nowhere near its advertised value.
Barton was the ninth winner in a row to unload the prize rather than live in it. Although that might surprise those who snapped up 30,000 tickets trying to win the home last fall, it doesn't shock Karen Swagerman.
So you've won a lavish $900,000 house in the Hospital Home Lottery. Now what? 0:56 "Most people, they want to get clear of it," said Swagerman who sold her own dream lottery home, at a $140,000 discount, within weeks of winning it with her mom in 2013.
"Winning a prize like that is wonderful. It's a big thrill. [But] it's expensive. You've really got to think about that and I don't think people do when they buy these tickets."
People love to dream
The Hospital Home Lottery is the largest fundraiser of the year for the Saint John Regional Hospital Foundation and will celebrate its 10th anniversary this fall.
Tickets are $100 each — slightly less for those who buy in bulk — and usually sell out, as they did last year.
The grand prize is a large newly built custom designed home that over the years has been advertised to ticket buyers to be worth anywhere between $675,000 and $900,000.
'It does take money to float it until you do sell it.' - Anita Cline
But although people love to dream of living in a high-end home, and buy tickets on that dream yearly, none of the first nine winners has kept it. Most unload the prize within weeks and at prices well below listed values.
Anita Cline is in that group.
She won the $775,000 grand prize home in 2012 on a ticket she bought with her sister, Suzanne Eldridge, and her sister's boss, Dwight Ough. They too sold quickly and for $125,000 less than the advertised prize amount, but Cline said the cost of owning the home made waiting for a better offer impractical.
"It does take money to float it until you do sell it," said Cline. "We were OK with it but there are certainly some people who would struggle."
Steep insurance, taxes and upkeep costs
The group bought home insurance on the first day at $800 per month, an elevated rate partly because no one was living in the home.
Municipal property taxes accumulated at $625 per month and provincial property taxes — because it was considered a second home for all three owners — added another $700 per month.
The group took possession in December, and Cline remembers heating costs for the large house running another $500 per month with snowplowing adding more to the burden.
"It would be considered a dream to have a home like that, but it's not necessarily realistic in terms of cost to maintain it," said Cline.
The hospital foundation used to provide winners $10,000 in cash to help with initial expenses, but cut that amount in half several years ago.
That's one of the reasons winners without a lot of resources feel under pressure to sell quickly, and realtor Jake Palmer says that's why the selling prices can be so low.
"If you've got a patient seller that's willing to wait for the right buyer, then you'll see them achieve really, really good value," said Palmer.
"What we're seeing is people selling some of these homes for $150,000 or $200,000 less than it would have sold for if you had a less motivated seller where they might wait a year for a perfect buyer."
Cleveland, left, daughter Anna and husband Brian couldn't afford to wait to find a buyer for their prize home. (Kayla Roy)
Sarah Cleveland couldn't afford to be a patient seller.
At 24, she and her mother won a $750,000 home in 2011. She knew she could not afford to live in it, but also remembers worrying about what would happen once the home ate through the $5,000 cash prize that went with it.
"I was a student. I couldn't afford to live in a house like that," said Cleveland. "I can remember my mom worrying a little bit after seeing a month of the bills. If you don't have that cash to upkeep the house, or pay the insurance, or pay the taxes, or pay the heat and lights, that can be a major stressor."
Cleveland accepted an offer about a month after taking possession of the home for $210,000 below its prize value.
"I was very, very fortunate to find someone quickly. I don't really care what houses were selling for around."
No cash prizes
Cleveland said it would have been a lot easier for a winner if the lottery offered the option of a cash prize instead of the home — like it does for luxury cars and like the Moncton Hospital home lottery did last year. But the Saint John Regional Hospital Foundation has rejected that idea in the past.
Foundation president Jeff McAloon says the lottery could not commission homes as unique and appealing as it does if it was unsure a winner would take the home as a prize.
"It's something we've definitely looked at," said McAloon. "We feel it's not right for our program. If we were to offer a cash option we'd need to look at a house that is a typical home — an off-the-shelf build, and we found that just doesn't hold the same cachet — it doesn't hold the the same excitement for folks who are buying tickets."
And people do buy the tickets. Karen Swagerman says she and her mother still get theirs every year to support the hospital.
"Mom and I, we still buy the tickets. I remember her saying last year, 'Oh good God I hope we don't win that house again.'"Over 444 infected, 16 dead and spreading to L.A. and the SF Bay Area including the non-homeless population.
So far, one remedy deployed in the street is power washing the sidewalks in the homeless encampment area, then spraying bleach on the sidewalks. From NBC News San Diego:
“The County of San Diego has increased efforts to maintain sanitary conditions by routinely power washing benches and sidewalks with a chlorine-bleach solution in strategic areas, and increasing the availability of toilets and hand washing stations throughout the county, according to a statement.”
One of the issues I take up with the spraying of bleach, or any toxic chemical, is that the process alone is a test. Why do we place so much faith in chemical companies to produce products that are safe and healthy for us? Sure bleach has been known to kill germs, but so has hot water.
In my opinion, the risk of infection increases when no beneficial microorganisms are left to fend off the pathogens–that’s part of the reason yogurt (or probiotics) are used to “restore” gut and digestive health; to replace the good guys. Keep in mind that what happens internally also takes place externally. Microbes vie for position all the time in our environment. Thank goodness the good guys win most battles.
To treat an infection, not only are antibiotics prescribed, doctors have recently began prescribing probiotics as well–to replace the good guys. Why wouldn’t it make sense to employ a similar philosophy to the external environment?On Wednesday, the Supreme Court held that the forcible acquisition of land in Singur by the Left Front government of West Bengal was illegal. Acquiring land for a private company could not be termed a "public purpose", a judge held. The land had been forcibly acquired for Tata Motors in 2006 and the company planned to build its small car, the Tata Nano in it.
In 2006, the forcible acquisition of land led in turn to a political movement by the farmers of the area, supported by then Opposition leader Mamata Banerjee. As a result of the movement, Tata had to relocate the plant to Gujarat – where it again saw controversy with critics pointing to the significant subsidies the Gujarat government had provided Tata Motors with.
In 2011, Banerjee made opposition to land acquisition her major campaign plank and managed to end the Left Front’s 34-year long rule. In the 2016 Assembly elections, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), still standing by its land acquisition misadventure, actually started its Singur campaign in a Tata Nano. The result was an ever bigger disaster: the CPI(M) slipped behind even the Congress and is now the third-largest party in the West Bengal Assembly.
Incredibly, even the Wednesday Singur judgment did not force the CPI(M) to acknowledge the fact that its land policy was unpopular with Bengalis. On Wednesday, CPI(M) State secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra refused to apologise for forcibly acquired land in Singur.
Extreme poverty
In Anglophone India, it is popular to talk of the end of left politics altogether – a Francis Fukuyama-style end of history argument. Of course, history never ends. The 2016 US Presidential elections, thus far, has had a strong (if ultimately unsuccessful) challenge from a self-styled socialist, Bernie Sanders. And of course, in West Bengal, the party now firmly in charge, the Trinamool, has an economic policy that can be best described as “left-wing populist” (an emerging force in Europe as well).
In fact, it’s not only Mamata Banerjee. Narendra Modi might be socially conservative but his economics is not very far from the Indian centre. Modi has postured against corporate hand-outs and kept the National Rural Employment Guarantee act going.
While many of Modi’s Anglophile supporters might have nursed fond wishes of him turning into the next Margaret Thatcher and privatising everything in sight, the Prime Minister might know India a bit better than them. It is not very apparent from reading the newspapers, but Indians are a desperately poor people. India ranks 130th in the Human Development Index out of 188 countries. Indians suffer from alarming levels of malnutrition and India is the 25th worst state in the world when it comes to handling hunger. A few of the countries that are able to offer better food security to its citizens than India are Bangladesh, Nepal and even war-torn Iraq. In India, so terrible is the public health system that 38 out of 1,000 children born never see their first birthday. In South Asia, only Pakistani babies have a worse chance of survival.
The Left gap in Indian politics
Given this desperate poverty, it is fanciful to expect that left politics will die out in India. Given that Indians are actually eating less today than they were before the 1991 liberalisation reforms, it is clear that right-wing economics, as it is practised in India, is not very good mass politics. In fact, it may be no coincidence that the CPI(M)’s best ever Lok Sabha tally came not during they heyday of communism in the 1960s or 70s but in in 2004, 13 years after reforms kicked off in India.
Of course, it was ironically after 2004 that the Left started its policy of land acquisitions in West Bengal and eventually farmer movements in Singur and Nandigram led to its downfall.
Why the CPI(M) decided to ape the economic polices of the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party will remain a mystery. If Bengalis wanted Congress or BJP-style economic policies, they could have simply voted for them in the first place.
Rather than copy something it's not very good at, the CPI(M) should stick to its core competence: left politics and voicing the demands of the dispossessed. Given the vast amounts of rural distress now present in India, this is a definite gap that needs filling in Indian politics.Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday reportedly gave NATO allies two months to either meet the group’s defense budget guidelines or offer up a schedule for doing so.
"Allies that do not have a concrete plan to spend 2 percent of [gross domestic product] on defense by 2024 need to establish one now. Allies that have a plan to reach the 2 percent guideline need to accelerate efforts and show results," Tillerson said in Brussels, according to The Associated Press.
It was Tillerson’s first meeting with his counterparts from NATO, which President Trump has repeatedly faulted for failing to live up to its defense spending commitments.
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Only four European nations met the 2014 defense goal of 2 percent spending of total GDP: the United Kingdom, Poland, Greece and Estonia.
On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly called out NATO members for falling short of their commitments, and even floated backing down on treaty obligations.
Tillerson made it clear on Friday, however, the U.S. would defend its allies.
“We understand that a threat against one of us is a threat against all of us, and we will respond accordingly,” he said. “We will uphold the agreements we have made to defend our allies.”How I Broke my Body and Then Fixed It
April 23, 2013 – San Francisco, CA
“YEAAAHHHH BOOOOYYYYY!”
My concentration broke long enough to see Kelly Starrett, owner of San Francisco CrossFit, grinning at me from across the room. He seemed pleased.
I was crouched in a deep squat, arms locked out, precariously balancing a weighted barbell overhead—not the best position to lose focus. I tried not to laugh, ground my feet into the ground, and stood up.
Upon arrival two days earlier I couldn’t perform a single air squat without hurting my right knee. I thought explosive movements like the ground-to-overhead Olympic lift I’d just performed would blow my joints apart.
Suddenly it seemed easy.
Three weeks later I would squat 205 lbs. like it was my job. Six weeks later I would press most of my bodyweight overhead and suddenly gain the ability to do free-standing handstand pushups—something I’d never done in my life, nagging shoulder injuries be damned.
After years spent as a broken mess I’d finally figured out why my body was broken and how to fix it. I also learned how to regain and exploit every last ounce of athletic potential I still have in the tank.
It turns out the answers had been right in front of me all along.
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Editor’s Note: This is a long post, but it’s the summary of 3 years of learning. Skip the backstory and check out the resources at the bottom of if you’re pressed for time. Don’t forget to sign up for email updates (right/bottom) if you’re interested in more from this site. I have no direct affiliation with any product, service, or person written about here (more on this), and these views and opinions here are based on my own experiences and interpretation of the work of others. The material presented here is for informational purposes only. I am not a trained professional, so don’t take any of my advice. And make sure you consult a doctor. LOL.
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Part I: Injuries that modern medicine can’t fix.
Mid 2010 – Office of Orthopedic Surgeon Kenneth Akazuki, San Francisco, CA
“You sure you’re only 28?”
Dr. Akazuki had an MRI of my right knee in his hand. He slowly turned from the MRI to me, as if he expected some kind of intelligent response to this question.
“I’m sorry?” was all I could blurt out.
Apparently—as Dr. Akazuki enthusiastically pointed out—the meniscus on the inside of my right knee had ground itself into a a fine powder and all but vanished. I had the knees of someone 20 years my senior, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.
Akazuki was orthopedic surgeon for the San Francisco Giants, who were at that moment on their way to win the World Series. He was a legit, highly respected Doctor, at the top of his game, and I was hoping he had some kind of magic bullet fix for me.
“So that’s it?”
“Well, I could give you a cortisone injection, or we could scope the knee to see what we find… …but beyond that, since there’s no tear in the meniscus there isn’t really anything I can do.”
I was deflated. I looked over at my reflection in the room’s only mirror: a wizened 152 lbs, out of shape, and as one friend had recently commented, ‘visibly diminished’.
What the hell happened?
Rewind 8 months: 5’9″, 172 lbs, 27-years old—I was a machine, fitter than I’d ever been, with a penchant for overdoing physical activity to the a point of ridiculousness.
This was nothing new: I grew up skiing, spent years doing martial arts, played soccer into college, and had been a river guide in the Grand Canyon by the time I was 20. Later I got into rock climbing, surfing, mountaineering, and long-distance running.
I’ve never considered myself a jock, I just love to move. A lot.
In 2010, a normal day consisted of a dawn-patrol surf in the icy, shark-infested waters off San Francisco’s Ocean Beach, followed after work by flailing all over the Mission Cliffs climbing gym, and polished off by an hour of masochistic weightlifting.
I’d never felt better. The more exercise I got the more energy I had. I wanted to quit my job so I could surf, climb, and lift weights all day.
In short, I felt invincible. Boy was I wrong.
‘You’re always only one training mistake from starting over.’
– Joe Friel, paraphrased from the Triathlete’s Training Bible
This was when the wheels fell off the wagon.
It was all over in 5 seconds: improper warm-up, bad technique, superman complex, whatever, a simple warm-up set turned into a three-year mission to understand what went wrong. Long story short: I tweaked my knee doing a set of squats and it wouldn’t get better.
By the time I found myself in Dr. Akazuki’s office I’d been injured for months. Every time things would start to feel OK I would re-tweak them again. Due to the pain in my right knee I could no longer surf, climb, run, lift weights, or get even moderate physical activity. I went to every specialist I could find: general practitioners, physical therapists, orthopedic surgeons.
One Doctor told me I just had a ‘sore knee’. The physical therapy made me feel better but never accomplished anything. The ortho had basically told me to check into the old folk’s home.
None of the so-called experts could help or even point me in the right direction.
This wasn’t the first time I’d been through this process either: shortly after college I gave myself a grade 1 shoulder separation while doing routine shoulder presses. In this case physical therapy worked, though my left shoulder was never the same. Unfortunately this new injury put a lot of stress on my upper body (since I couldn’t do anything else) so I quickly I re-activated all the problems there. I was a wreck from head to toe.
I lost 20 lbs, became seriously depressed, stopped doing anything social, and for the first time in my life found myself in front of the TV for several hours each night.
In short, it was the lowest point of my adult life.
Hitting rock bottom: only one way to go after that.
I didn’t know where to start, but I knew that it was up to me to figure out why I was injured and how to fix it.
Doctors—a group of people that I’ve never trusted and have since lost nearly all respect for—could not help because they didn’t know how. It was time to accept personal responsibility for the problem, so I went to work.
I got on Amazon and purchased every book I could find on functional training, biomechanics, nutrition, weightlifting, and so on. I read for hours each night, burning through books like Functional Training for Sports, The Triathlete’s Training Bible, Born to Run, and Starting Strength. I read everything I could find online too, from medical journals on knee injuries and rehabilitation, physical therapy digests, to excellent articles like Everything You Know about Fitness is a lie and How We’re Wrecking our Feet.
And then I stumbled onto, low and behold, Tim Ferris’ The 4-Hour Body. One particular chapter jumped out: Reversing “Permanent” Injuries. And therein lay the first glimpse of the answers I was looking for.
Finding the real solutions just took a lot more time and energy than I could have imagined.
Part II: Your body on the verge of total meltdown.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but your body is probably already as screwed up as mine was.
It doesn’t matter if you’re 20, 30, or 60, whether you’re a couch potato or an endurance sport freak, you’re probably just a few movements away from total disaster.
If you don’t believe me, try this: when you have some privacy, take your shirt and shoes off, and roll up your pants so you can see your knees. Walk up to a full length mirror and stop. Or better yet, have a friend take a photo of you facing the camera.
What do you see?
I bet you never noticed that one or both feet turn out and aren’t facing straight ahead, that your belly button isn’t centered over your hips, or that one of your shoulders is higher than the other. What about your feet: do they roll inward (pronate)? Knees: do they roll in or out? Hands: are they flat against the sides of your body?
If you see nothing but flawless symmetry, congratulations, you’re a cyborg.
For the rest of us, I have some serious news to deliver: any discrepancies here are warning signs that your body is not biochemically sound and that any movements you perform are prematurely wearing things out.
The human body (as we currently use it) is constantly moving out of ‘tune’ – the neutral position from which movement is intended to occur. Most of this is caused not by movement but by lack of it: a lifestyle that makes us sit most of the day.
And here’s the punchline: you can’t hire someone to fix you. You have to do it yourself. And if you want to stay healthy you will have to do it for the rest of your life…
Start looking around and you’ll immediately notice a sea of dysfunctional people. At the office, at the gym, in the park: watch how people stand, sit, and God forbid how they (*shudder*) run.
Part III: Posture that leaves something to be desired.
It was in The 4-Hour Body that I found the first clue that faulty movement patterns based on bad positioning were a big part of my problems.
In the chapter on reversing injuries Tim writes about the Egoscue Method (named after Pete Egoscue and best introduced by his book, The Egoscue Method of Healing through Motion) which he describes as a ‘postural therapy program with the aftertaste of cult.’ Cult because of the following built by the miraculous success of those who’ve tried it.
Despite the shocking expense of visiting an Egoscue Clinic (not covered by insurance, more expensive than PT), by the time I discovered the clinic in downtown San Francisco I was ready to try anything. Ten minutes at the Egoscue clinic taught me more about my issues than the hours I’d previously spent with any other specialist.
My Egoscue therapist Johnny had me stand in the corner and take my shirt off. He then took the extremely unflattering photos featured at the top left of this post.
“You see what’s going on here?” Johnny asked. It was all clear when he drew a line through the middle. My left shoulder was elevated, my hips were cocked to one side, and my feet were everted like a duck.
John asked me if I’d ever played soccer. He said I was probably right-footed, since it’s easy to see which foot I predominantly passed the ball with. I was already surprised that he could figure out all that just by looking at me. Then he had me do this:
“I want you to close your eyes and march in place, knees up.”
I felt like an idiot but marched away for what seemed like several minutes. When I opened my eyes I was now facing the wall—while marching I’d turned 90 degrees to the left without realizing it.
“You see what’s going on here?” Johnny asked again. “Your body is constantly trying to make a left turn because your hips are tilted right and forward. This explains your knee pain since your right foot is turned out, which wears the inside of the right knee, and also why your left shoulder is pushed up and forward, to compensate the turning motion. We can fix all of this.”
I’d found the first piece of the puzzle: my default body position was a mess.
Like driving a car with faulty alignment, I was grinding things down to the hubcaps.
It isn’t difficult to understand how his happened. Essentially I’d been nearly killed by the “real world”. Despite my aggressive fitness schedule I was still spending most of my time not moving, hanging out in dysfunctional positions and not doing anything to fix them.
Work on a computer? Well guess what, unless you pay serious attention to re-tuning your body you’re fu*#&ed. As I learned later, Kelly Starrett goes so far as to say that “sitting is the new smoking.”
Sitting causes us to spend most of the day in compromised body positions, and when we do move it’s within an extremely limited range of motion. How often, for example, do you reach directly overhead? Or sit in a squat position? Or throw something?
The more we move within a box of restricted movement patterns the smaller this box becomes. Once you’ve adapted to these limited positions many normal movements become outliers: try lifting a weight overhead after sitting all day with your shoulders hunched forward. You’ll blow the joint apart. As time goes on, it’s harder to complete normal movements–let alone during exercise–because your body is no longer accustomed to doing them.
It’s basically a positive feedback death spiral.
The more accumulated time you spend in these faulty positions, the more ingrained they become. This means that your body has to be properly re-aligned and constantly restored to neutral. Fail to do this and eventually things will break.
Some of you may be thinking, “yeah but I go to the gym every day.” That’s great, but there’s a big problem here: spending 8 hours melting into an office chair sets you up for failure: every day you’re telling your body that the seated ‘primate-at-the-computer’ posture is the default. This may work well for typing, but it can have disastrous consequences when you do anything else.
The Egoscue ‘method’, as I learned, is simply a series of multidisciplinary movements (pulled from Yoga, PT, and invented by the founder) designed to restore functional movement patterns and put your body back to neutral. (It seems relatively clear that one of the reasons Yoga is so popular is because it’s a non-specific way to address these issues). Fail to return to neutral before moving and you’re putting your body through a tremendous amount of extra wear and tear.
Ultimately my experiences at the Egoscue clinic dramatically improved my posture and lead me to the initial conclusion that my knee injury had nothing to do with the squat as a movement pattern. Rather, it had everything to do with wearing the inside of my knee out by years spent walking and running with my right foot turned out. The squat that actually tweaked my knee was really just the final insult on the slow, chronic degeneration caused by these ongoing biomechanical faults. (It was also the result of not knowing what the hell I was doing–more on that later.)
(As another aside: the tilt in my hips also led other Doctors to assume that my legs were a different length, which caused one Chiropractor to prescribe custom orthotics of different heights. Not only was this total BS and expensive, but it ultimately did more harm than good. Read Born to Run and this article if still think shoes have anything to do with healthy feet.)
I performed an Egoscue routine for about a year and watched my feet straighten out, my hips level, and my left shoulder drop to neutral. But something still wasn’t working. I hit a plateau.
As I would learn later, the Egoscue routines were useful, but they didn’t complete the picture. The exercises could get me a lot closer to neutral, to being able to walk and even run again, but they couldn’t get me back to full functional fitness.
It wasn’t until March 2013 that I would figure out why and how to fix things once and for all.
Little did I know while I was fooling around at the Egoscue clinic that another experiment was under way: MobilityWOD.com. I had been introduced to this website back in March 2012 by a friend. At the time it just looked like some cool stretching videos.
It took a full year for me to discover that the key to everything was under development less than 3 miles from my apartment in San Francisco.
Part IV: You both can’t, and aren’t, moving correctly.
March 2013, Moving pretty well on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii
“San Francisco? Man if I lived in San Francisco I’d go to Kelly’s gym. That’s where Brian Mackenzie hangs out too.”
Coming from an aspiring Navy Seal and one of the most fit dudes I know, this was a serious recommendation.
I had no idea who Kelly was, but the second name rang a bell. I knew Brian Mackenzie as the ultra-endurance guru that helped Tim Ferris train for his first marathon (as described in The 4-Hour Body). But Kelly’s name kept coming up in relation to some freaky-sounding website called MobilityWOD.
“Is that what you’re watching every night?” I’d been sharing a room with my buddy for the last few weeks and when he wasn’t working out all he did was stare at his laptop and perform what appeared to be some kind of advanced masochistic stretching routine.
“Yup man, every day.”
Time to figure out what MobilityWOD was all about.
I’d been doing a combination Egoscue and fitness routine daily for the last year and a half and was feeling pretty good (I’d also spent the last 3 weeks surfing on the North Shore). The last thing I wanted was to add more to my daily routine |
senior Holy See spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, last night issued the following brief statement:
“I confirm that on Sunday morning May 10, 2015, the Holy Father will receive in a strictly private manner the President of the Republic of Cuba, Mr Raul Castro Ruz. The meeting will take place in the study of the Paul VI Audience Hall.
“As we already know, President Raul Castro has publicly thanked the Pope for his role in fostering the rapprochement between Cuba and the United States of America. The Pope will visit the Caribbean island in September en route to the United States.”
Vatican spokesman Father Lombardi also emphasised that President Castro’s meeting with Pope Francis was strictly private and not an official state visit.This article is over 4 years old
Australasian Railway Association releases comparison of international construction costs – and says project should be put on global market
The perpetually postponed east coast high-speed rail link could cost around half the previous estimate, according to a new study.
The Australasian Railway Association has released a report that says a comparison of international construction costs indicates a railway between Brisbane and Melbourne could be built for $35m a kilometre.
That gives a price tag of $63bn – significantly lower than the $114bn estimate from a feasibility study completed last year.
The association’s chief executive, Brian Nye, said prices had not come down and the $63bn cost was a reflection of current international costs. “These construction costs are why the the project needs to be put on to the global market,” he said.
Nye said for this to proceed, the government needed to make a commitment then establish a body to oversee the project. Then it should be opened to the market.
“High-speed rail is proven to entice populations out of capital cities and open up regional areas,” he said. “The study shows these same benefits are viable for Australia too.”
The project is routinely postponed because of the cost and difficulties of an infrastructure project that would cover three states and one territory and involve five governments.
The Greens deputy leader, Adam Bandt, wants the government to immediately start negotiations with the states to identify a route and reserve the land.
He said this month marked the 50th anniversary of Japan’s Shinkansen high-speed rail network.
“Australia and Antarctica are the only two continents without high-speed rail,” he said. “If we don’t act soon, the penguins will beat us to it.”PERHAPS THE MOST impressive aspect of Japan’s win over South Africa on Saturday was the fact that Eddie Jones’ side played a high-tempo, attractive style of rugby.
Japan celebrate an unforgettable win. Source: PA Wire/PA Images
We’ve almost become used to shock victories being about the underdogs negating the strengths of the favourites, spoiling their attacking plans and then taking chances from the tee and generally keeping things tight.
While there were elements of that in Brighton, the Japanese victory was built on an intelligent, probing game plan that allowed Jones’ players to show off their attacking quality.
The 69th-minute try from fullback Ayumu Goromaru, which he converted himself to bring the game to 29-29, was a particular highlight of the first weekend of the World Cup, a stunning set-piece effort from Japan.
Source: World Rugby
It takes just 20 second from start to finish, but the score highlights several of the best attributes involved in Japan’s excellent performance: a strong set-piece foundation, excellent skills under pressure and an ability to make good decisions on the ball.
The Japanese display at scrum and lineout was nothing short of astonishing. We had been aware that former France hooker Marc dal Maso had improved the scrum immeasurably, but a 100% return against the Boks was exceptional.
Ex-England lock Steve Borthwick, meanwhile, has built a simple, clever and effective lineout platform, one which provided clean ball for the backline in this example.
Source: World Rugby
It’s a straightforward seven-man set-up from Japan, a full lineout, but typically they use a smart bit of movement on the ground pre-throw to give themselves the opportunity to make a clean catch.
As we see above and below, Shinya Makabe (19) is the key man in the dummy movement, as he shifts from a lifting position behind Michael Leitch at the front all the way to the Japan’s pod at the rear of the lineout.
Source: World Rugby
That causes the great Victor Matfield to track the movement initially, following Makabe for two steps before he realises that Amanaki Lelei Mafi is coming towards the front of the lineout with Luke Thompson.
As Makabe steps around Mafi and Thompson on his way to the back of the lineout, Matfield identifies the decoy and immediately turns back to get into the air for Shota Horie’s throw.
Source: World Rugby
Just too late. As we see above, Thompson is already in the air as Matfield plants on the ground, only inches ahead of him but it makes all the difference as the wonderful Horie releases his throw.
Thompson gets a strong lift from Mafi and Leitch, such an important aspect of the set-piece, and wins the ball just over the despairing left arm of Matfield. Off the top, the ball lands perfectly into the hands of replacement scrum-half Atsushi Hiwasa and the next part of the attacking is launched.
The quality of the pass from Hiwasa is important – himself and man of the match Fumiaki Tanaki were brilliant at scrum-half – and it means first receiver Harumichi Tatekawa doesn’t have to check his run in the slightest.
Source: World Rugby
The shape from Japan in midfield is excellent, with Tatekawa (12) arriving as first receiver with outside centre Male Sau (13) running a hard line on his outside shoulder, and out-half Kōsei Ono (10) fading out the back of Tatekawa.
Left wing Kotaro Matsushima (11) is also showing at the rear of the formation, running a trailing line close to Ono that will becoming hugely important within a split second.
Source: World Rugby
Tatekawa is the passing hub around which the starter play revolves, but his first duty is to actually carry the ball to the line and tie down a defender. We see above how he does so ideally, drawing Handré Pollard into the tackle and then releasing the ball just as the South African out-half initiates the contact.
Outside Pollard is where the real trouble lies for South Africa, as inside centre Jean de Villiers completely loses track of Matsushima trailing inside Ono.
We get a better view of it on the angle below, as de Villiers drifts across onto Ono, completely ignoring the presence of Matsushima and opening a big hole for the left wing to run into.
Source: World Rugby
De Villiers actually does well not to be checked by the decoy run of Sau initially, but once he does get past the Japan 13, that’s where the problem lies.
Outside de Villiers, Jesse Kriel has made a good read of the situation and stepped in on Ono, but that simply means South Africa have two defenders on one player and none on Matsushima.
Source: World Rugby
Most teams will operate under the policy that one defender biting in, as Kriel does here, means all the men inside him do the same, but the pace and accuracy of Japan’s attack means de Villiers has little time to react, his despairing lunge missing Matsushima.
The former Munster man would have hoped and possibly expected defenders inside him to get a scrag tackle in on Matsushima, but again the excellence of the Japanese play means there’s no one in position to do so.
We’ve already mentioned how Tatekawa takes Pollard out of play, but outside centre Sau is just as important.
Source: World Rugby
We’ve highlighted him ahead of the ball above, just after de Villiers has bypassed Sau’s decoy run. The Japan centre is eager to have some effect on the Springbok defence, however, and gets the slightest nudge on Coenie Oosthuizen to do so.
Oosthuizen has come from the very tail of South Africa’s lineout to cover across, and though it’s really Matsushima’s pace that takes him past the prop, the tiniest bit of contact from Sau slows his stride for a split second and leaves him short of the tackle.
Springbok scrum-half Fourie du Preez might feel he too could have done more to halt Matsushima.
Source: World Rugby
Du Preez is the ‘tailgunner’ for South Africa here, the defender who starts in the defensive receiver position just behind the lineout and is tasked with getting across into the defensive line rapidly.
Let’s watch his movement again below.
Source: World Rugby
The power in Hiwasa’s pass means du Preez is realistically not going to get to first receiver Tatekawa, so his job instantly becomes a sweeping one, covering in behind the line in case of breaks.
However, du Preez eases off the pace, failing to identify the threat to South Africa’s midfield defence. Oosthuizen actually bursts past du Preez as he does recognise the threat. Du Preez is nowhere near Matsushima when he powers through after Ono’s brilliant and deft inside pass.
We have to focus on the quality of the attack here, of course. Everything that goes wrong for the Boks is down to the quality of Japan’s play, the sheer pace and accuracy with which they come forward.
Source: World Rugby
The composure of Matsushima when busts the line is impressive, as it was so often generally in the Japanese performance. Getting through the line can be heady stuff in international rugby, but Japan’s wing keeps his cool, scoots around Oosthuizen and draws South Africa fullback Zane Kirchner up to make the tackle.
The pass out in front of Goromaru allows the fullback an easy finish, with a man to spare on the outside in Akihito Yamada.
Kriel’s decision to bite in on Ono draws South Africa left wing Lwazi Mvovo into doing the same on Goromaru, but it also leaves him in a weak position when Matsushima breaks.
Source: World Rugby
Mvovo has to turn, while Goromaru can simply continue his forward run in full stride. The South Africa wing might ask himself if he could have made some sort of interfering move across Goromaru, but thankfully he stays legal and Japan finish with aplomb.
It’s a remarkable score from start to finish from Eddie Jones’ side. Wonderfully planned, clearly trained with rigour and featuring the clever set-piece simplicity, high skill level, intelligent midfield movement and clincial edge that drove Japan’s performance.
Their winning try at the very death contained all those elements too, as well as truly incredible grit and bravery.
Here’s to plenty more of the same.Welcome back to Fantasy Firsts. Today we are sharing an interview with Aurealis and Ditmar Award-winning author Thoraiya Dyer about her debut novel Crossroads of Canopy. This highly-anticipated novel is set in a mythical rainforest controlled by living gods and will become available on January 31st. You can sneak a peek of it here!
Crossroads of Canopy is set in a giant, rainforest world, and you drew upon a lot of scientific research to imagine this realm. What was some cool facts about this environment you were excited to include in the book? Or, was there something you really wanted to mention but couldn’t find the right spot for?
I was excited to include monsoonal weather patterns, aka the “big wet” in northern Australia.
In the temperate south of the continent, we have cold, rainy winters and hot, dry summers. However, in the tropical top end you get something like 75% of the annual rainfall dumped all at once in the summer (although they wouldn’t necessarily call it summer; the locals observe something closer to a six-season cycle.) Between October and February, Darwin gets an average of 1267mm rain. Which is a pretty cool fact!
On a trip to Nepal, I remember using elephants to get across a river because the monsoon had just finished and jeeps were useless.
Yeah. Monsoons. Exciting!
What else. Gap-axe wood really is too hard to cut into without ruining your axe. Fish really can climb up waterfalls. Sandpaper fig leaves, while not to my knowledge recorded as being used for depilation, are pretty good for smoothing spears. Sun bears don’t hibernate in the real world, but their appetite for honey and co-evolution with the tualang tree has produced in the latter a glassy, slippery trunk which prevents bears from climbing the trees and keeps the hosted giant honey bees, Apis dorsata, happy and safe.
As for things that didn’t fit, when I first tried to convince my agent, Evan, that a rainforest setting would be a good idea for a fantasy novel, I’d just seen a brilliant exhibition at the Australian Museum on the Aztecs. The words “jaguars and sloth gods” may have flown excitedly from the keyboard.
I found a place in Canopy for jaguars and their souped-up versions, the chimera. Possibly sloths got a mention once or twice, but the sloth god itself got canned.
Sorry, sloth god.
Greek mythology has a subtle influence in this worldbuilding along, including Canopy possessing its own pantheon of gods and goddess. How did you decide on these thirteen deities and their specific ruling “specialties”?
In the Greek stories of Odysseus and Atalanta, which inspired many of my characters and their arcs, you find prominent mention of the following immortals: Artemis (wild animals), Aphrodite (love), Zeus (thunder, ruled the other gods), Rhea (mother of gods), Hermes (emissary, travel, trade), Helios (sun), Thetis (sea) and Poseidon (also the sea).
Because I wanted things to be cyclical with reincarnation, not linear with mother and father gods, Rhea was left out, and Zeus became a tamer, lightning-only type of god. Canopians didn’t travel much outside the forest, so Hermes got cut. Canopians consider the sea to be practically mythical, so Poseidon didn’t survive, either. That left wild animals, the sun, and a freshwater goddess of the monsoon.
Love was an interesting one. If you look at the religion of the Indus Valley civilization, which preceded Hinduism in Nepal, you find a mother goddess, a father god, deified animals and plants, indications of water worship, and giant stone genitalia.
No mention of love.
I combined love with the sun and kept it, because I was doing the compromise thing. If you look at the geographical half-way point between Nepal and Greece, you find Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of fertility, love and war.
If you visit the Temple of Eshmun near Sidon, Lebanon, you find hundreds of marble statues of babies. Eshmun was a Phoenician god of healing. His origin story goes like this: He was born an eighth son in Beirut. As he grew into a young man, Ishtar/Astarte romantically pursued him, to the point where he fatally castrated himself with an axe. She then resurrected him and turned him into a god.
He was the patron deity of Sidon from about 500BC. If your child was sick, you’d have a stone replica carved and sent to the Temple in the hope that Eshmun would heal them. No matter where they are in space or time, no matter what they believe, people want to keep their children safe.
In Canopy, the god Odel, Protector of Children, holds a special place in my heart.
Many characters seem to leap from great heights in a death-defying way! How much climbing research (or hands-on experiences!) went into this book?
Here’s where I confess that I suck at rock-climbing. Once, I abseiled with my uncle into this amazing cave system in Canada. We dropped down seventy metres into pitch blackness. Waited for pumps to evacuate water from “the birth canal” before squeezing through it. Endured waterfalls in the face and having to balance in foot-width, ice-cold watercourses to avoid touching and ruining the crystal-covered walls. All that was fine…but climbing back up? Ahahahaha! Talk to my stepson. He’s good at that stuff. I’m an armchair Ninja Warrior.
My stepdaughter advised me to google the extreme climber known as the Monkey Man. So I’m confident in humankind’s ability to do the things I described. Just not me personally. Although I have stripped off a bit of bark and inadvertently grabbed a spider before. So there’s that.
The idea of one having a great destiny is what motivated Unar to start her adventure. Do you, too, believe we all have some sort of fate awaiting us?
I’m a scientist. I believe in statistical likelihoods. Which, I admit, can sometimes seem like destiny.
Crossroads of Canopy is your novel debut, but readers mostly know your award-winning short fiction. What are the challenges between writing short versus writing longform?
I think many years of writing short fantasy fiction made me not only succinct, but enamoured of the mysteriousness of my succinctness. One real challenge for me was to flesh things out in this manuscript. How did Unar and Aoun meet one another? In a short story that’s not my problem! What are they wearing? They have insects and bark, you work it out! Except, no, here it’s my job to make sure you smell the patchwork of pressed leaves, see Aoun sitting by the closed Gate of the Garden, and feel the silk as you stroll through the market.
If you could be a goddess from any mythology, who would you choose and why?
Artemis, for sure. I like deer and dogs and I wish I was better at archery.
Buy Crossroads of Canopy here:
Don’t forget to follow Thoraiya Dyer on Twitter (@ThoraiyaDyer) or visit her website.Adam Harvey, ABC correspondent, shot in neck while covering battle for Marawi in Philippines
Updated
ABC South-East Asia correspondent Adam Harvey has described the moment he was shot while on assignment in the Philippines as like being "hit in the neck with a cricket ball".
Key points: Correspondent says he was shot in "what was considered a safe zone"
Hospital "came under attack" as he had tests
People fleeing besieged Marawi City say they have seen hundreds of dead bodies
Harvey, who has been covering the battle between the Philippines military and Islamic State (IS) militants in Marawi, received medical treatment after being struck in the neck by a bullet.
The Jakarta-based correspondent said he had been on the frontline of the conflict wearing a flak jacket and helmet on Thursday morning before being moved back to "what was considered a safe zone", where he was hit.
"I was bending down — we stopped and I opened the back door of the car to get some food and water and I felt an almighty stabbing at the side of my neck and I went down on the ground and I thought I'd been hit by a bit of shrapnel," he told PM.
"I started bleeding and luckily we had our ABC first aid kit, so we started doing some first aid.
"Then I was taken to a medical centre and they took me for observation at another hospital, then they did X-rays and discovered it wasn't a bit of shrapnel, I'd actually been shot in the neck with a bullet and the bullet was still in my neck.
"But luckily it missed everything important and it just got lodged behind my jaw."
Harvey said at no point did he lose consciousness and was advised to wear a neck brace "as a precaution".
"It felt actually like I'd been hit in the head with a cricket ball or in the side of the neck with a cricket ball," he said.
"That kind of big dull bite that hurts but I didn't black out, we were joking about it a few minutes later. [It] turned a bit more serious when I saw the X-ray."
Harvey said evacuees from the besieged city were praying nearby when the few-centimetres-long bullet came from "a long way away" and hit him.
He said a few people gathered around to take photos, believing he had just been hit by a piece of shrapnel.
Marawi City was seized on May 23 by hundreds of fighters who have sworn allegiance to the IS group, including dozens from neighbouring countries and the Middle East.
It has fuelled concern that the ultra-radical group is gaining a foothold in the region.
Harvey left 'dangerous' hospital amid gunfire
Harvey said the hospital where he received a CT scan and X-ray "came under attack" while he was there.
"A lot of gun fire right outside the door, so we made the decision it was too dangerous to stay and pulled out," he said.
"I've had a lot of painkillers, so I feel fine, a dull ache in my neck … I feel OK. I've got my body armour still on."
A Philippines politician said residents fleeing the besieged city had seen hundreds of dead bodies in an area where there had been intense fighting.
"They said [they saw] around 500 to 1,000 dead bodies," Zia Alonto Adiong said.
The military has said 290 people have died in over three weeks of fighting, including 206 militants, 58 soldiers and 26 civilians.
Harvey, who has been in the Philippines for a few days, said while he had seen a lot of fighting while covering the siege, he did not feel in danger at the place he was shot by the "perfectly formed little sharp-tipped bullet".
"When we were closer to the battle some bullets hit the road in front of us a few metres away, and that's happened a few times since we've been here," he said.
"So we've been careful to stay behind walls, I could move around with security in mind … but this is the last place we expected this to happen."
ABC News director Gaven Morris said in a statement: "Indonesia correspondent Adam Harvey has been injured while on assignment in Marawi in the Philippines and is currently receiving medical treatment.
"His injury is not life threatening."
Senior member of the IS-backed militants detained
The Philippines military said on Thursday it had arrested one of the senior members of the IS-backed militants it was fighting in the city in the country's south.
Mohammad Noaim Maute, alias Abu Jadid, was arrested at a checkpoint near the coastal city of Cagayan de Oro just after dawn, military spokesman Lt Col Jo-Ar Herrera said.
Two of Mohammad's brothers, Omarkhayam and Abdullah, lead the Maute gang that is at the forefront of a vicious battle with security forces for Marawi City, now in its fourth week.
Brigadier-General Gilbert Gapay, spokesman for the military's Eastern Mindanao Command, said Mohammad Noaim Maute was a suspected bomb-maker for the group.
He said he was unarmed and holding a fake student card of the Mindanao State University when stopped at the checkpoint.
US special forces have been assisting local troops to end the siege, but only to provide technical support.
ABC/Reuters
Topics: journalism, information-and-communication, abc, broadcasting, terrorism, unrest-conflict-and-war, philippines, australia
First postedPortions of this guide were adapted, with permission, from Language Science for Everyone. This guide may also be downloaded in a printer-friendly PDF version (updated May 2016).
In recent years, LSA members and their linguistic colleagues have become more active in efforts to engage the public in learning about linguistics and its broader value to society. Linguists are organizing and participating in public outreach activities at science festivals, museums, libraries, and through public-facing digital communications outlets.
This guide offers a compendium of best practices, sample materials, and links to external resources to assist linguists who are interested in getting more involved in public outreach activities. The LSA invites linguists to contribute additional content to enrich the resources included in this guide.
Table of Contents
The Benefits of Public Outreach
The academic discipline of linguistics is sometimes referred to in higher education circles as a “discovery major”. Most students arrive at college with little or no exposure to the basic concepts of linguistics, and many undergraduates discover linguistics by accident when taking a required course or elective, after which becoming fascinated by the important questions the field seeks to answer.
When linguists reach out to the broader public (who are not currently enrolled at a college or university), it opens a window through which people can share in the fascination experienced by linguistics students and scholars. This has the potential of generating broader public interest and support for linguistic research that can result in more students pursuing linguistics degrees and increased financial and institutional support for linguistics departments and programs. It can also lead to enhanced public support for government- and privately -funded linguistic research. It may also lead those in the private sector to gain a greater understanding of how linguistics research can be applied for practical purposes to everyday problems and challenges.
Linguists who are visibly engaged in public-facing activities have found that it enhances their professional standing by drawing positive attention to the institution or organization they represent. Linguists who collaborate with colleagues that specialize in related fields, or as part of an institution-wide outreach initiative, also report enhanced appreciation and understanding about the value of linguistics research to the broader areas of scientific and humanistic inquiry.
Finally, the individuals who participate in these activities, or who consume public-facing materials prepared by linguists, benefit by gaining greater insight into a central aspect of their lives. Programs designed to reach younger audiences (K-12) may also have direct educational and mentoring benefits for those served.
“Doing outreach has helped many of our students build their presentation skills and explain their research to a general audience that does not share their own assumptions. If you can explain what you do to a seventh grader and can make a high schooler get excited about it, you can probably do the same with your colleague from a different department.”
[excerpted from Language Science for Everyone, University of Maryland]
Public Outreach in Context
Linguistics is a field that bridges many other academic disciplines in higher education. As a discipline that draws on both the natural and social sciences, as well as humanities research, linguistics is uniquely positioned.
As the economics of higher education have changed over time, there has been an increasing emphasis on the burden of student debt and the importance of lucrative career outcomes. Questions from students, parents and policy-makers about the practical value of a liberal arts education have become ever-more frequent. A presumption has developed in the U.S. that careers in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math) will contribute to the nation’s economic competitiveness in a way that careers in other fields may not. In this context, linguistics and the social sciences more broadly are frequently excluded or marginalized. For many parents and students, the value of a linguistics degree is not always obvious.
The same can be said for academic administrators and elected officials who make decisions about funding for research and higher education more broadly. Recent years have seen reductions in state and federal support for higher education, and targeted attacks on certain fields of research and study deemed to be of lesser value to society. In addition to these trends affecting higher education and scholarly research, there has been growing concern about the challenges facing the primary and secondary education sectors. Standards for K-12 STEM education have mostly ignored the social sciences, and standards for language have not been informed by linguistic research.
As a result of these interconnected trends, many advocates for the humanities and social sciences have developed proactive public outreach programs. The LSA recommends these three general resource guides for placing linguistics in a broader context when conducting public outreach:
When considering your public outreach activities, please be mindful of available resources at your home institution/organization and from allied groups. For example, if you have a public affairs office, it may be able to provide advice and assistance in promoting your event. For those based at colleges and universities, students in your school's art or film programs may be interested in creating video, designing exhibit displays, etc.
Public Outreach Strategies
Participation in Fairs, Festivals and Broad-based Events
For first-time organizers, it's often easiest to take part in an event that's being organized by a larger group, which removes many of the logistical issues you would face by creating your own event, and guarantees a much larger audience without the need to do huge amounts of promotion.
Prospective types of such events include:
Partnering with Public Institutions: Museums, Libraries, Schools
A number of linguistics departments and programs have formed partnerships with museums, libraries, and schools in their surrounding communities. These institutions have a built-in audience for your outreach efforts, but will likely require that you make a persuasive case for how a linguistics program relates to its mission.
Prospective types of partnerships include:
A linguistics exhibit, display, or interactive element at a museum
Participation in NACLO - The North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO) is a contest in which high school students solve linguistic puzzles. In solving these puzzles, students learn about the diversity and consistency of language while exercising logic skills. No prior knowledge of linguistics or second languages is necessary. Professionals in linguistics, computational linguistics, and language technologies use dozens of languages to create engaging problems that represent cutting-edge issues in their fields. The competition has attracted top students to study and work in those same fields. It is truly an opportunity for young people to experience a taste of natural-language processing in the 21st century.
Mentoring programs with local high schools - Linguists at various institutions have hosted class visits to their research labs, partnered with student-led linguistics clubs, or offered research internships to students.
A lecture series or discussion group at a library
Hosting endangered language communities to provide support and training
For more internationally focused partnerships, see our list of National and International Linguistics Organizations
University Hosted Activities
Organizing a linguistics summer camp
The University of Arizona and Ohio State University both organize summer camp programs for local youth. U of A offers a one-week program for students from grades K-12. OSU offers two one-week sessions for high school students.
Hosting a booth at a festival or fair for the local community
Many universities host open houses, festivals and other events to which members of the local community are invited. Consider using the similar approaches to those described elsewhere in this guide.
Digital Communications
Linguists are making increasing use of digital media to communicate with all kinds of people. Activities range from publishing blogs, holding Wikipedia “editathons”, producing podcasts, giving TED talks, and participating in documentaries to generating YouTube videos, and establishing active followings on social media. These strategies have the power to reach a broader public well beyond the surrounding communities where you live and work.
Planning Considerations for Various Strategies
Building on Your Strengths
You and your colleagues have a mix of talents that no other combination of people has. The flexibility of outreach means that you can put those talents to good use. Outreach works best when it involves utilizing your strengths; making use of the things that make your program or research unique, rather than assuming that what other people emphasize will work everywhere.
Larger universities may have a wide range of tools for doing laboratory-based linguistics, including eye-trackers, developmental labs, and brain-research tools like EEG, MEG, and fMRI. Those kinds of gadgets are great for getting students interested in the varieties of data gathering that drive language science.
In designing an outreach program, it is important to think about what makes your community special. For example, you might be strong in the documentation of rare or endangered languages, or in studies of dialect variation, both of which could be fertile areas for discussion and demonstrations. Or, you might have access to speakers from a wide range of language communities, which could contribute to activities surrounding linguistic diversity.
It may also help to think of your community as broadly as possible. Faculty members can provide gravitas in doing outreach, but enthusiastic undergraduates and graduate students can also play a key role in developing a unique and effective outreach program. Also consider including representatives from different departments or PhD programs. The critical idea is to think about your talents and interests and how to use them to creative activities that others will find as exciting as you do.
Tailoring Efforts for Specific Audiences
It can sometimes be challenging when, in linguistics, we’re called to talk to people in a different department, different institution, or different field. They may come prepared with a wholly foreign skill set and an unfamiliar background that can make it challenging to find common ground. These difficulties are made even more apparent when doing outreach. That’s why it’s so important to tailor your efforts for specific audiences; to learn how to explain insights in a way that is sensible and intriguing to outsiders and that resonates with what they already know.
Some of this tailoring is physical: leave your familiar surroundings and go into the community. Just as in your professional life, an in-person meeting with community members who may be interested in hosting an activity or bringing a group to your institution can often be more insight-provoking than just an email or a phone call. And it can’t hurt to increase your or your institution’s visibility in the world around you.
Tailoring your efforts means understanding the background knowledge of your intended audience. There are very few people outside of linguistics who are familiar with the language sciences. Yet people are more familiar than they think with some of the things that are interesting about it. We are fortunate to have a field that can take a lot from everyday conversation and insights. For example:
They might know people who are bilingual, or wonder why learning a second language is so hard, but haven’t heard about bilingual advantages or age of acquisition effects on second language learning.
They know how to form a question, but they don’t realize what that can tell us about the structure of English.
They might have realized that there is no particularly straightforward reason why the word island should have an s, but they might not have heard about the influence of Latin-speaking monks on English orthographic development, and so on.
Tailoring your message is also a matter of finding cool tricks that people outside the field might find intriguing. If you have taught an introductory level course in a language science field, you might have some of these on hand that you use to liven class up a little bit. Expletive infixation in English isn’t just fun as a joke, but also as a pathway to talking about lexical stress, morphology, the Stroop task, or the semantics of curse words. Including interactive activities can help, too!
Choosing Activities and Topics
Decisions about activities and topics will depend largely on the format your public outreach takes and the intended audience. For public-facing events such as festivals and fairs, interactive activities are preferable to flyers and other handouts, especially for younger audiences. (Having material that attendees can take home with them can still be helpful, though.) The level of content you share will depend on your target audience (kids, high school students, adults, etc.).
Some topics and curricula which linguists have found to be successful and engaging include:
Dialect variation--guessing where a speaker is from based on their dialect, mapping dialect diversity, etc.
Places of articulation
Basic syntax trees
Writing your name in different alphabets (especially for younger audiences)
The McGurk Effect (videos are available on YouTube)
Dictation and Online Translators: Participants dictate speech and then compare the computer interpretation with what they said.
Stroop Task: Time participants as they complete the Stroop task and keep track of fastest times. Everyone loves a healthy competition!
Vocoder
IPA name tags: An outreach volunteer ventures out into the crowd and makes nametags for people in IPA. This activity only requires a clipboard with an IPA chart, pens, and nametag stickers!
Syntax board: Use syntactic ambiguity to show people that sentences have underlying structure. Use a posterboard to present two different trees for one sentence, and ask visitors to match pictures corresponding to the two interpretations to the appropriate structure. (Requires a large board and time/materials to development. May not be easily portable for all outreach events.)
Spectrogram activities: Ask visitors to record their name in PRAAT, and then guide them through the details of their spectrogram and print out their personal waveform. (Note: this activity requires a laptop with PRAAT and a printer, so may not always be the most portable.)
Logistics
It may be helpful to develop a planning checklist for your event. Though tasks will vary based on the nature of your event and its goals, a sample checklist may include:
Securing the venue and scheduling the event
Recruiting a planning group to help with developing the content
Preliminary marketing, such as "save the date" notices
Recruiting volunteers to staff the event
Production of any display materials, including quantities of hand-outs
Arrangements for transport to and from the event
Marketing to potential attendees
Creating a photographic/video record of the event
Thanking volunteers and conducting a post-event debriefing
Some of these tasks are addressed in more detail below.
Expenses
The cost of organizing a public outreach activity can vary greatly, but may involve expenses for display materials, audio-visual equipment, shipping, transportation, and registration/booth rental fees. Digital communications projects are typically less expensive, but may require a more significant investment of your time.
Recruiting Volunteers
Recruiting linguistic colleagues to help with planning and staffing a public outreach activity is essential. Some types of activities, such as hosting a booth at a festival/fair, may require up to 10 volunteers for supporting a day-long event. Students, particularly undergraduates, are excellent volunteer candidates; if your department/program (or, if you're outside of academia, your local university's department) has a club for undergraduate linguistics students, their participation can be incredibly helpful. It's still important, though, to cast a wide net and reach out to faculty, post-docs, and those outside of academia.
Marketing and Promotion
The most important part of any public outreach activity is to ensure that your prospective audience is made aware of it. If you're taking part in a larger event such as a science festival, the organization running the event will often do the bulk of the promotion. If not, you’ll want to start by using your existing communications tools, which may include:
Your department/organization's website
Email: departmental/alumni listservs, announcements in university-wide newsletters
Social media: both accounts run by the department and your own personal networks
Public/community affairs offices at your institution/organization that can assist with marketing to the news media and community-based organizations, such as libraries, museums, schools, etc.
Make sure to send out multiple announcements: at least one a few weeks or more in advance, to notify your audience, and one a few days or closer to the activity to remind them.
Supporting Materials and Equipment
The materials and equipment needed for your public outreach activity will vary depending on the format. For festivals and fairs, you’ll likely want |
it a National Semifinal Open Cup contest.
On April 14, Open Cup secretary Joe Barriskill informed the four remaining teams (Hamm’s, Sparta A & BA of Chicago, Denver Kickers and Pabst Blue Ribbon of Milwaukee) in the Midwest half of the West bracket that the survivor would play Yugoslav American SC in Los Angeles on May 2, and that they should plan accordingly.
On April 19, Tony Morejon from Yugoslav American called both Sparta and Hamm’s (the remaining Midwest teams) requesting player and team info to use in publicity for the May 2 game. Hamm’s sent newspaper clippings.
After Hamm’s defeated Sparta 1-0, Hamm’s representative Jim Moore contacted Cup Chairman John O. Best on April 25 to ask how much the Yugoslav American team was going to guarantee Hamm’s to travel to Los Angeles. Best informed Moore that the away team was required to offer the home team travel expenses for 18 persons. Up until 1971, it was the host team’s obligation to offer the traveling team reimbursement for their travel costs.
Best received a telegram from John Schaper of Hamm’s informing him that Hamm’s were invoking Rule 29 of the USSFA Rules & Constitution and offering $2,000 to play the game in St. Louis. Morejon called to inform Best that they had received a telegram from Hamm’s stating they would not be able to play the game on May 2 in Los Angeles, and they would also file a protest with the Open Cup committee.
Barriskill then telephoned Moore with a proposal in which the USFA would waive their 15 percent cut of the gate receipts and include that with the percentage Hamm’s would receive as the away team, which would total an estimated $2,500. Moore agreed.
When Cup committee member Bob Guelker phoned Hamm’s to tell them the plan was set, he was told that Hamm’s could not make the trip because three of their players would be working on the day of the game.
After being informed of the proposal by the USFA, Morejon decided to call Guelker and was told that the Hamm’s team was apparently at the airport for a 6:30 pm flight to Los Angeles, but their coach and three players could not be located. Morejon seemed encouraged that Hamm’s would make it to LA for the game after all.
Rancho Cienega Stadium was opened to the public at noon on May 2, but Hamm’s were nowhere in sight. Signs were then posted at the stadium that the game was called off, and an exhibition game was played instead for the fans that showed up. The Cup committee concurred that Hamm’s did indeed forfeit by non-compliance and failure to appear for the scheduled game. A protest was received from Hamm’s, but they were informed that the cup committee’s decision was final.
Oct. 31, 1971
New York Greek American SC vs. Everest Merrich
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a first round match in the Southern New York qualifying elimination tournament for the 1972 US Open Cup championship.
In one corner, a perennial heavyweight contender for the US Open Cup championship with a roster full of international players, from the famous German-American League of New York City: Greek American SC.
In the other corner, from the lightly regarded Long Island Soccer League, with a roster full of young American-born players: Everest Merrich.
The Greek American squad treated the match as a formality, as two of their regular players didn’t even bother to show up. What resulted was one of the most shocking scorelines in Open Cup history: Greek American SC 1, Everest Merrich 2.
The GASC immediately filed a protest alleging that two of the players Everest used were ineligible. Both players had in fact been in the GASC organization in the past. One player, who was part of a GASC Junior team at one time, jumped to Everest without getting a proper release and was under a two year suspension. The other player was supposed to be serving a three year suspension for the same offence, and was also ejected from a recent game for striking an opposing player.
Both players were indeed found to be ineligible to play for Everest. When the Open cup Committee ruled that a replay, and not Everest’s disqualification, was in order, the Greeks were furious.
“There is no reason we should have to replay the game,” GASC executive secretary Steve Pantios told Soccer America. The Greeks argued that the game should be forfeited to them, since Everest had knowingly used the ineligible players. With the replay date set for Nov. 17, Everest announced they would pull out of the competition and forfeit, but not due to the ineligible player.
What followed was a war of words between the two clubs. Everest club secretary Dennis Guglielmetti explained the stance taken by his team.
“Through no fault of ours this so-called ‘ineligible’ player was signed on and there is some doubt in my mind that he is indeed ineligible.” Guglielmetti continued, “When the Cup Committee ruled that a replay must be ordered we were shocked. We beat the Greeks fairly and I still feel that we can beat them again, but to play the game again in Cup competition would be unfair not only to our players, but to soccer fans as well.” Guglielmetti went on to also say that his club would be happy to play the game as a friendly, but not as a Cup game, since he felt a replay would “take away the glory which everyone knows we achieved in the first meeting between our two clubs.”
Greek American manager Aristos Vasiledes was not shy about his feelings when told of Guglielmetti’s statement.
“It’s just too bad that they didn’t want to go ahead with the replay since there is no doubt in my mind that the ire brought up in our men would have resulted in them getting one of the worst trouncings in the history of soccer in this country.”
The Greek American club fell out of contention two games later, dropping a 1-0 decision to New York Hota in the New York semifinals. According to TheCup.us records, Everest Merrich never entered the Open Cup again.
April 17, 1971
New York Hota players pull double duty
On their way to the club’s lone Open cup championship in 1971, the New York Hota team ran into a bit of controversy when some of their players pulled double duty with the New York Cosmos.
Hota were scheduled to face Taunton Sport of Massachusetts in the Eastern semifinals on April 17. The day before, five members of the team, including manager Gordon Bradley, played in the New York Cosmos NASL season opening game in St. Louis (the very first game in Cosmos history), a 2-1 win over the St. Louis Stars. The players then flew back to the east coast in time to help Hota defeat Taunton 4-1 in extra time and earn a spot in the Eastern Final versus Cleveland’s Danube Schwaben.
While Taunton did not file a formal protest, they did lodge a complaint over the players’ appearance for two different teams. The argument was that the Hota players had not been cleared to play for the Cosmos while still registered with Hota.
In the report of the annual USFA meetings, it was decided that the double signing of the players had not violated any Cup rules, and was “done in the spirit and best interests of the game displaying for the first time cooperation between a local organization and the professional league to get the game off the ground and moving.”
Cosmos GM and Vice President Clive Toye absolved Hota of any wrong doing, and pointed out that had the Cup schedule been completed as planned, the conflict would have been avoided. In the same report the USFA recommended that rules be set in place to keep players from appearing for one club while their registration with another team is in effect.
Hota would go on to defeat Danube Schwaben 3-1 in the Eastern Final, and win the Open Cup with a wild 6-4 extra time win over Yugoslav American SC of Los Angeles.
March 19, 1972-March 25, 1972
Willy Roy gets arrested, Croatians get angry
It began with a player being arrested during the game, and ended with a walk-off protest in a separate competition and $100,000 worth of lawsuits. Such was the 1972 Illinois Open Cup Final between the UASC Lions and Croatian SC.
After the Croatians scored the tying goal, a fan ran on to the field in celebration. A while later, the fan claimed he was struck by Lions forward and future Hall of Famer Willy Roy, resulting in the arrest of Roy after regulation time was completed.
The Croatians won the game 2-1 in extra time, but the Lions protested that they were put at an unfair disadvantage by not having Roy on the field for extra time. A ruling was handed down in favor of the Lions, and the game was ordered replayed the next week.
The Lions won the replay 2-1. After the game, Illinois Open Cup Commissioner George Meyer was confronted by several people associated with the Croatian team. However, the trouble did not end there.
The next day the Croatians were set to play Schwaben in the playoffs of the yearly Chicago indoor winter league. During the game one of the Croatian players was sent off for remarks made to the referee. This led to the entire Croatian SC team walking off the field. A few minutes later two of the referees were attacked by three individuals believed to be associated with the Croatian team.
The Illinois State Soccer Association demanded the names of those responsible for the attack. A hearing was called by the National Soccer League, were Croatia SC played. While the ISSA declined to attend the meeting, they handed down their own decision: the team was suspended for one year, club officials for 3 years, and some players for one year.
The NSL protested the decision, arguing that the Croatian SC had not been given a hearing, and that the NSL had not had a chance to announce their decision on the matter. The Croatian SC then attempted to get a court injunction to stop the Lions from playing further Cup games, arguing not only the lack of a hearing from the ISSA, but that they were not given proper amount of notice of the replay.
The Croatians wound up filing a lawsuit against Open Cup Commissioner George Meyer, as well as a $100,000 lawsuit against the ISSA for punitive damages. What became of the lawsuits is unclear, but the Lions went on to the Open Cup Semifinals, where they lost to Los Angeles’s Yugoslav-American SC 2-1.
Jan. 5 and Feb. 2, 1975
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Replay……
On Jan. 5, 1975, New York Hungaria and Inter-Giuliana faced each other at the Metropolitan Oval in Queens in a Southern New York preliminary round game. After 90 minutes of play and the score knotted at two, both teams agreed that it was too frigid to continue, so the match was halted.
On the same day at George Washington High School in Manhattan, Doxa and defending Open Cup champions NY Greek American SC had also finished 2-2 after full time, but were able to play the full 30 minutes of extra time. With the penalty tiebreaker at 4-4, the referee called a halt to the game due to darkness.
A month later all four teams gathered at Metropolitan Oval, assuming full replays of their matches were in order. Doxa and the Greek Americans took the field first, but officials quickly informed them that instead of a replay, they would resume the penalty tiebreaker were they left off in January. This ruling infuriated both teams, who felt the only true solution was a full replay of the match. Roberto Illenis was up first for the Greek Americans, and sent his shot over the bar.
When Doxa’s Nick DeKoste converted his kick the match was over, in less then three minutes. “Let it be known that even before we took the field I told them (Doxa) that if we were the winners it was not a victory I would be proud of.” Greek American manager Kyrikis Fitilis told Soccer America reporter Joe Marcus. Even Doxa supporters were not pleased with how their team advanced.
“This is no way for us to win a match and gain in Cup play,” said George Andredis, a Doxa fan. “There was no real soccer skill involved and I am not proud that my club won the game that way.”
Next up was Hungaria and Inter-Giuliana, and as you might guess, instead of a replay, officials simply ordered the teams to continue play where they left off in January. After 17 minutes of extra time, Ringo Contilla, reigning MVP of the American Soccer League, scored for Inter-Giuliana and they hung on for a 3-2 victory.
Doxa and Inter would eventually meet in the Southern New York final, with Inter prevailing 4-1. Inter Giuliana made it all the way to the Open Cup final, falling to Los Angeles’s Maccabee AC 1-0.
May 29-July 2, 1983
FOE Eagles/GAAC dispute
What do you get when you mix ineligible players, court injunctions, replays, and a threat of an on-field protest? An Open Cup controversy for the ages.
The saga between Seattle’s FOE Eagles and the Greek American AC of San Francisco began simply enough. The two clubs met in the 1983 Region IV Final on May 29 at San Francisco’s Balboa Stadium for the right to travel to Houston, Texas for the National Semifinals. John Kline scored the lone goal in the 19th minute to give the Eagles a 1-0 victory. After it was discovered the Eagles used an improperly registered player (ex-Seattle Sounder Pepe Fernandez), the match was forfeited to the Greek Americans, and they made plans to go to Texas.
The Eagles did not give up easily however. On June 27, the club’s attorney was able to obtain a court order from a Seattle judge declaring the Eagles the winner of the match. The owners of the Greek American AC, John and Jim Rally, were furious when they learned that there was no official USSF representation at the court hearing. USSF volunteer Jo Anderson was present for the hearing, but was turned away because she was not an official USSF representative. The USSF appealed the ruling, and a compromise was reached in which the game would be replayed, with Fernandez eligible. The Rallys arranged to have an attorney of their own investigate the matter, but the replay was still on.
As a result, the Eagles and GAAC were scheduled to kick off their replay in Houston the night before the National Semifinals were to begin. At 10:20 p.m. the game began, and almost 40 minutes later, Peter Fewing gave the Eagles another insurmountable 1-0 lead. At the stroke of midnight the FOE Eagles were once again Region IV champs, set to play the New York Pancyprian Freedoms in the next day’s semifinal.
The next day the Rally brothers announced they would file a lawsuit against the USSF, and also threatened to have their team take the field against the Freedoms in protest of the result from the night before. Delmar Stadium security and Houston police were informed that the Greek American players were to be ejected from the stadium if they tried to take the field. In the end none of the GAAC players showed up, and the Rallys watched as the Freedoms defeated the Eagles 4-2.
John Rally again stated that once he and his brother got back to San Francisco, they would file a $50,000 lawsuit against the USSF for the team’s travel expenses to Houston. “Of course, it’s a great expense for us to come all the way down here and not be able to play in the semifinal.” Rally said. “The USSF never showed the power to dictate and follow their rules.”
Rally also asserted that the USSF should be prepared to present their case in a court in order to explain the rules. “We went to a great expense. The USSF told us to have an attorney investigate the situation in Seattle.” Rally said. “The USSF told us we would have to pay the attorneys, which we aren’t going to do. We’re not going to do their work, it’s their job to do it.”
While the USSF asserted that they believed their original ruling in favor the Greek American team was correct, they admitted that further action was not taken to fight the court order because they wanted the semifinals to run smoothly and be played on time. ‘There was nothing we could do about it, unless we wanted to go to jail or be fined.” USSF rep Milton Aimi said of the Seattle court order.
1970-1984
The NASL Snubs the Open Cup
In the 100-year history of the US Open Cup, there is one very large and noticeable gap in the history of the tournament, the lack of participation from clubs in the North American Soccer League. While no definitive reason has been given, there are many theories as to why the league stayed out of the cup.
One suggestion is that the league didn’t want to risk being embarrassed by losing games to semi-pro teams. The most likely reason is that the NASL simply ignored the Open Cup, seeing it as a competition for amateur teams. Most of the team owners in the league were attracted by the large crowds that were showing up to watch the league games, surely they were not worried about competing against lower level teams.
Despite this, there have been a few times when the NASL was close to participating in the tournament.
In the very early days of the NASL, the teams of the league seemed to have every intention of participating in the Open Cup. In the fall of 1969, the National Soccer News announced that the four U.S. NASL clubs, The Atlanta Chiefs, Dallas Tornados, Kansas City Spurs and St. Louis would participate in the tournament. The four teams would ultimately withdraw in early 1970, citing conflicts with the NASL schedule.
In 1981 the reserve team of the Los Angeles Aztecs, who were playing in the Greater Los Angeles Soccer League at the time, took part in the Open Cup. The team reached the final of the Los Angeles preliminary tournament before falling to Maccabee AC. It is the only known time that a team affiliated with a NASL club took part in the Open Cup.
In the dying days of the NASL, a team finally showed interest in participating in the tournament. In April of 1984, defending NASL champion Tulsa Roughnecks made a formal request to enter the 1984 Open Cup. The initial plan was to allow the Roughnecks to step in and compete in the South region finals in San Antonio on May 19-20 of that year, with the winner moving on to the National finals on June 23-24 in St. Louis.
That plan had to be scrapped because the Roughneck’s NASL schedule interfered with the Regional and National finals, but there was optimism that Tulsa and perhaps other NASL clubs could plan ahead and participate in the 1985 tournament. Unfortunately, the NASL folded before the 1985 season could begin, eliminating the possibility for any kind of Open Cup participation from the North American Soccer League.
The NASL wasn’t the only professional league to stay away from the Open Cup. As the American Soccer League began to expand outside of its traditional territory of New York, New Jersey and New England in the early 1970s, fewer and fewer of the league’s clubs took part in the tournament. A few years after the death of the NASL and ASL, the American Professional Soccer League continued the tradition of professional teams avoiding the cup.
In fact, the APSL went as far as to create its own competition in 1992 called the Professional Cup. The tournament was contested by all five of the APSL’s clubs, as well as the Vancouver 86ers and Montreal Supra from the Canadian Soccer League and the Chicago Power from the indoor NPSL. By this time the Open Cup was seen more of an amateur competition, and the APSL clubs may have been more concerned about their own league’s survival, as it has shrunk to five teams by this point.
One national league that did see some of its clubs participate in the early 90s was the USISL. A handful of clubs from the league took part in the cup, including a round robin qualifying tournament in 1991 for the leagues Tex-Oma Conference clubs. That same year the Richardson Rockets and New Mexico Chiles faced off in the semifinals, with Richardson representing the league in the final.
In 1995, teams from both APSL and USISL would face off against the USASA clubs, and with the debut of Major League Soccer in 1996, the top leagues in the country were once again represented in the Open Cup.
June 25, 1994
’94 World Cup keeps McCormick Kickers from Open Cup Semifinal
It’s one thing to miss out on the final because your opponent outplayed you, or even if the game had a controversial ending. To miss a final without stepping on the field brings with it a new level of frustration.
The chance to watch the world’s best players without traveling outside your borders does not come along very often. Thus, the United States hosting the 1994 World Cup was huge for many soccer fans and players. For the McCormick Kickers, it cost them a chance at a national championship.
The Kickers, from St. Petersburg, Fla., were forced to forfeit their National Semifinal match against Milwaukee’s Bavarian SC because the date conflicted with a World Cup game in Orlando the Kickers had purchased tickets to well in advance.
The semifinal was originally set to be played on June 12, but for reasons that were not explained to team sponsor Brooks McCormick, the date was changed to June 19. Due to the tournament sponsor having a contract that stipulated the two finalists must be known a month before the Cup final, the weekend of June 25-26 were the only other option. Since the Bavarian SC was the hosts, they held the right to select the date.
The Bavarian team itself had purchased a large quantity of tickets for the Greece-Bulgaria game on the 26th in Chicago, so June 25 was the only option for them. Kickers manager Steve Gogas had sent a letter to the Cup committee in mid-April, long before the Kickers even qualified for the semifinal, explaining that the team would not be able to play on either June 19 or 25.
“It’s a shame for the kids who worked so hard. It’s not fair for the players. It’s not fair for the sport,” Gogas told the St. Petersburg Times. In protest, Gogas resigned from his position as Kickers manager.
Gordon Redshaw, the chairman of the National Cup committee, said the Kickers “wrongfully assumed we were willing to change the date. We gave them an extra week and that’s the best we could do.”
“It’s a joke,” said Kickers defender Craig Fossett. “The World Cup isn’t something you pass up. And they told us two months ago this wouldn’t be a problem.”
Aug. 20 – Sept. 15, 1996
In the Quarterfinals, Kansas City is playing the Colorado……WHO?!
1996 was a big year for the US Open Cup, with teams from Major League Soccer entering the competition in the debut season of the league. All of the lower division clubs were lining up to take their shot at the new big boys of American soccer. What the APSL’s Colorado Foxes did not count on was being part of the first big controversy of the Open Cup’s Modern Professional Era.
After dispatching the USISL’s El Paso Patriots 5-1 in the second round, the Foxes looked forward to a chance to upset the then named Kansas City Wiz, who was one of the stronger teams in the first summer of MLS play. Before the APSL upstarts could face their MLS goliath, another team’s World Cup aspirations derailed them.
On Aug. 20, US Soccer held a conference call to sort out the details of the Quarterfinal matches. As hosts, Kansas City offered two dates to play the game, Sept. 14 or 15. APSL commissioner Richard Groff objected to both dates, citing the Foxes APSL match on Aug. 13 against Rochester. After Kansas City refused to move the game to Denver, the Foxes GM eventually agreed to play the match on Aug. 15, with the thought that the team would have their full roster available to handle the one day of rest between games.
Two days later, the Jamaica Football Federation formally requested the release of five players (Walter Boyd, Anthony McCreath, Gregory Messam, Wolde Harris and Fabian Davis) on the Foxes roster for their Aug. 15 World Cup qualifying match against Honduras. The Foxes made a request with US Soccer to have the match rescheduled, but Kansas City refused to move the date, citing their own tight schedule in Major League Soccer. On Aug. 10, the US Open Cup committee told both clubs they would be allowed to add two players to their rosters, but the match had to be played on Aug. 15.
After considering their league schedule, loss of players and quality of players available, the Foxes took a vote and decided to forfeit the match to the Wiz.
”This was a tough decision, reached only after a hard-fought battle,” Foxes president and former Denver Broncos kicker Rich Karlis said in the forfeiture announcement. ”Unfortunately, it’s the result of many long discussions ending in an inability to reach a compromise.”
Instead of giving the Wiz a free ride to the semifinals, it was decided to allow the Colorado Rapids to take the Foxes’ place. At the time, the Rapids were dealing with a miserable first season, sitting in last place in the MLS Western Conference and long eliminated from playoff contention. To make matters more interesting, right about the time the Rapids were thrust into the Open Cup, they fired manager Bob Houghton and general manager Rich Levine.
Rapids forward Roy Wegerle was named the interim manager, and he seemed optimistic about the Rapids chances against the Wiz, who were in first place in the MLS Western Conference.
“It’s some way of salvaging a somewhat disappointing season,” Wegerle told the Rocky Mountain News. “We’re not as bad as we showed this season.”
Wegerle’s optimism was rewarded with a 3-2 victory over the Wiz on the strength of two Chris Henderson goals. Nearly a month later on Oct. 12 the Rapids would fall in the semifinals to the Rochester Raging Rhinos 3-0. The very next night the Wiz were eliminated from the MLS playoffs by the Los Angeles Galaxy. The Colorado Foxes went on to drop their first round APSL playoffs series to the Seattle Sounders.
June 4 – July 10, 2003
Chesapeake Dragons vs. Bridgeport Italians vs. New Hampshire Phantoms
On June 4, 2003, the USASA’s Bridgeport Italians pulled off a 1-0 win over the Chesapeake Dragons of the USL Premier Development League. A Ruben Fernandez goal in the 25th minute was all the amateurs from Connecticut needed to move on to Round 2 where they would face the New Hampshire Phantoms of the USL Pro Soccer League.
On June 25, they lost to the Phantoms 3-0, but the match ultimately wouldn’t count because Chesapeake filed a late protest that meant if Bridgeport won they had to play Chesapeake again but if they didn’t win, New Hampshire had to play another second round game against Chesapeake.
With the second round match a week away, Chesapeake filed a protest with US Soccer on June 18, alleging that Bridgeport had provided “inaccurate” information about two players on the roster that was submitted prior to the June 4 match. The main focus of the protest was Darin Lewis, a former Trinidad and Tobago national team member who Chesapeake alleged was listed as Lewis Daria on Bridgeport’s roster. Chesapeake later dropped their complaint about the other player, Carlos Silva, since he never entered the game.
During the conference call hearing regarding the matter on June 23, Bridgeport representative Boris Medvedev confirmed that the player in question was in fact Darin Lewis, but maintained that his club did not knowingly attempt to deceive, as they believed Lewis was properly registered with the Connecticut State Soccer Association.
At the conclusion of the conference call, the US Open Cup Adjudication and Discipline Panel ruled that Lewis was ineligible to play due in the Open Cup for Bridgeport due to being registered as a professional player with US Soccer.
The panel also ruled that while Bridgeport did not knowingly attempt to deceive, they were “responsible for not insuring the accuracy and proper handling of its player registration process.” With a 3-2 vote, the panel decided the match was to be replayed on July 2. The only problem was the second round game between Bridgeport and New Hampshire was to kick off on June 25, just two days after the hearing.
What resulted was a Twilight Zone-type of situation. It was decided that the New Hampshire-Bridgeport game would go off as planned, with the following stipulations: If Bridgeport won, they would have to go back and replay their first round game with Chesapeake to advance to the third round. If Chesapeake won the replay, New Hampshire would have to play another second round match to determine who advances to the third round.
Chesapeake would also get to play New Hampshire in the second round if New Hampshire defeated Bridgeport in the second round.
Get all that?
The final scenario was the one that won out, as the Phantoms won 3-0 over Bridgeport on June 25, resulting in a July 10 game that saw the Phantoms prevail 3-2 over Chesapeake in sudden death extra time.
After all that, what did New Hampshire get for winning two second round games? A match against the Rochester Raging Rhinos, in which the Phantoms were pounded 5-1.
2002-2011
Buying Home Field Advantage
When professional clubs joined the Open Cup in 1995, the USSF implemented a bidding process for later round matches to determine who would host tournament games. In the early rounds, the Open Cup commissioner would announce the hosts for each game, taking into account factors such as travel, venue quality and availability while also making sure that one team did not host too many consecutive games. Prior to 1995, the cup commissioner, backed by a committee, would determine who hosted every game of the tournament.
George Mellis, the long-time general manager for the New York Greek American Atlas, a four-time Open Cup champion founded in 1941, said, in his experience, the decisions by the cup commissioner were almost always fair. Very simple logic was involved in the decisions, such as, if both venues were equal and you hosted the last round, then you wouldn’t host the next round.
In 2002, the USSF expanded the bidding process to include all games of the tournament, in an effort to remove subjectivity from the decision-making process and to help with the costs associated with the competition.
The process evolved slightly since 2002, but for the 2011 US Open Cup, the system for determining home games began with the USSF setting a deadline of May 26 for qualified teams to submit their bids for the first and second rounds.
Part of the bidding process allowed interested teams to declare two different venues (e.g. Seattle Sounders used both Starfire Sports Complex and CenturyLink Field in 2011), and submit an application declaring which venue they plan to use, and answering questions that would help the USSF determine if that venue meets their minimum standards (lights, locker rooms, field size etc.).
In addition to meeting those standards, each team was encouraged, not required, to commit to a financial bid to the federation. Assuming the team’s proposed venue was acceptable, the criteria came down to who wrote the biggest check. The team who bid the most, got to host. While the amounts of the bids were kept a secret, sources told TheCup.us that the amounts range from $500 to as much as $200,000 to host the championship game.
Writing a check isn’t the only option. In fact, according to the Open Cup handbook distributed by the USSF to teams, the proposals can vary.
“The parameters for such proposals are open-ended and may include a financial guarantee to US Soccer, a guarantee plus percentage of the gate, or a percentage of the gate alone,” the 2011 handbook read. “Teams may consider a financial guarantee paid in advance to strengthen their proposal, although this is not a pre-requisite. However, U.S. Soccer will take the absence of a check at the time of submitting a Hosting Proposal into consideration in the selection process.”
The teams submit their checks in advance, but only the winning bids have their checks deposited, with the losing bids getting theirs sent back.
After the Second Round, the stadium standards increase, but the same procedure is followed with USSF setting a deadline in advance, and teams bidding to host the Third Round and the Quarterfinals, and later the Semifinals and the Final.
The heart of the controversy of the bidding process was the lack of transparency. It doesn’t take long to find quotes from team officials criticizing the process, but the situation that received the most attention was a war of words in 2009 between the Seattle Sounders and DC United. After United was chosen to host the 2009 Final, a disappointed Sounders general manager Adrian Hanauer took the opportunity to criticize the secret process and to suggest that the defending champions were given favortism over the first-year MLS franchise from Seattle.
“I do still feel like the bidding process could be more transparent and better understood by fans, owners, general managers,” Hanauer told the Seattle Times. “Now, it’s purely financial. I don’t know if that’s the best way to [go], especially if you want a major tournament. There are other ways to do it. You can do a draw, like they do for other major tournaments around the world.”
Hanauer also suggested that the defending champions were given special treatment, but since no one knows the amount that each team bid, DC general manager Kevin Payne felt the cricism was baseless.
“We participated in the process, and we won,” Payne told the Seattle Times. “I was a little offended that because I am on the board of the US Soccer Federation, that my team was shown favoritism.”
If Seattle would have been chosen, the game was going to be played in the afternoon and Payne felt that the prospect of an afternoon broadcast in the middle of the week on Fox Soccer Channel may have played a role in the decision.
Regardless of what happened behind the scenes, the spat between Hanauer and Payne created some extra buzz for the game and may have been the first step toward the changes that came for the 2012 and 2013 tournament. In 2012, the secret bidding process was eliminated and as long as both teams met the federation’s venue standards, then both clubs are entered into a blind draw.Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived
By Antonin Scalia
Edited by Christopher J. Scalia and Edward Whelan
(Crown Forum, 420 pages, $30)
There have been a lot of positive reviews of the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s recently released book of speeches. This will be another one. What’s not to like? The speeches were selected by his son, Christopher Scalia, and a former law clerk, Edward Whelan, from the many the justice delivered over the last 30 years or so of his life. They show not only an articulate and scholarly jurist with a well thought-out and consistent view of the law, but a full-service human being, full of insights and humor about the roller-coaster we call life, which he was very good at living.
Those who’ve read Scalia’s opinions, especially his occasionally acerbic dissents, know he was a clear, persuasive, and amusing writer. (I lift up 2004’s Scalia Dissents — Regnery — still available.) Can you feature it? Legal opinions that one can read for pleasure. What next?
Antonin Gregory “Nino” Scalia, born in Trenton, New Jersey and raised in the Elmhurst section of Queens, was one lawyer who didn’t have clarity, coherence, humor, and humanity beaten out of him in three years of law school, an institution that seems to be a sworn enemy of all four. Those reading these speeches, or watching them delivered on YouTube, will learn that Scalia was as good behind a podium as he was on a word processor. He’s a treat to read or listen to. The man had content and style.
Many of these 48 speeches — given before various schools, universities, and organizations of all sorts — focus on his legal philosophy called “originalism,” which holds that words have meaning, even in a Constitution, and we should interpret our governing document on the basis of what the framers meant when they wrote it. And this meaning is unchanging. His reasoning — my paraphrase here, not his, but I think I’ve captured his point — is that if the Constitution doesn’t mean on Friday what it meant on Monday, then who the hell knows what it will mean next week? This being the case, what’s the point of having a Constitution? Such a fluid and useless document would protect no one or nothing except current fads and those in political power.
This view of the Constitution, or one very like it, was held by most Supreme Court justices until about the middle of the last century, reflecting an understanding that one cannot coherently run a large, complex enterprise like America if the basic ground rules are moving targets. Alas, this sensible approach is increasingly giving way to a more political approach to our basic document. The more loosey-goosey approach, popular with the ever-expanding “living document” crowd who insist the meaning of the Constitution must change to suit changing times, helps facilitate the politicalizing of the law. Under this kind of legal regime, judges and justices can and often do simply substitute their own judgments on various matters for those of the people elected to make those judgements. Whatever judges don’t like must be unconstitutional — whatever they fancy must be a constitutionally protected right. We see this all the time. Scalia would have none of it.
From himself on this matter:
One of the interesting features of the massive modern attack upon originalism is that, while its opponents are unified in the view that that mode of interpretation is wrong, they display no agreement whatever upon what is right — that is to say, no agreement upon what criterion of constitutional meaning should replace it.
And:
The problem with making the Constitution an all-purpose embodiment of our current preferences — pro-abortion, anti-abortion, or anything else — is that it deprives the Constitution of its essential character as an obstacle to majority self-will and converts it (iron |
were all alone.
Like others, the Mindemans tell of door-knocking in the suburbs and homeowners quietly telling them that they voted for Democrats but were the only ones of that political persuasion. And hearing the same secret at the next house. And the next one.
Stories like that have Democrats optimistic that they can not only capitalize on the left-moving inner suburbs but expand the blue tide farther.
But House Speaker Kurt Daudt, R-Crown, said the GOP House has a “sustainable majority” despite the loss of the inner-ring suburbs.
“We are not defending in Edina and Eagan like we have in the past, and those are really expensive seats,” Daudt said.
Rural seats, which swung to Republicans last year, are cheaper to defend and simply contain more Republican voters.
But Daudt said he’ll fight for seats in the suburbs in 2016, too. In 2014, Republicans won big in rural areas and lost narrowly in the suburbs.
“We are going to play in the suburbs this year,” Daudt said.
In the long term, Teixeira said, suburbs will likely continue to become denser, more educated and more diverse. Those trends have benefited Democrats, but it’s no guarantee that same coalition will back Democrats decades into the future. If Republicans manage to effectively appeal to the emerging suburban population, they could halt or even reverse their suburban decline. Alternately, Teixeira said, the current leftward move could continue for a long time.
“No trend goes on forever,” Teixeira said. “(But) the underlying demographic trends, regardless of what they mean politically, are going to continue. You can bet on that one.”
Follow David Montgomery at twitter.com/dhmontgomery and follow Rachel E. Stassen-Berger at twitter.com/rachelsb.by
The waves of the Detroit River lap up onto the wall of the riverwalk downtown, and young children play in the fountains that shoot up through the concrete in the park below the towering Renaissance Center.
It is Saturday in Motown, and the sun is shining warm rays down on working-class folk enjoying a day of rest.
Just a few miles away, on the east side across the highway, Jean stands on her porch and worries about the pregnant mom whose water was shut off Thursday morning by Homrich contractors working for the City of Detroit under emergency financial management.
Water is a human right. Oh yeah?
They came that morning in a red pickup truck with a homemade decal on the side. In an arc around a circle it read “DETROIT WATER COLLECTION PROJECT” – quite official-looking – and inside the circle it read “WATER ****** HOMRICH”.
The asterisks representing a scribbled out word“SHUTOFF” that was removed after community protests about shaming neighborhood residents.
Jean came yesterday to the weekly, growing Freedom Fridays rallies at the Detroit Water and Sewerage Dept (DWSD) to voice her outrage at seeing a pregnant mother and young children denied the basic human right to water in a city surrounded by the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth, containing 21% of the world’s surface fresh water.
Her voice faltered as she worked to hold back tears on the megaphone. Her tone was one part desperation and one part pure rage, a rage that is simmering with the summer heat and the threat of over 100,000 family water shutoffs in the hot months ahead.
Where’s the media outrage?
The media has been nearly silent on the issue of water shutoffs since Detroit’s emergency management began to ramp them up last month. With so much negative news about bankruptcy and blight already, could it be that the country has become desensitized to Detroit’s suffering?
Or is it just increasingly difficult to cut through the corporate spin machine that seems to dictate so much of what we hear and see these days on the TV and in newspapers, as Conan O’Brien famously demonstrated when he showed how local news stations were just lazily parroting national corporate press releases.
Whatever the reason, you won’t be reading about this humanitarian crisis in USA Today – yet. But that’s something we’re planning to change. And the work has already started.
Detroit is rebuilding community from the grassroots up, and a few dedicated but under-staffed community organizations are working feverishly to grow a more sustainable, equitable and innovative Detroit than the one you hear about in the mainstream media.
They’re working for the most part under-the-radar and on local scale, building housing and worker cooperatives, urban farms, alternative recycling programs, public-private partnerships, and a million other amazing ideas that could only take root in a city as ingenuous and resilient as Detroit.
These are Detroit’s Davids against Wall Street’s Goliaths, and they need our solidarity now.
Democracy? You must be joking
Today, 60% of Detroit children live in poverty and the infant mortality rate has surpassed Mexico’s. The city, under unelected emergency financial management from the state governor’s office, recently announced a plan to shut off up to 150,000 residential and commercial water accounts – almost 40% of the city – for non-payment.
In some neighborhoods, more streetlights are broken or off than on, and there are more than 80,000 abandoned buildings citywide.
Meanwhile, Detroit’s municipal government and economy are still reeling from decades of disinvestment, deindustrialization, white flight, capital flight, and – yes – corruption that have sent former mayors to jail.
Simultaneously, City Hall is being crushed under the weight of an imposing and nationally-coordinated media and financial occupation by corporate America.
Michigan’s Tea Party state governor, Rick Snyder, took control of Detroit and 6 other majority-black cities last year under a controversial ‘emergency manager’ law.
Shortly after Snyder appointed Kevin Orr to run the city, Orr hired his own former corporate bankruptcy law firm to initiate bankruptcy proceedings while also paving the way for land sell-offs to preferred companies and developers as well as privatization of public utilities and services like ambulances and the Water Department.
Detroit’s retired city employees and pensioners are likely to pay a high price for the bankruptcy, while banks that engaged in dubious municipal credit rate swaps reclaim the majority of their failed loans and extract usurious interest rates on existing bad debt.
I thought Detroit already got a bailout, in 2009?
Nope, the Big 3 auto companies – Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors – got bailed out under the Automotive Industry Finance Program. In return, their top executives sold their corporate jets, and then proceeded to slash health benefits, cut pensions and reduce payments to laid-off workers.
The bailout wasn’t enough for Chrysler, which went bankrupt 3 months later. It received an additional $6 billion check straight from the desk of US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, in exchange for vague promises to become “more competitive” and build electric cars. In March of 2009, Treasury approved an additional $5 billion in loans to auto suppliers.
One thing is clear from the auto bailouts: they didn’t do a damn thing to help 99% of Detroit residents. In 2012, two years after the bailout, Detroit still had three times the national poverty rate and half the median income.
In fact, the median household income actually declined in the years after the auto bailout from $28,730 (2008) to $23,600 (2012), a full 18% drop. The auto bailout dollars didn’t enrich Detroit proper because for decades Detroit and the auto companies have been disjointed.
Very little of the wealth created by automobile sales actually stays in Detroit, but gets piped out to the wealthier suburbs or diffuses into the now-global network of financial centers and offshore tax havens.
And Americans as a whole didn’t benefit from the auto bailouts either, in tandem with how they haven’t benefitted from the Wall Street bailouts. Five years later, the government has spent $80 billion propping up the car companies, but recovered only $54.6 billion of it by October, 2013.
That leaves taxpayers on the hook for nearly $25 billion. And the electric cars promised? Chrysler built them, and then Chrysler’s CEO told customers not to buy them because they weren’t profitable.
Bailing out the auto companies to save Detroit turned out to be like paying the fox to guard the henhouse, and working Americans are the hens.
The 5th Cavalry never came …
In a world of less dysfunctional politics, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. A functional and compassionate government would have come to the aid of a once-great American city now teetering on the brink of financial collapse and experiencing a full-blown humanitarian disaster.
If the disaster that has befallen Detroit and countless other rustbelt cities had occurred overnight like a hurricane or a tornado, FEMA – the real domestic ‘emergency managers’ – and Red Cross volunteers would be on every corner distributing emergency aid.
An army of social workers would descend on the neighborhoods to provided vital services. A New Deal-style emergency jobs program would put thousands of Detroiters to work repairing or demolishing blighted buildings and infrastructure
If the disaster of Detroit had happened in Ukraine, or Israel, or Afghanistan, or Egypt, or any of the dozens of countries around the world where the US government spends over $37 billion annually on foreign aid, US peacekeeping forces would be working side-by-side with local leaders to build schools and hospitals.
UN Human Rights Observers would be on the ground to ensure the human right of access to clean drinking water. President Obama would stand proudly with Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan posing for pictures in front of the Spirit of Detroit sculpture announcing a peace treaty to ensure an end to the violent water shutoffs and evictions.
So who’s left? We are!
In reality, none of this is going to happen if it doesn’t suit the interests of the large banks and corporations – the ones that showed us clearly in 2008 how they have our elected government fully co-opted to serve their bottom lines.
To corporate America, Detroit is just a bunch of deadbeat debtors who haven’t paid their bills, not a humanitarian disaster zone. To them, a bailout for Detroit is a bailout of their own coffers – payback on their own soured gambles.
For the rest of us, though, it’s time to help Detroit. If you care about second chances, about life after poverty and unemployment, you are needed in Detroit to build the better world we talked about in 1,000 parks across this country in the fall of 2011.
It begins with water
You ready to start bailing out Detroit the right way? It starts with water, the basic element of life. Join the Detroit Water Brigade and help us start getting water and vital information to Detroiters in need.
If we can, we’ll raise the money to buy off the $150 debts of Detroit families to keep the city from shutting off their water – Strike Debt style.
If we raise enough money, maybe we can even buy this debt in bulk and bring hope and second chances to some of America’s most-neglected citizens. Once we get going, who knows where we’ll stop?
Rebuild the water and energy systems with renewable technologies and designate them a public commons for all. End all evictions. Turn abandoned lots into urban farms. Rebuild schools. End payday lending and expand crowd funding of local small and cooperative businesses. The sky is the limit.
The bailout isn’t coming from above, people. Let’s do this ourselves.
Join: the Detroit Water Brigade
Donate water, water coolers, and other essential items: http://bit.ly/water4detroit
Justin Wedes is an educator and activist based in Detroit, Michigan. A graduate of the University of Michigan with degrees in Physics and Linguistics with High Honors, Justin has taught formerly truant and low-income youth in subjects ranging from science to media literacy and social justice activism. A founding member of the New York City General Assembly (NYCGA), the group that brought you Occupy Wall Street, Justin continues his education activism with the Grassroots Education Movement, Class Size Matters. He founded the Paul Robeson Freedom School. In his (fleeting) spare time, Justin enjoys biking, running, chess, and playing the ’77 Fender Rhodes stage piano to his heart’s delight.
This article, edited by the Ecologist, is a fusion of two articles originally published on JustinWedes.com."If they don't charge him, he can leave. We hope we won't have any problem with the United Kingdom. He would likely come to Ecuador, because he has already been granted asylum in our country," said Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino in an interview on public radio.
Assange, who faces a rape allegation in Sweden, has been in hiding at the Ecuadoran embassy in London since 2012.
The 44-year-old Australian refuses to travel to Sweden to answer the allegation, saying he fears he would then face extradition to the United States and trial over the leaking of hundreds of thousands of classified US military and diplomatic documents in 2010.
Ecuador granted Assange asylum in 2012, after he sought refuge at its embassy while facing extradition to Sweden.
British authorities have vowed to arrest him if he sets foot outside the embassy.
Sweden said Wednesday it had formally requested permission to interrogate Assange at the embassy, after months of diplomatic wrangling finally yielded a Swedish-Ecuadoran deal on legal cooperation last month.
Patino has said Ecuador will cooperate with Swedish prosecutors, but that the questioning will be conducted by Ecuadoran officials under Ecuadoran law.
Swedish prosecutors dropped a sexual assault probe against Assange in mid-August after the five-year statute of limitations expired.
But they still want to question him about a 2010 rape allegation, which carries a 10-year statute of limitations.
Assange has denied all the allegations and insisted the sexual encounters were consensual.The sad history of the skull has been all but forgotten. A paper tag, brown and soft with age, gives the only clue to its story.
It shares a warehouse shelf with other hippo skulls – powerful, ponderous things, grimacing with teeth and tusks, the remains of bull males shot down on safari. But this skull is different. It’s smaller than the others, less imposing.
It comes from a hippo that lived and died in Orange County, whose last moments made headlines around the world. Today it is known only as specimen number 54113, just one of many hippo skeletons stored in this out-of-the-way warehouse.
But the paper tag makes clear that this hippo once had a name.
•••
She was a hippo on the lam, a two-ton Houdini. On a February night in 1978, Bubbles managed to burrow under her fence, squeeze past a barricade and lumber away from her pen at the old Lion Country Safari animal park in Irvine.
She found a marshy drainage pit and settled in for a standoff with park rangers, rarely showing much more than her nostrils above the water line. Crowds gathered. Television cameras arrived. Soon, even Johnny Carson was having a laugh at the wayward hippo in Orange County.
Bubbles emerged from her watery hideout a few days into her escape, and was greeted with a tranquilizer dart. She crumpled to the ground. Three rangers approached, and one tapped her with a wooden pole.
“Bubbles roused with a mighty snort,” the Register reported, “and promptly treed two rangers and sent the third scampering… Bubbles flicked her tail and rumbled back into the pond.”
For 19 days, Bubbles wallowed in her pond as news helicopters clattered overhead and highway patrol officers directed traffic on nearby roads. She refused to budge even when rangers baited a huge net with her favorite food, alfalfa.
And then, as night fell on her 19th day of freedom, Bubbles pulled herself out of the shallows and wandered up a nearby hill. A ranger approached her in the dark and shot her with two tranquilizer darts.
She staggered for a few more steps before her knees gave out and she collapsed. A veterinarian arrived and gave her a dose of a potent calming drug.
The cheering and backslapping of her capture soon turned to disbelief and then tears as the park rangers realized that Bubbles had stopped breathing. One of the rangers reached down and tried to close her eyes, then covered her body with a blanket.
The official story from Lion Country Safari has always been that Bubbles fell in an awkward position on the hill, and her heavy internal organs pressed against her lungs, suffocating her. But the lead ranger that night, Steve Clark, has long maintained that it was the veterinarian’s drug – administered needlessly and carelessly, he says – that killed Bubbles.
“She was only a hippo,” chided a cameraman as the crowd of reporters melted away that night.
“But to many, Bubbles was more than a hippo,” the Register wrote. “Some saw her as a symbol of the liberated lady and to others she provided comic relief from the day-to-day world crises.”
A heavy-duty earthmover carried Bubbles back to Lion Country Safari, where an autopsy found she had been pregnant with her second calf.
•••
But there’s a final chapter to her story, one that few people know, one that takes place a long way from her murky pond.
In a gray neighborhood of truck terminals and train tracks in the industrial city of Vernon stands a warehouse, unmarked except for the street number. It’s so mysterious that the manager of a wholesale emporium next door believes this is where the U.S. Marines conduct tests on fish.
Inside, the yellow light that filters down from the ceiling leaves shadows among the bones stacked along one wall and the white skulls that line the shelves. The air smells a little like old seashells and a lot like strong cheese.
This is Bubbles’ final resting place: Six drawers in a wooden cabinet marked “Hippopotamus Amphibius.” Here are her stout leg bones, each as dense and as heavy as a dumbbell. Here are her powerful shoulder blades, her massive ribs, even her black hooves.
Her skull – forty pounds of solid bone and tusk – sits on a metal shelf nearby, behind a tarp of thick plastic. It shares the shelf with three massive skulls from bull hippos sport-hunted decades ago in the wilds of Kenya.
The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County uses this warehouse to store the animal skeletons and bones it doesn’t put on display. It has 98,000 specimens here, including the second-biggest collection of whales and other marine mammals in the world.
The warehouse is a library of bones, the back stacks of the museum. There are slender giraffe skulls arranged in a neat row on the shelf below Bubbles, and a rebuilt bison skeleton on the shelf above. There’s a blue whale skull on the floor nearby, as sleek as a speed boat and – at 18 feet – about as long.
Lion Country Safari donated Bubbles’ body to the museum for research, not to be pieced back together and put on display. She’s a rare celebrity here, but she’s not the only one: The warehouse also holds the remains of a circus polar bear, a performing killer whale and a celebrity chimp named Mike.
Museum files indicate that nobody has ever visited Bubbles here, with the possible exception of a paleontologist who may have borrowed her leg bones for research. “Some of (the specimens) might sit on the shelf for years and years and years,” says James Dines, the collections manager for the museum’s mammalogy department. “But when somebody needs it, it’s there.
A simple tag attached to Bubbles’ skull sums up her life in few words:
“Female (died with fetus). Born in captivity. California, Orange County, Laguna Hills, Lion Country Safari, Inc. Died 11 March 1978.”
But there’s another tag – brown and soft with age – attached to a box of teeth that have shaken loose over the years. On it, in black ink, someone thought to afford specimen number 54113 a rare dignity here. A name.
“This is ‘Bubbles.'”Alternative rock/pop-punk clan Grayscale has emerged from the Philadelphia punk scene to unveil their Anchor Eighty Four Records full-length debut, What We’re Missing.
The album is set to release Feb. 12, but the band has joined forces with AltPress to provide you with the exclusive first listen.
“What We’re Missing is a collection of our thoughts, feelings, and stories from the past two years,” explains drummer Nick Veno. “It’s a very personal record for all of us. It’s brutally honest and revealing of certain happenings in our lives—both happy and sad. We put everything that we had into these songs, leaving us completely unveiled and vulnerable, but in a way that was therapeutic. It allowed us to release the thoughts and feelings that were weighing us down and tell each individual story from our perspective. We revealed our deepest emotions on this record, and I think people will take notice of that.”
Lyricists Collin Walsh and Dallas Molster are never afraid to call things as they see them, and that kind of blunt and brutal honesty certainly didn’t change for this record. The band held nothing back.
“This album is about things that haunt us. It is about life altering events and changes that keep us awake for hours on end,” Walsh describes of the album. “Bad things happen for a good reason, right? If that's the case, then why does it never feel that way?”
Walsh continues to say the stories found in the What We’re Missing reflect the pain derived from change. While we may not initially understand why these things occur, the singer aims to reassure others that what they’re missing has vanished for the better.
“The ‘what ifs’ and ‘what could have beens’ were cut short or stunted for a reason,” Walsh says. “The world is a fucked up place, but hopefully hearing about it from our shoes helps you not feel so alone.”
Blending pure, raw emotion with elements of alternative rock and punk roots, Grayscale has spent the past four years crafting their own unique, loud and catchy sound with bouncy rhythms and memorable hooks that will stick in your head on the first listen. Their relatable lyrics will have you singing and screaming along in no time.
We've got the exclusive stream, and you can pre-order What We're Missing today on the band's website.The U.S. State Department has announced some small but important additional changes to its policy for updating gender on U.S. passports and Consular Reports of Birth Abroad (CRBAs). The changes make clear that any physician who has treated or evaluated a passport applicant may certify that he or she has had appropriate treatment for gender transition. The revised policy also clarifies language and procedures to ensure that individuals with intersex condition can obtain documents with the correct gender.
In June 2010, the Obama Administration announced a new policy for updating gender markers on passports and CRBAs. For the first time, the June policy enabled transgender people to a passport that reflects their current gender without providing details of specific medical or surgical procedures. Instead, applicants could provide certification from a physician that they had received “appropriate clinical treatment” for gender transition. This policy was the result of years of advocacy, and represented a significant advance in providing safe, humane and dignified treatment of transgender people.
The policy announced in June was a huge step forward, but it was not perfect. It contained rigid and unnecessary restrictions on which physicians could write supporting letters for applicants, and contained confusing provisions regarding people with intersex conditions. With input from NCTE and other organizations, the Department moved swiftly to clarify and improve the policy. The passport policy as it now stands represents a model that other federal agencies, such as the Social Security Administration and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, should move swiftly to adopt.
NCTE has prepared a revised resource that fully explains the new guidelines and outlines the ways in which transgender people can make changes to their passports and CRBAs. We are thankful for our colleagues at the Council for Global Equality, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Lesbian Rights for their wonderful collaborative work on this vital issue.
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Like this: Like Loading... RelatedInspired by Babymetal’s long-awaited New York City debut last night, here are fifteen questions about Japan’s latest musical export and America’s new obsession to which we’re absolutely dying to know the answers.
1. Are they the best thing ever?
They’re close, but they’re not quite there yet. Everyone I spoke to after the show seemed to agree that while the performance was riveting and amazing in a number of ways, it wasn’t quite GREAT. At least not yet — they’re clearly still getting their footing as a performing act, which I think we can chalk up to experience; they’re still super-new at this! Comparing Babymetal to Maximum the Hormone might seem lazy, but since we just saw the latter last week and both are Japanese bands that rarely come to the US it seems poignant: the Maximum the Hormone show just edged out Babymetal in terms of how mind-boggling captivating it was.
2. Was the show freakin’ amazing anyway?
Definitely. It’s a full-on spectacle complete with a video backdrop that narrates a storyline in English (something about heavy meal fox gods saving the earth?), tons of lights, a platform with stairs, pyro (!) and of course lots of choreographed dancing and adorable costumes.
3. How come they don’t seem to sweat at all?
It’s remarkable! I’d have the stage under an inch of water if I ran and danced around the way they do. The only explanation we can come up with is that they have handlers who blow-dry their hair every time they go backstage for costume changes. It seems crazy, but don’t rule it out!
4. Are they lip-synching?
The answer appears to be yes, sometimes. When Su-Metal takes her leads it’s clear that her mic is hot, but when the girls are doing some of their more involved dance routines it gets dubious, especially with Yui-Metal and Moa-Metal’s headset mics. At the very least, all sorts of backing vocals are absolutely being piped in — there were harmonies coming through the PA even when Su-Metal was the sole girl on stage. No lip-synching in this one:
5. Is the backing band legit?
Abso-fucking-lutely. Dudes RIP, all of them. No surprise Marty Friedman chose guitarist Takayoshi Ohmura for his own band. Not only does the Babymetal backing band a joy to watch in the back, but they get their own share of the limelight, too; the band stepped to the front and entertained the audiences during several interludes in the set.
6. Who the hell ARE all these people in the audience??
Just who are all these people that filled the 3,500-seat Hammerstein Ballroom nearly to capacity after just discovering this band in the past six months? The audience was one of the most diverse I’ve ever seen at a metal show. It’s clear that Babymetal draw fans from all sorts of interests — fans of Japanese music and culture, comic/anime nerds, all sorts of metalheads and people just there for the spectacle– and the audience is appropriately diverse across lines of age, race and gender.
7. Why the hell is Grim Kim here?!
Researching a piece she’s working on for Noisey, apparently. I genuinely cannot wait to read it and all the massively stangry reactions it will surely inspire from IMNs! [UPDATE: Her article is now live! Read it here. -Ed]
8. Are real metalheads into Babymetal?
Absolutely, the metal crowd was out in full force. And like the audience as a whole, they were incredibly diverse: we saw tough guy biker dudes with Megadeth backpatches, garden variety metalheads in Metallica, Children of Bodom and Amon Amarth shirts, guys and gals repping more “indie”(for lack of a better word) metal bands like Kvelertak and Asphyx, and everything in between. Despite their pop formula, Babymetal are getting the seal of approval from all swaths of the metal community, at least for now.
9. Should I feel bad/dirty about young children being exploited for the sake of entertainment?
It’s easy to dismiss young entertainers as “basically like adults” when you’re watching them on a screen, but when I got within a few rows of the front last night and saw Moa-Metal and Yui-Metal up close and in person… holy shit, these are really young girls! It’s hard not to wonder what their school schedule is like, and how they have time for anything outside of Babymetal with all the rehearsing such an elaborate presentation much entail. Sure, kid groups aren’t anything new, but we all know how so many child stars end up later in life.
10. Will the band’s handlers swap in new members Menudo-style once the current girls get too old?
Unclear, but it seems likely. These girls already look so much older than they did in promo shots and videos taken just two years ago, and it’s hard to see the whole “cuteness” sell working when they’re much beyond 18.
11. Are Babymetal going to sign a ginormous U.S. album deal?
It would appear that way. All sorts of label brass were in the house, and I have it on good authority that they’re working on something with a major label similar to what Unlocking the Truth got. Unlocking the Truth were in attendance, by the way… so take that for whatever you think it’s worth. Future label-mates, or just friends (who can’t communicate with one another)?
12. How many albums are they capable of selling?
Industry vets I talked to seemed to agree that 50k was a fair estimate for total sales for one album.
13. How far do they plan to take this and what’s the ceiling?
It’ll be interesting to see how the marketing around Babymetal develops on their next album. Will their label push them as a metal band, or will they try and go the Disney route to appeal to kids? I could see it going either way, although I have a hard time believing kids will be able to relate to music so heavy, even if adorable Japanese girls in tu-tus are peddling it.
14. How much money did this guy outside the venue make selling bootleg Babymetal posters for $5 each?
A helluva lot — they were selling like hotcakes!
15. How long before Babymetal hysteria dies down?
You’re gonna be waiting a while. We saw a Fox 5 news team filming last night, and we’re sure they weren’t the only ones there — the mainstream press is just now catching on.
Did we miss anything? Chime in with your own questions in the comments.Woman with child
The social and legal situation of women in Uzbekistan has been influenced by local traditions, religion, the Soviet rule, and changing social norms since independence.[2]
Maternal healthcare and availability of contraceptives [ edit ]
The availability of contraceptives and maternal healthcare is mixed. 62.3% of women were using free contraceptives in 2003.[3][4] However, the UN estimates that about 13.7% of women in Uzbekistan who would like to prevent, or delay, their next pregnancy are unable to do so because of limited access to contraceptives.[5] In 2000, there were approximately 20,900 midwives in the country.[6]
Forced sterilization [ edit ]
There are reports that forced sterilization of women is practiced in Uzbekistan.[7][8][9] A BBC World Service "Assignment" report on 12 April 2012 uncovered evidence that women are being sterilised, often without their knowledge, in an effort by the government to control the population.[10]
Suicide [ edit ]
Self-immolation [setting one’s self on fire] is a common form of suicide among women in Uzbekistan.[11] In 2001 it was estimated that approximately 500 women a year kill themselves because of abusive situations.[12]
Trafficking [ edit ]
The UN has recognized some efforts of the government to curtail human trafficking.[13] For example, telephone hotlines are available for trafficking victims,[14] and trafficking carries a jail sentence of five to eight years.[3][4]
However, trafficking still persists, as Uzbekistan is both a supplier and consumer of trafficked women.[15][4]”Trafficking occurs as an extension of the ‘shuttle’ trade. The women are sent as tourists with promises of employment as nannies, tutors or baby-sitters, but they often end up working in the sex industry.”[12]
Women’s economic opportunities [ edit ]
"Gender roles in the economy changed during the Soviet period and continue to change in independence."[16] While the Uzbek state has programs in place to help increase economic opportunities for women, there are persistent problems. For example, the labor market is sex-segregated, and women are usually paid lower wages.[17] "Unskilled personnel in the non-production sector are comprised virtually entirely of women.”[3][4] Women also cannot be used for night time or overtime work.[3] As of 2003 there was no known law against sexual harassment.[18]
Mothers with disabled children or many children can retire at 50—up to five years earlier than the stipulated retirement age (55).[3]
Women’s legal rights and government representation [ edit ]
As of 2004 Uzbekistan’s election law requires political parties to nominate at least 30 percent female candidates for the parliament. However, underrepresentation of women is endemic at all levels of government.[4]
Uzbekistan has universal suffrage;[3] however, "according to data from surveys conducted by the Public Opinion Centre, 64% of urban and 50% of rural women consider that men have greater opportunities for implementing their rights in the political sphere".[3]
Forced marriage and bride kidnapping [ edit ]
Forced marriage through bride kidnapping occurs in parts of the country, especially Karakalpakstan. [19] Bride kidnappings are believed to be tied to economic instability. Whereas weddings can be prohibitively expensive, kidnappings avoid both the cost of the ceremony and any bride price.[20] Some scholars report that less desirable males with inferior educations or drug or alcohol problems are more likely to kidnap their brides.[21]Buy Photo East Nashville resident Mitch Hansen in the creek bed behind his home, Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2016, in Nashville, Tenn. Flood waters from the creek reached his home in 2010 and 2013. (Photo: Andrew Nelles / The Tennessean)Buy Photo
While stretches of Cooper Creek remain dry for most of the year, East Nashville resident Mitch Hansen has seen the creek come alive. Heavy rains flooded his Inglewood house in 2010 and again in 2013.
Now, the federal government officially recognizes the risk. The Federal Emergency Management Agency last month finalized revised flood maps for Davidson county, and more than 4,400 properties were added to high-risk zones, including many on small creeks like Cooper.
Thousands of property owners may have to purchase flood insurance policies for the first time. Mortgage companies typically require coverage if a property falls into the 100-year floodplain -- an area with a 1 percent chance of being inundated each year. For some recent buyers, the designation could be the first they learn of flooding risks.
“I should have known better when I bought it in 2008,” said Hansen, recalling when he saw the rain swelling in the creek at the time. “I was like, ‘wonder if that happens often?’”
Hansen now has flood insurance, but he didn’t when the epic 2010 rainfall caused about $2,000 of damage to his heating and air-conditioning system and ruined about $10,000 of his music production equipment.
Flood risk models are based on rainfall, river flow, topography, flood-control measures and changes from building and development.
Since the last update in 2001, engineers flew laser instruments over more areas of the county, improving topographic base maps, said Tom Palko, assistant director of stormwater at Metro Water Services. That allowed more accurate flood modeling. Also, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers surveyed land not previously studied in detail, such as the area around Cooper Creek.
“The intent of the flood maps is to identify risk,” Palko said. “If an area was previously unstudied, then we did not know the risk associated with living or building in that area.”
Most of the flood boundaries in the county changed by one or two feet. Parts of the Harpeth River, for instance, saw floodplains rise by a foot. Some areas with new development are at a higher elevation than before, and now out of the floodplain.
To see if a property was added to a hazard zone, visit maps.nashville.gov/PrelimFEMAViewer. Homeowners may be exempt from insurance if the floodway covers a portion of a lot, but doesn't touch the home itself.
Metro officials will use the new maps to guide future construction. No new buildings will be allowed in the floodway -- the area of the floodplain where waters usually flow faster and deeper. And new construction in the 100-year floodplain must be offset by removing an equal amount of land to accommodate the flow of floodwaters.
Homeowners whose properties fall into the floodplain may be eligible for subsidized policies through the National Flood Insurance Program. But they have to sign up before the maps become effective in April. An average flood insurance premium costs about $700 per year, according to federal officials.
To determine the exact premium, homeowners have to first survey their properties and calculate their flooding risk. Professional surveys can cost more than $500, Palko said.
For her neighbors on a fixed income, flood insurance could be cost-prohibitive, said Ruby Baker, the president of the Bordeaux Hills Residents Association. Baker attended an open house on Monday to learn about insurance requirements.
“That’s going to be a huge burden,” she said. “After their medications, utilities… they might just take the risk.”
Officials recommend that homeowners consider flood insurance even if their homes fall outside the 100-year boundary. Every property in Davidson County is eligible for flood insurance.
“A lot of people will carry it only because someone is making them carry it," Palko said. "That’s the mindset we’re trying to change."
Homes with federally-backed mortgages, such as those through the Veterans Administration or the Federal Housing Administration, are required to have flood insurance if they fall into the 100-year floodplain.
State law requires residential sellers to disclose if they are aware of any flooding problems, if the property has been damaged by floods, or if flood insurance is required. But if the seller isn’t aware of flooding issues, they aren’t required to do any research to answer the questions.
The impact on property values is harder to gauge. In a hot real estate market, buyers are more willing to choose properties in a flood zone, said Richard Exton of |
Hazel finally said, after finishing setting the table.
“Of course, I should probably have dinner myself,” Tobias said, though a little disappointed that he would have to hang up.
Hazel nodded, suddenly nervous again. “Well, until tomorrow,” she said, looking at him with her paws folded in front of her. They had already said it once, but the words were still so new to her that she could feel her heart racing in anticipation.
“I love you Toby.”
Tobias let out a short breathless laugh. It would take him some time to get used to hearing her say that.
“I love you too.”
Tobias rolled over on his back on the couch, his i-Paw resting on his chest as he looked up at the ceiling, his eyes not really focusing on anything. As every night after the curfew, the streets outside his apartment was eerily quiet. The sound of far off police sirens carried through above the rooftops. Tobias closed his eyes, purposefully ignoring them.
He would get the news of another savage attack soon enough anyway, it could wait until morning. Tonight, the only thing he wanted to think about was Hazel. Her voice was playing on repeat in his mind, and he focused all his energy on remembering everything about it, and nothing else.
I love you Toby.ROME — The Vatican told a Spanish bishop that transsexuals cannot be godparents after he asked for a formal answer on the matter, the cleric in the diocese of Cadiz and Ceuta said.
Bishop Rafael Zornoza Boy said the Vatican’s doctrinal arm replied that transsexuals “publicly show an attitude contrary to the moral requirement to resolve one’s sexual identity problem according to the truth of one’s sex.”
In a statement on his diocese’s website, Zornoza Boy said: “Pope Francis has effectively said on several occasions, in line with Church teaching, that this behaviour is against man’s nature.”
The Church “wants to help everyone in their own situation with a compassionate heart, but without denying the truth it preaches,” the bishop added.
Zornoza Boy said he made the query to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith because of confusion among the faithful, and the publicity given to the complicated subject.
An Italian conservative Catholic blog, Rorate Caeli, said the issue was first raised by a transsexual, born a woman, who had asked to be godfather to his nephew.
In its response to Zornoza Boy, the Vatican said its stance on transsexual godparents “should not be seen as discrimination.”There are roughly ten thousand bajillion (to the nearest bajillion) merchants registered with Stripe. We recently finished a Very Big Migration of Large Amounts Of Data between several database tables for every single one of them, without losing any of it, without any downtime, mis-reads or mis-writes, whilst running a system that is responsible for the transfer of squillions of dollars every single day.
This was conceptually relatively simple, but the devil and the ability to sleep at night is in the details. Here’s how we did it.
0. The principle.
At Stripe we have a Merchant table and an AccountApplication table. Every Merchant has an AccountApplication, and once upon a time these tables contained every single one of a merchant’s details. This included both trivial information like email_font_color and self_estimated_yearly_turnover, and very very important, legally-required “Know Your Customer” information like business_name and tax_id_number.
For the recent launch of Stripe Connect, we needed to build out a new system that would tell Connect Applications exactly what “KYC” information is currently required for each of their connected merchants. This is a complicated process that varies by country, business type and other factors. To make the new system as simple, modular and generally tractable as possible, we needed to extract all of these “KYC” fields into a single, seperate LegalEntity table.
If we could temporarily take down our entire system for a while, and if we were programming robots who never made anything remotely close to a mistake, we would simply turn off our servers, tell all of our merchants not to sell anything for a while, move all the data from the Merchant and AccountApplication tables to the LegalEntity table, convert all of our code to read and write to this new table, turn our servers on again, and give the all clear that the internet can start selling again.
But we obviously cannot take down our system at all. This means that during the time we are migrating all of this data, we are going to have ten thousand bajillion pesky users wanting to read and write new information. If we’re not careful then we could easily end up reading old data and failing to write new data. This would be Really Really Bad.
And we are not programming robots, and if we try and change many thousands of lines of code that touch every single part of our system all at once, at some point we are inevitably going to miss something. Instead of one enormous “pleaseworkpleaseworkpleaswork” change, we want to make a long series of many small changes so that we can easily A) monitor each small change in production for correctness, preferably “in the dark” alongside our old code and B) easily recover from any mistakes that we do make.
The entire migration is essentially a transition of data reading from:
to:
and data writing from:
to:
This is done in 4 phases:
Read on to find out both the nitty and the gritty details.
1. Data migration
1.1 Make the LegalEntity model
We start by making the LegalEntity model in our ORM, and the associated table in our database. So far it contains no data, and does absolutely nothing.
class LegalEntity end
1.2 Start double-writing to the LegalEntity
We begin by double-writing all writes to the relevant Merchant and AccountApplication properties to the LegalEntity equivalent. For example, when we write to Merchant#owner_first_name, we also write to LegalEntity#first_name. Note that we have not yet migrated old data to the LegalEntity, so the Merchant and AccountApplication remain the source of truth.
With the utmost of care, we use some meta-programming magic:
class Merchant # Each Merchant has a LegalEntity prop :legal_entity, foreign: LegalEntity def self. legal_entity_proxy ( merchant_prop_name, legal_entity_prop_name ) # Redefine the Merchant setter method to also write to the LegalEntity merchant_prop_name_set = :" #{ merchant_prop_name } =" original_merchant_prop_name_set = :"original_ #{ merchant_prop_name_set } " alias_method original_merchant_prop_name_set, merchant_prop_name_set if method_defined? ( merchant_prop_name_set ) define_method ( merchant_prop_name_set ) do | val | self. public_send ( original_merchant_prop_name_set, val ) self. legal_entity. public_send ( :" #{ legal_entity_prop_name } =", val ) end end legal_entity_proxy :owner_first_name, :first_name before_save do # Make sure that we actually save our LegalEntity double-write. # This "multi-save" can cause confusion and unnecessary database calls, # but is a necessary evil and will be unwound later self. legal_entity. save end end merchant. owner_first_name = 'Barry' merchant. save merchant. legal_entity. first_name # => Also 'Barry'
We let this run in production for a few days, and verify that the data is consistent between tables. If it is not then that we can debug and fix at our leisure, since the Merchant and AccountApplication tables are still the source of truth and we are not relying on the data in the LegalEntity for anything at this point.
This updates our data-flows to:
Read:
Write:
1.3 Migrate old data to the LegalEntity
Next, we iterate through every single Merchant and AccountApplication record and migrate the relevant properties over to the LegalEntity. Our double-writing code ensures that whilst this (long-running) migration is in progress, we stay in sync even as data is added and updated.
We once again check that the relevant Merchant, AccountApplication and LegalEntity fields contain exactly the same data.
2. Start reading from the LegalEntity
2.1 Proxy reads to the Merchant/AccountApplication through to the LegalEntity
We are now very confident that the LegalEntity table is in sync with and just as reliable as the Merchant and AccountApplication tables. Carefully using some more meta-programming magic, we make all calls to eg. merchant.owner_first_name proxy through to read their data from the associated LegalEntity. We continue to write data to both tables and put this proxying behind a feature flag. This is a simple flag that can be instantly toggled from a UI. When deciding whether to read data from the LegalEntity or from one of our old models, we first check to see if the feature flag is set to “on”. This means that if we discover an inconsistency or other error we can instantly flip the feature flag off and switch back to reading directly from the Merchant table whilst we debug.
class Merchant prop :legal_entity, foreign: LegalEntity def self. legal_entity_proxy ( merchant_prop_name, legal_entity_prop_name ) # # UPDATED: Now we also redefine the Merchant getter method to read from the LegalEntity # alias_method :"original_ #{ merchant_prop_name } ", merchant_prop_name if method_defined? ( merchant_prop_name ) define_method ( merchant_prop_name ) do self. legal_entity. public_send ( legal_entity_prop_name ) end # We continue to write to both tables for safety merchant_prop_name_set = :" #{ merchant_prop_name } =" original_merchant_prop_name_set = :"original_ #{ merchant_prop_name_set } " alias_method original_merchant_prop_name_set, merchant_prop_name_set if method_defined? ( merchant_prop_name_set ) define_method ( merchant_prop_name_set ) do | val | self. public_send ( original_merchant_prop_name_set, val ) self. legal_entity. public_send ( :" #{ legal_entity_prop_name } =", val ) end end legal_entity_proxy :owner_first_name, :first_name before_save do self. legal_entity. save end end merchant. owner_first_name # => calls legal_entity.first_name, which should be the same as Merchant#owner_first_name anyway
This updates our data-flows to:
Read:
Write:
We let this code run in production for a few days, stay vigilant for any strange bug reports, and check regularly that all of our data continues to be in sync. The LegalEntity is now the source of truth.
2.2 Stop writing to the Merchant/AccountApplication altogether
We are now reading all of our data from the LegalEntity, and are no longer using the data stored in the corresponding Merchant or AccountApplication fields. Once we are sufficiently confident in our setup, we remove the Merchant and AccountApplication fields and database columns altogether and stop writing to them. merchant.owner_first_name now both reads and writes only to the LegalEntity, and the Merchant no longer has a real owner_first_name property.
This updates our data-flows to:
Read:
Write:
Our data is now fully migrated, and all that remains is to clean up our codebase to reflect this. We are still making multiple database calls every time we save our objects, and we are still relying on a non-obvious chain of meta-programming and indirection to proxy and glue everything together.
3. Read and write to the LegalEntity directly
3.1 Grep grep grep grep
This step requires us to be particularly methodical, and is best carried out from within some kind of isolation tank or spiritual mountain retreat. For each Merchant or AccountApplication property that is being proxied through to the LegalEntity, we grep the entire codebase for every single read or write of it, and change to read or write to the LegalEntity directly. For example:
merchant. owner_first_name = 'Barry'
becomes:
legal_entity. first_name = 'Barry'
We touch a lot of unfamiliar code that we have never seen before, so we are thankful for our extensive and reliable test suite and ask the people with the most context on the code we are updating to review our changes.. We migrate each property in a separate pull request that can be reviewed, monitored and reverted (if necessary) individually.
This updates our data-flows to:
Read:
Write:
3.2 Use logging to track down stragglers
Whilst we are of course hyper-focussed programming demigods, there is nonetheless a small chance that we may miss the odd call to Merchant#owner_favorite_type_of_fruit (NB we are not legally required to collect this information outside of New Mexico). It is also very probable that our blissfully unaware colleagues may have added new calls to the very fields we are trying to remove. This is fine, since these calls will still correctly proxy through to the relevant LegalEntity properties.
However, in order to make sure we have tracked down everything before we turn off read-proxying completely, we log whenever a deprecated Merchant or AccountApplication field is accessed, and add in an assertion that will make tests fail whenever they are called (but will not throw errors in production).
class Merchant prop :legal_entity, foreign: LegalEntity def self. legal_entity_proxy ( merchant_prop_name, legal_entity_prop_name ) alias_method :"original_ #{ merchant_prop_name } ", merchant_prop_name if method_defined? ( merchant_prop_name ) define_method ( merchant_prop_name ) do # # UPDATED: We add in logging # log. info ( 'Deprecated method called' ) self. legal_entity. public_send ( legal_entity_prop_name ) end merchant_prop_name_set = :" #{ merchant_prop_name } =" original_merchant_prop_name_set = :"original_ #{ merchant_prop_name_set } " alias_method original_merchant_prop_name_set, merchant_prop_name_set if method_defined? ( merchant_prop_name_set ) define_method ( merchant_prop_name_set ) do | val | # # UPDATED: We add in logging # log. info ( 'Deprecated method called' ) self. legal_entity. public_send ( :" #{ legal_entity_prop_name } =", val ) end end end
We let this run in production, search our logs for 'Deprecated method called', and remove every instance we find.
3.3 Remove proxying altogether
Once our logging has been silent for for a suitable amount of time (say 2-7 days, depending on how paranoid we are), we remove the proxying layer altogether. All being well it is no longer being used and this should be a no-op, although we nonetheless remove proxying for one or small groups of properties at a time, rather than all of them at once. Just in case.
class Merchant prop :legal_entity, foreign: LegalEntity # REMOVED # # def self.legal_entity_proxy(merchant_prop_name, legal_entity_prop_name) # # etc # end # # legal_entity_proxy :owner_first_name, :first_name before_save do self. legal_entity. save end end
4. Stop multi-saving
4.1 Log where the multi-save is needed
All of our data is now being read and written directly to the LegalEntity. However, we are still chaining saves through our models, and saving the Merchant still secretly saves the LegalEntity (see the above before_save block). We will most likely have a large number of slightly obtuse looking sections along the lines of:
legal_entity. first_name = 'Barry' merchant. save
This still works, but is not a tidy state of affairs. We would like to remove the confusing and obfuscating save-chaining and explicitly save everything we need to save ourselves. We therefore log all places where our merchant.save (or whatever) is also actually causing fields on the legal_entity to be changed (as above). We update our before_save blocks to look like:
class Merchant prop :legal_entity, foreign: LegalEntity before_save do # Our ORM's implementation of "dirty" fields unless self. legal_entity. updated_fields. empty? self. legal_entity. save log. info ( 'Multi-saved an updated model' ) end end end
We also add a feature flag to allow us to force multi-saving, even when there are apparently no updated fields. We can panic-turn this on if we believe that it is necessary.
4.2 Good Hunting
For the next few days, we search our logs for 'Multi-saved an updated model' to track down all places where saving the Merchant or AccountApplication is also responsible for saving new data on the LegalEntity. We save the LegalEntity ourselves, just before saving the other model, which sets legal_entity.updated_fields to be empty, preventing our log-line from being hit.
legal_entity. first_name = 'Barry' merchant. business_url = 'http://foobar.com' merchant. save
will trigger our log-line, since merchant.save will also save the new LegalEntity#owner_name. It becomes:
legal_entity. first_name = 'Barry' legal_entity. save merchant. business_url = 'http://foobar.com' merchant. save
which will not, since legal_entity has already saved itself. We add assertions in our before_save block that will make tests that rely on the multi-save to fail, and clean them up too.
4.3 Remove the multi-save
Once our log-line has stopped being triggered and we are confident that every model with updated data is correctly saving itself, we pull the final trigger and remove the multi-save. All of our data is where it is supposed to be, we are not proxying any reads or writes, and we are not using any meta-programming.
class Merchant prop :legal_entity, foreign: LegalEntity end
It is over. We feel human once again.
5. Conclusion
Throughout the entire migration, we never made a change that we didn’t have strong, empirical evidence to believe was correct. We were almost always making small, incremental updates that were never in danger of seriously breaking our system. This pattern of migrating data by double-writing to both the old and the new sources, then gradually switching over all of your reads to the new source and turning off the old one, is a very common and safe one.
On the other hand, by far the most awkward part of the process is “The Multi-Save”. Having an innocent merchant.save trigger saving multiple different models as well is Not Intuitive, and requires you to be very precise and clear that the LegalEntity object in memory you are updating is the same one that is being multi-saved. ORM’s are a wonderful thing, but can start to creak a little when you rely on them too much.
If you ever find yourself writing a single, enormous yolo-pull-request to migrate a very large amount of anything, think hard about whether it is possible to make the moment of deploying less pant-wettingly terrifying. If the answer is “no”, be sure to come up with your new fake identity and backstory for when you inevitably have to flee the country and start a new life in Brazil.
Thanks to Brian Krausz for devising the entire migration. Thanks also to Sandy Wu, Avi Itskovich, Maher Beg, Julia Evans, Tim Drinian and Darragh Buckley for reading and improving drafts of this post.
More on ProgrammingCORONADO, Calif (CNS) – The first Navy helicopter squadron to include manned and unmanned aircraft will be established during a ceremony Thursday at NAS North Island.
Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 35, the “Magicians,” will be outfitted with what the Navy calls its most technologically advanced helicopter, the Sikorsky Multi Mission MH60-R.
It will also have the Fire Scout MQ-8 B, a drone that looks and flies like a regular helicopter. The Fire Scout was only recently added to the fleet, according to the Navy.
The Navy said the unmanned chopper can be operated from up to 110 miles away.
The squadron will deploy on the new littoral combat ships — fast, highly maneuverable vessels designed for fighting in coastal waters.
The Navy is scheduled to hold a ceremony for the new squadron at 10 a.m. on base, with remarks from Vice Adm. David Buss, the commander of Naval Air Forces.Work has begun on a $5 million jetty project that could even-tually cater for an expanded public ferry service to the Perth Stadium.
The 96m floating jetty will run parallel to the shore on the northern side of the pedestrian bridge at Burswood. It will initially accommodate private vessels taking patrons to the stadium, including commercial charter vessels.
There are no plans for a public ferry service to the stadium, but the jetty has been designed to accommodate such a service. The jetty will not be finished in time for next year’s AFL season.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Transport said a construction contract had been awarded to experienced marine contractor Maritime Constructions.
She said work would begin at Henderson next month and it was anticipated that the jetty would be installed in the middle of next year.
The department has also awarded a landscaping contract to WA company Deep Green Landscaping for the land alongside the jetty.
It will incorporate shelters and furniture made in WA and artwork by indigenous artist Wendy Hayden. It is due to be finished by January.
Earlier this year, The West Australian obtained a copy of a Government task force’s interim report that recommended the expansion of Perth’s ferry network, including buying a third ferry for a service to Perth Stadium. The ferries working group listed 16 potential stops for an expanded ferry service, including Matilda Bay, Crown Perth, Belmont, Point Walter, Ascot Waters and Guildford.
The group included representatives from the Public Transport Authority, departments of Planning, Transport, Parks and Wildlife and Tourism WA. It was commissioned by the former Barnett government and chaired by South Perth Liberal MP John McGrath.
In August, Transport Minister Rita Saffioti said she would look at how to progress the report’s recommendations but she did not want to raise expectations.
Money was scarce for a third ferry and Perth was “not anywhere near” the required density.
“Where we can, we will try to make it work, ” Ms Saffioti said.Update: Toure was previously convicted of two counts of robbery in Bradley County, TN. He was sentenced to eight years, but only served one. Police believe that Mehiel was tortured for her ATM pin number. Toure then went to seven ATM machines and withdrew a total of $4k.
El Hadji Alpha Madiou Toure, 28, has been charged with first-degree murder for tying up Corrina Mehiel and stabbing her to death.
Toure was arrested on Monday, in a different jurisdiction, and held on an outstanding Tennessee warrant. Tips from the public helped to track him down. This morning he was transferred to the custody of the Washington DC police and charged with murder. Mehiel’s stolen car had already been recovered by DC police.
Police believe that Toure was living in homeless shelters. They do not think that Toure and Mehiel knew each other.
News of the arrest was made at a press conference featuring Metropolitan Police Chief Peter Newsham and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser. When asked about Toure’s immigration status, they refused to answer.
Newsham stated “I think you know that the Metropolitan Police Department does not ask questions about immigration status. It’s a long-standing policy of the Metropolitan Police Department not to enforce civil immigration law. We believe that the enforcement of civil immigration laws creates a divide between us and the community we serve and at the end of the day we believe that will make out community less safe. As the Chief of Police, I don’t think I should be involved in any behavior that makes our city less safe.”
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser then defended the Chief’s position.
The name El Hadji Toure is most common in Senegal.
Click here to see our previous coverage.
Corrina Mehiel is an art instructor and a prominent social justice activist. She was in DC to help set up an art exhibit. She was found tied up and stabbed to death in a basement apartment she was borrowing from a friend.We’re excited to announce the next step in providing increased mobility to riders in Ottawa with uberASSIST, launching today at 3pm.
uberASSIST is an option designed for riders who may have a disability, older adults, and those who may just feel more comfortable with an extra hand when getting from place to place. Drivers will provide door-to-door service, helping riders to enter and exit the vehicle. uberASSIST will also be priced the same as uberX.
To further support those with accessibility needs in our community, we’ll be donating our share of each uberASSIST trip this week to the Ottawa Independent Living Resource Centre (OILRC).
With uberASSIST, riders can expect the quality and ease of communication that comes from our top-rated driver-partners, rated 4.6 or higher. Moreover, all uberASSIST driver-partners have completed a hands-on in-person educational session led by Tracy Schmitt, and developed along with an Advisory Board of non-profit organizations including AGE-WELL, SCI Ontario, OCAD Inclusive Design Institute, The Centre for Independent Living in Toronto (CILT), and Citizens for Accessible Neighbourhoods.
“We assist in individual empowerment of all persons with any disability in the Ottawa area. We provide the tools they need to direct their lives and participate fully in the community. That’s why we’re so excited to be part of the uberASSIST launch here in Ottawa. It will provide individuals with another option that helps increase their mobility and independence within our city.” – Asheligh Nelles, Peer Support Coordinator, Ottawa Independent Living Resource Centre
“Transportation is our link to equal participation in our society. That link becomes even more important when you need assistance getting about. Everyone should have affordable transportation choices. uberASSIST is extending an affordable choice to riders who need some extra help, and awareness and skills to drivers who want to offer that choice.” – Jutta Treviranus, Director and Professor at Inclusive Design Research Centre, OCAD University
“I am excited by uberASSIST and Uber’s focus on continuing to increase the accessibility of its service. The thoroughness of the driver-partner education and the engagement and care from these individuals so far is truly impressive. This could be a major step towards a cultural shift in inclusivity. As someone with accessibility needs, I can not begin to state how important reliable transportation is to my daily life.” – Tracy Schmitt, Professional Accessibility Consultant
During the sessions, driver-partners went through accessibility awareness exercises, demonstrations on how to fold and unfold wheelchairs and on how to guide people with visual impairments, and more. This group of driver-partners also gained access to online learning modules to further their knowledge to ensure a safe and comfortable trip for their riders.
HOW TO REQUEST uberASSIST*:
Open your Uber app
Slide the selector at the bottom of the app to uberASSIST
Enter and set your pickup location
Request an uberASSIST
PRO TIP #1: You can request an uberASSIST for a parent or grandparent – check out our FAQ for instructions
PRO TIP #2: After requesting, you can contact your driver through the app to provide any special instructions prior to your pickup
We’re pleased to be taking another step towards providing accessible, reliable, and affordable transportation for Ottawans. Read more about our partnership with AGE-WELL, and our other accessibility features. Be sure to check out the uberASSIST FAQs for more information.
*Note: If you’re using uberASSIST for the first time, and it is a Friday or Saturday (from midnight-7am), enter the code ACCESSCANADA to access the option.There was some surprise last night when Scott’s endorsement was announced, although Hot Air readers knew it was more or less in the bag a month ago. (Scott appeared at a Rubio rally in South Carolina in mid-December.) The news leaked as the votes were being counted in Iowa, which started some speculation that Team Rubio thought they were going to underperform and needed positive buzz to distract from the results. So much for that theory. I think the real message of announcing Scott’s endorsement during the Iowa vote was that Rubio’s in this for the long haul. He’s already looking past New Hampshire to Scott’s home state of South Carolina. And of course it’s an implicit rebuke to Cruz, who hasn’t landed the endorsement of a single Senate colleague (yet). Scott is respected on the right as a “true conservative,” a tea-party favorite who, in theory, should be with Cruz. Nope. Team Rubio. For Cruz’s Senate endorsements, it may be Jeff Sessions or bust.
In many ways Scott is the perfect Rubio endorsement. He’s got the sort of conservative cred that Rubio once had among his detractors on the right and is trying to rebuild after the Gang of Eight debacle. He’s an influential officeholder from an early primary state. Like Rubio, he comes from a humble background and has risen to hold high federal office, the American dream in action. And of course he’s living proof that the GOP isn’t exclusively a party of old white guys. Emily Zanotti notes the symbolism:
Senator Tim Scott is the first black Senator [since Reconstruction] elected from the “deep south.” He was appointed, initially, by a female governor, herself a woman of color, a child of immigrants and a Catholic. He is throwing his support behind the Hispanic son of immigrants who escaped Communist Cuba, the night after more than 60% of Republican Iowa caucus-goers voted for a minority – Hispanic, black, or female – to win the Presidential nomination. Even if you’re not a fan of Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Dr. Ben Carson or Carly Fiorina, you have to appreciate what that means for the “party of old white people.” Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, both lily-white septugenarians – literally old white people – are arguing over.4% of a vote that drew only half as many caucus-goers as in 2008, flipping coins for delegates and lobbing accusations of voter fraud.
Rubio’s running as the future of the party, on a message of opportunity. Who better to echo that than Tim Scott? The money line: “It’s not about where you start, it’s about where you’re going.” His other core point here is electability, which you’ll hear again and again from Team Marco as they veer towards a long war with Cruz. Ace objects that Rubio’s electability is overstated given his tepid reception among Republican voters so far. Fair enough, but there is data suggesting that he’d appeal more to key groups in the general election than Cruz or Trump would. I don’t take “electability” claims as an insult to my intelligence, just a tactful reminder that not all constituencies are as willing or unwilling to support a candidate as grassroots conservatives might be. Which is not to say that those claims should be taken at face value: The best way to prove you’re electable is to, um, win some elections. Big test for Rubio coming up in New Hampshire and South Carolina.
So, as the candidates arm up for war in South Carolina, that makes Scott for Rubio, Lindsey Graham for Jeb Bush (giggle), and Lt. Gov. Henry McMaster for Trump. There’s still a major wild card out there who I once thought for sure would line up for Rubio but lately have begun to doubt. Which way is Nikki Haley going? She’s not going to wimp out and refuse to endorse in the primary, is she?
Update: Whoops — forgot that Trey Gowdy is already on Team Rubio too. And if Jeb flames out in New Hampshire, Graham could be aboard the Rubio express by the time South Carolina votes.Another World - 20th Anniversary Edition Rated for PS3, PS4 & PS Vita Written Wednesday, April 23, 2014 By Lee Bradley View author's profile
Classic sci-fi action adventure game Another World looks set to arrive on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PS Vita in the near future, according to a ratings board filing and a chucklesome publisher denial.
The 20th Anniversary Edition of the game, which added enhanced HD visuals, remastered audio, and new difficulty modes, has been spotted in a German ratings board listing by a NeoGAF user. Amusingly, publisher The Digital Lounge has simultaneously denied and confirmed Another World’s console release, saying, "We do not comment on rumours. Especially since everybody is now fully aware!”
We await the official announcement. You can find a gameplay vid of Another World 20th Anniversary Edition (it released across mobile, PC and Mac from 2011) below.
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333African-Americans have come to dominate the National Football League since a “gentleman’s agreement” by white owners ended in 1946. In recent years, black quarterbacks such as Seattle’s Russell Wilson and Carolina’s Cam Newton have become stars in a league that would have shunned them as much for mobility and athleticism as much as their skin color a generation ago.
African-Americans such as Tony Dungy, Mike Tomlin, Lovie Smith and others have become head coaches, while others have become offensive and defensive coordinators, and even general managers, as the NFL has embraced racial diversity in the executive ranks.
But despite these accomplishments, the NFL continues to lag behind its neighboring league to the north, the Canadian Football League, which has a 60-year legacy of offering greater opportunities, both on the field and off, to African-Americans, who crossed the border to escape racial discrimination at home. The gap between opportunities offered to African-Americans between the two leagues can’t just be measured in dollars or miles, but, in some cases, decades.
Nothing embodies this better, perhaps, than Jeffrey Orridge, who was named the CFL’s commissioner last year, becoming the first black man to lead a major professional sports league in North America.
“I think my appointment last year as commissioner of the CFL is just the course of history of progressiveness of ethnic and gender diversity in Canada,” said the 56-year-old Orridge. “It speaks of a long history and heritage of being inclusive of a diversity of talent.”
Orridge grew up watching the CFL
A longtime sports executive, the Harvard-educated Orridge was born and raised in racially integrated East Elmhurst neighborhood in Queens, New York City, a couple of blocks away from where Malcolm X lived and about a mile away from the site of Shea Stadium. He grew up as an avid fan of Tom Seaver’s New York Mets teams, as well as the New York Knicks of the Walt Frazier era.
Yet, Orridge said the sports hero who had perhaps the biggest impact upon his life was the one he and his father used to watch together on TV in the late ’70s and early ’80s – Warren Moon leading the CFL’s Edmonton Eskimos.
“I have a special relationship with Warren Moon,” said Orridge from his Toronto office. “I remember watching Warren Moon on TV with my father. He used to say, ‘That’s why I love Canada. You see a black quarterback. That doesn’t exist here.’ ”
Orridge said his admiration of Moon also gave him a deeper appreciation of his race, the CFL and Canada.
“His message to me was subliminal. It helped make me more cognitive of the importance of watching Warren Moon. I realized that people like me, who looked like me, could play and be celebrated. He was the first modern-day player I was really exposed to, because he looked like me and I looked like him.”
Undrafted by the NFL after leading the Washington Huskies to a 27-20 upset over Michigan in the 1978 Rose Bowl, Moon signed as a free agent with the CFL’s Edmonton Eskimos. Moon balked at scouts who wanted him to play wide receiver, as had been the case with many African-American college quarterbacks before him.
At the time, the NFL was reluctant to start an African-American at quarterback, the face of a franchise, citing a litany of excuses (e.g. lack of arm strength, pocket awareness, lack of competition, athleticism better suited to other positions). The position of quarterback in the NFL was almost exclusively a white fraternity.
Warren Moon erased all doubt on the field
Undaunted, Moon quickly adapted to the CFL’s wider and longer field dimensions, three downs and 12-man squads. He was an instant star. Moon led the Eskimos to a record five straight Grey Cups. Along the way, the smooth-throwing Moon set numerous league passing records, including becoming the first quarterback in the professional ranks to throw for 5,000 yards in a season.
“Warren Moon was undeniably talented,” stated John Danakas, author of Choice of Colours: The Pioneering African-American Quarterbacks Who Changed The Game of Football. “He had everything. He had the arm, the intelligence, and the mobility to play anywhere. When he won in Edmonton, they won year after year. He proved that on the field. There was no way to deny him.”
In the interim, James Harris and Doug Williams, both from the historically black college football powerhouse Grambling University, had been drafted and were starting in the NFL.
After having nothing left to prove in the CFL, Moon became a free agent in 1983, drawing intense interest from seven NFL teams. He signed a then-record five-year $5.5 million contract with the Houston Oilers and began a 17-year NFL career with four teams.
Moon set various professional football records, including passing attempts, passing completions, yards and touchdowns. In 2006, Moon was inducted on the first ballot to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, (he is also a member of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame) becoming the first black quarterback to be so honored.
When he retired in 2001, Moon had passed for 70,553 yards, the most of any quarterback in the history of professional football. The record has been surpassed by another black quarterback, Damon Allen (the younger brother of NFL great Marcus Allen), |
1:52 pm PT...
Hey lets forget health care. And look at this situation instead, http://news.slashdot.org...Results-With-No-Election
COMMENT #7 [Permalink]
... Josh Freeman said on 7/19/2009 @ 3:21 pm PT...
Excellent piece. My only suggestion is that in '...undue influence of corporate money and lobbying over whom we select as our "leaders,"...', the quotation marks should be on "elect" and not on "leaders"....
COMMENT #8 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 7/19/2009 @ 4:52 pm PT...
I think it was Saskatchewan. A province in Canada was the first, and the whole country followed. Why? Think about this: if Pennsylvania got single payer on the state level, businesses would relocate to Pa. because they wouldn't have to pay their workers health benefits. Other states would lose business, so they would follow. I think this is Dennis Kucinich's strategy. I heard about this strategy on the Pennsylvania state level, from our local Green Party rep. Carl Romanelli. There's a lot happening at the state level as far as moving forward implementing single payer. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I heard about this strategy right from the horse's mouth.
COMMENT #9 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 7/19/2009 @ 4:59 pm PT...
Phil, I hear ya! It's a SIN, a travesty, etc...that any American is without health care. We are NOT the great nation we think we are! And anti-single payer is all propaganda. It's all propaganda by the rich and the health insurance companies. Everyone wants it. You're better off not owning anything in this country unless you're rich. They'll take it off you to pay for your medical bills. Pretty soon they'll start not accepting people at emergency rooms, people with no insurance's only way to get treatment. Hey, why not? What a country! The BEST! Everyone looking out for everyone else! Or is it: I got mine, so FUCK you! Or I'm a politician getting kickbacks from health insurance lobbyists, so FUCK you! We should dress like people from other countries, like Israelis, to get our taxpayer aid and use it for health coverage. Imagine how much $$$ we're giving to foreign countries! And millions of Americans have no health care coverage, and hundreds of millions have SHITTY coverage! Don't forget, SICKO was about Americans WITH health care coverage!
COMMENT #10 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 7/19/2009 @ 5:06 pm PT...
Phil, and if you think "America the Beautiful" gives a rats ass if you drop dead because you don't have health insurance, check this out: http://rawstory.com/08/n...amily-dead-after-glitch/ Again, they have the POINT wrong in that story: it's NOT a "glitch" that caused them to be cut off of electricity...PEOPLE SHOULD NEVER HAVE THEIR ELECTRICITY SHUT OFF!! There's a valid reason to shut off your electricity, is what they're implying. Like having no money!
COMMENT #11 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 7/19/2009 @ 5:08 pm PT...
There's no valid reason in this country to ever shut off a family's water or electricity or heat!!! OR to not have health care! Is that socialism? Then bring it on! It's better than DYING!!!!!!!!
COMMENT #12 [Permalink]
... another joe said on 7/19/2009 @ 5:46 pm PT...
Big Dan - not to the "culture of life" crowd. If the poor cannot be cannon-fodder for the military-industrial complex, they have no economic value. In urban areas, unemployment is way over 50 percent because the masses are only "human resources" for the corpocracy if they are buying cheap crap at walmart. The jobs for these people are permanently GONE! If folks aren't buying health insurance (or having employers buy it), they are not "human resources" for the medical/health/insurance complex because no one is making excessive profits off their premiums nor utilizing overpriced services (that the insurance company will try to deny anyhow). When the repugs/blue dogs need votes from the ignorant masses, they trumpet wedge issues like abortion and "value voters." After the election, these politicians and special interests have nothing but disdain for the masses. At least until the next time they need a wedge issue, like "socialism".
COMMENT #13 [Permalink]
... another joe said on 7/19/2009 @ 5:55 pm PT...
The neocons have decided there is no need to provide healthcare for the masses. For young and healthy young men and women, they can generate surplus value for the corpocracy by serving the military industrial complex as a human resource that exchanges blood for oil. For others, healthcare is a waste - the next great “breakthrough” will be a growing appreciation of the efficiencies that result from the burning of humans as fuel. This process allows the body's organic matter to directly contribute to the economic growth of society without the thousands of years that are needed to convert organic matter into oil reserves. The repugs/blue dogs are looking out for our well-being. To economically prosper, America needs to burn the bodies of "undesirables" to fuel our economy. Not only will there be benefits from harvesting the poor, infirmed, or elderly that result from the laws of thermo-science, the economic benefits and economies of scale that will result from consumption of humans for fuel make providing universal healthcare economically inefficient. Until people become useless to the ruling class, they participate in our economic system adding to the creation of wealth through the surplus value of their wages (if employed) or to their contributions to either the military-industrial or the medical/health/insurance complex. When their economic usefulness no longer serves the needs of the ruling elite, we convert the surplus value of their being into an energy commodity. The powerful interests that will benefit from this economically efficient production cannot be stopped - just consider it another example of "the-invisible hand" that guides our economy slapping you in the face.
COMMENT #14 [Permalink]
... Ernest A. Canning said on 7/19/2009 @ 6:49 pm PT...
While I can appreciate the frustration with the status quo, I take exception to Phil's "one man's not going to fix the [smelly, brown sticky substance]" in reference to Dennis Kucinich and to Another Joe's "The powerful interests...cannot be stopped..." Pessimism is self-defeating. Consider the observations of historian Howard Zinn in A Power Governments Cannot Suppress: There is a basic weakness in governments, however massive their armies, however vast their wealth, however they control images and information, because their power depends on the obedience of citizens, of soldiers, of civil servants, of journalists and writers and teachers and artists. When the citizens begin to suspect they have been deceived and withdraw their support, government loses its legitimacy and its power. You are right Phil, one man (Kucinich) by himself cannot make a difference. But the informed masses of the American people can make all the difference. Educate yourselves; educate others; get involved! In this instance, if you feel strongly about single-payer health care, contact PDA, learn about its "Healthcare NOT Warfare" Campaign, find out what you can do to help, learn which representatives support single-payer, which have sold out to the bogus "public option" plan; support and work for candidates like Marcy Winograd who will take on not only the neocons but corporate America.
COMMENT #15 [Permalink]
... another joe said on 7/19/2009 @ 9:31 pm PT...
Ernie – not a pessimist, just tellin’ ya, this is AMERICAN CAPTIALISM! The healthcare system is simply the result of free markets As long as workers make a net contribution to the general economic good, then market forces of supply and demand will gravitate towards equilibrium where those workers will live because price the free market places on economically productive workers will be higher than the demand for their death. Those that have (1). Health insurance can be productive assets to the medical/health/insurance industrial complex. (2). Those that are young and health enough to be productive assets to the military-industrial complex will naturally find their highest and best use there. Other humans will be “harvested” and converted into energy to run our cars, heat the rest of our homes, and provide for an expanding, hi-tech lifestyle. When workers, medical/health/insurance industrial complex assets, or military-industrial complex fodder are no longer is making net contributions to the general economic good, then market forces will move price towards equilibrium where these depreciated assets will die because the price of that depreciated asset will be less than the free market price for that mass of bio-energy economic. They key is that we eliminate all government interference with these natural, God-given market forces. The “Ownership Society” will remove all of the Marxist forces and socialistm. When we allow free markets to determine the relative net worth of each individual based on: (1). Each person’s accumulation of wealth, and (2). Contribution to the general economic good; then we will be allowing God’s “invisible hand” to fairly and objectively assess each person’s right to live. In other words, we will be handing the “design” of our society back to the “intelligent designer.” Of course, God’s will reaches globally, so we will need to create a more equitable balance between the net providers of labor, military-industrial, and medical/health/insurance industrial complexes. We need to prevent immigration and allow the demand for each individual to reflect the economies of scale within each divinely created boundary. If we immediately deport or lock up all illegal immigrants, that will correct market distortions in the supply and demand. This, in turn, will insure that those human beings that the free market determines to be “surplus lives” to be distributed across global boundaries consistent with global plans. Not only will this restore market forces, but it will tend to accelerate the elimination of excess populations, starting with the world’s poorest nations. While increasing our supply of energy will be an important outcome of these new market policies regarding the value of life, perhaps most importantly, these forces will allow the oligopoly that God has created to control our energy, defense, and medical needs to maintain increasing profits. This, in turn, will place downward pressures on the value of depreciated human resources, more fully assuring that mother earth will be able to provide for the economic needs of the world’s affluent and elite. Perhaps subsidizing the existence of the poor made sense under “compassionate conservative” principles from earlier times. Clearly, with the ability to convert human bodies to high quality energy resources, we can avoid the costly proposition of exchanging human blood for oil. The public expenditures for the military represent a government subsidy for an inefficient energy market. The capitalists that own the war machine can continue endless wars without doing so for energy. The military-industrial complex, if freed from the shackles of securing energy and more fully maximize profits and more efficiently harvest the global population of depreciated human resources. It is time to wring the last socialist subsidies out of our economy and allow free markets to more fully determine who will inherit the earth and who will not be able to pass into the Kingdom of Heaven through the eye of a needle. Of course, more tax-breaks for the wealthy and eliminating the “Paris Hilton” tax will a much more viable strategy for economic growth and a jobless recovery than wasting scarce resources on healthcare for depreciated human assets.
COMMENT #16 [Permalink]
... Phil said on 7/20/2009 @ 12:53 am PT...
You can be sure that I am not attacking Kucinich. One of the only TWO Senators I trust. I am simply saying that two Senators are not going to fight and win against all the fascist Senators. And I doubt Ron Paul (the second Senator I trust) is for Health Care, since Libertarians don't want government providing anything but defense and what the Constitution says. There's some cracks in that description --- but since I was a Libertarian and left because they didn't give a crap about electronic vote tabulation devices, I left. I am saying the complex charts out there should be simplified. You live, You pay tax, the tax pays for health care. It's a closed loop, if the cost goes up the tax goes up to match the cost. The moment you inject insurance, you have just made dirty tricks be the end result e.g. Expensive Health Care when Terminal / Chronic crap creeps in.
or No Health Care at all. No Health Care at all is what I have now. Actually since 1985. ;o) So I've heard plenty of shit out there over the years, but no action. Pessimism is a poor description.
Frustration and Anger is more like it. And no accountability with the ongoing shituation with the media + electronic voting + broken chain of custody + caging + Oh hell.. I'm done explaining myself. And I don't think my ASCII chart was a representation of Single Payer Health Care. I don't even know that I believe that's the best thing. I think like I said, You pay tax, the tax should keep the people healthy. Call that whatever the fuck you want. I call it common sense and basic humanity 101. When you try to make a profit, logic is replaced with fuzzy math and we end up like we are now with $65 Trillion Sucked into the Ether. Nice that the banks are making a profit, too bad that profit isn't paying for OTHER BAILOUTS. It's comming down to a super bubble. Since they still haven't fixed the root problem of the markets monetary system. Overleveraging the fractional reserve. Already loans are being taken out to build. You'd think we'd need to sell the existing foreclosed homes first wouldn't ya? na... I am not a pesimist. I am pissed off constitutionalist and don't see officials responding at all, just breaking their oaths. So is socialized heal care right for you? It is for me. Until we actually follow the Constitution again. We no longer live in a Constitutional Republic --- if you haven't noticed, perhaps it's time to notice.
COMMENT #17 [Permalink]
... Floridiot said on 7/20/2009 @ 5:46 am PT...
we got two, maybe three Senators we can trust. Sanders, Franken, and Harkin, who was Wellstones mentor/friend when he came in.
Have to wait for a while to see which way Franken goes yet. I wish I were a vet so's I could go to the VA for medical attention, sheesh
COMMENT #18 [Permalink]
... Bluehawk said on 7/20/2009 @ 8:08 am PT...
Comment #14...Ernest That is an outstanding quote.
COMMENT #19 [Permalink]
... disillusioned said on 7/20/2009 @ 3:34 pm PT...
Feingold, Sanders, Harken, Kucinich, Franken (assumed - still to be proven)
COMMENT #20 [Permalink]
... disillusioned said on 7/20/2009 @ 3:36 pm PT...
Phil, Ron Paul is a congressman (in the House, not the Senate). And yes, I doubt he's in favor of national healthcare, but at least I respect his stance on that topic because its consistent and rational with his view of the role of government.
COMMENT #21 [Permalink]
... Bluehawk said on 7/20/2009 @ 4:07 pm PT...
Dennis Kucinich is in the house too...not the Senate.
COMMENT #22 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 7/21/2009 @ 12:39 pm PT...
Comment 16 - Phil thinks Ron Paul & Kucinich are senators. Phil is delusional because he hasn't had a checkup since 1985, when he last had health care, so please forgive him for misspeaking.
COMMENT #23 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 7/21/2009 @ 12:41 pm PT...
But schmeeriously, I agree - good congressmen/senators I can think of are: Paul, Kucinich, Feingold, Sanders (especially Sanders)...geez, out of what, 535-550 (?), that's all I can think of? Holy shit! Franken may become one. From what I've read about him, he will become one.
COMMENT #24 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 7/21/2009 @ 12:42 pm PT...
Actually, believe it or not, I think Lincoln Chafee was good. Too bad he didn't switch parties. I think that was the guy, he lost to Whitehouse (? going by memory)
COMMENT #25 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 7/21/2009 @ 12:45 pm PT...
Oh, and Sarah Palin. (just kidding, wouldn't you question everything I said from here on in, if I really meant that?)
COMMENT #26 [Permalink]
... Phil said on 7/21/2009 @ 2:02 pm PT...
Sorry about that. My bad. Big Dan is correct (About who I called Senators actually being members of Congress.) I don't know about not having health care as the prime reason why I munged it up. While it's a funny sounding reason Big Dan gives, I would chock that one up as just being burned out from politics. Thanks for setting the record straight Big Dan.
COMMENT #27 [Permalink]
... Reggie Greene / The Logistician said on 7/21/2009 @ 2:54 pm PT...
We have a tendency in America to argue for or against a concept based on our own personal philosophy or view of the world, what advances our personal interests, or the interests of our party, family, organization, or region. Perhaps viewing the issue from a management or systemic perspective might result in innovative approaches to the issue. The American national mindset, citizen philosophy, lack of citizen motivation to be proactively healthy, and governance model make the socialization of health care in America very problematic, particularly at this point in time. A country needs to know its limitations.
COMMENT #28 [Permalink]
... Bluehawk said on 7/21/2009 @ 9:02 pm PT...
Comment #27.... Reggie Greene / The Logistician There were those that thought abolishing slavery was "problematic".
There were those that thought allowing women to vote was "problematic".
There were those that thought eradicating polio and small pox was "problematic".
There are those that thought paying a fair wage was "problematic"
But those got done anyway. I said all that to say...that some things, as difficult as they may seem to be are WORTH the effort anyway.
Providing health care shouldn't be done because it's easy to do...it should be done because it's the HUMANE thing to do.
Would you want to face a cancer diagnosis without decent insurance?
America has reached it's limitations of consumerist, corporate, me and only me, how much does it cost non-sense.
Now it's time to be human again and find ways to employ the unemployed, care for the ill and house the homeless. It's what's human...I could care less about your systems analysis. It's time to grow the f-ck up and see beyond the bottom line. I found your link to be well disguised corporate bullcrap propaganda....and your almost Vulcan denial of your humanity is repulsive.
It seems that you know the cost of everything but the value of nothing.
COMMENT #29 [Permalink]
... Floridiot said on 7/22/2009 @ 12:28 am PT...
Wiener now says, fuck 3200, go 676 instead...with gusto http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/44638
COMMENT #30 [Permalink]
... Floridiot said on 7/22/2009 @ 1:04 am PT...
I see you have the update on Weiner up there, but his video needs top billing
We got ourselves another Wellstone in the making here, the passion is there anyway.
COMMENT #31 [Permalink]
... Bluehawk said on 7/22/2009 @ 4:36 am PT...
Floridiot That's an outstanding video. I've sent that link to my friends. great stuff there by Rep. Wiener
COMMENT #32 [Permalink]
... Jeannie Dean said on 7/25/2009 @ 1:48 am PT...President Barack Obama deputies are secretly preparing to print work permits for up to 11 million illegal immigrants over the next two years, despite the nation’s high unemployment, stalled wages and increasing automation.
If Obama actually goes ahead with the plan that is sketched in a federal contract document, he would provide employers with the ability to legally hire 13 million foreign workers even as 12 million Americans turn 18 in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
The plan to print millions of work permits and green cards — dubbed “permanent resident cards” — is outlined in Oct. 3 and Oct. 6 federal announcements to contractors.
The contract plan was discovered by the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors a lower level of immigration.
“The objective of this procurement is … to produce Permanent Resident Cards (PRC) and Employment Authorization Documentation (EAD) cards,” said the Oct. 6 official announcement at FedBizOpps.gov.
“The requirement is for an estimated 4 million cards annually with the potential to buy as many as 34 million cards total,” the document says.
But the proposed five-year contract includes a so-called “surge” capability to produce an additional five million work-permit cards in one year.
“The Contractor shall demonstrate the capability to support potential ‘surge’ in PRC and EAD card demand for up to 9M [nine million] cards during the initial period of performance to support possible future immigration reform initiative requirements,” said the government’s description of the pending contract.
Those contract terms would give Obama the technical ability to hand out more than nine million work permits in one year, or 13 million in two years, as part of his much-touted unilateral immigration plan.
The plan could give work permits to more foreigners than the total number of U.S. jobs that have been created by businesses during his tenure.
“Over the past four and a half years, our businesses have created more than 10 million new jobs,” Obama declared at an Oct. 19 campaign speech in Maryland. “For the first time in six years, unemployment is below six percent.”
Currently, the federal government awards green cards to one million people per year. That’s roughly one new immigrant for every four Americans who turns 18.
If legal immigrants are given first priority, the proposed contract would still leave 11 million cards for illegal immigrants in the first two years.
The current inflow of legal immigrants — and the resident population of roughly 1.5 million guest workers — already increases the supply of blue-collar and professional workers. Few of the immigrants work in the agriculture sector. The extra labor supply flattens wages when the economy grows slowly, or as technology replaces lower-skilled workers, say economists.
Obama has promised progressives and advocates for immigrants that he will take major action on immigration by the end of the year.
He made that promise after Democratic lawmakers pleaded with him to delay the executive action until after the election.
Obama has repeatedly threatened to roll back enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws because the GOP won’t agree to his political priorities.
In early 2014, national polls and primary voters prompted House Republicans to reject the Senate’s 2013 comprehensive immigration bill.
The Senate bill was backed by Obama, progressives, the Chamber of Commerce, Silicon Valley, many established media outlets, universities, labor unions, the agricultural sector and Wall Street.
The bill would have provided a path to legalization to at least 12 million illegal immigrants, and boosted the annual inflow of legal immigrants and guest workers. It would have also provided more money for border security and a national E-Verify system.
Overall, in combination with existing laws, the Senate’s bill would have annually added up to nearly three million working-age immigrants and guest workers to compete for jobs against the four million Americans who enter the workforce each year.
Obama has taken similar — but much smaller — unilateral immigration actions before.
Collectively, those actions are providing works permits to roughly one million illegal immigrants or foreigners.
Since June 2012, Obama used the legally questionable “Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals” program to give work permits to more than 600,000 illegal immigrants. That DACA number may go above 1.5 million.
Since 2011, he’s allowed roughly 200,000 Central Americans adults, youths and children to apply for green cards via immigration courts. That application process allows the adults and youths to work during the multi-year lawsuits.
In May 2014, Obama’s deputy announced a plan to give work permits to roughly 100,000 resident spouses of foreign guest workers.
On Friday, Obama’s deputies announced they would award work permits in 2015 to 110,000 Haitians who were expected to migrate over the next several years.
He’s also scaled back enforcement efforts so much that immigration officials have not deported 900,000 illegals — including 167,000 foreign criminals — who have been given deportation orders by federal judges. In 2013, for example, fewer than one percent of illegal immigrants living in the United States were repatriated.
The public opposes Obama’s immigration plans by a ratio of roughly three to one.
Polls show Obama’s policies are unpopular, even among his core supporters, such as unmarried women and Hispanics. Others polls shows that GOP voters, many Hispanics, Democratic voters, swing voters and people worried about jobs also oppose Obama’s immigration priorities.
Follow Neil on TwitterA North-side Chicago man, 20 year old Jackson Banks, is facing first degree murder charges after he reportedly shot his friend dead, because he claimed that “Young Metro didn’t trust him”.
Jackson Banks was arrested Wednesday night on the 6800 block of N Ridge, only moments after he shot and killed 21 year old Jason Briggs. According to authorities, Jackson Banks claimed that killed Jason because “Young Metro didn’t trust him”. Authorities say they believed Jackson Banks was suffering from a mental condition upon hearing his motives for the murder. However, authorities soon discovered that Jackson was perfectly sane after finding out exactly what he meant by “Young Metro didn’t trust him”.
The phrase can be linked back to rap artist Future, who repeats the phrase “If Young Metro don’t trust you, I’m gonna shoot you” in many of his songs, with Young Metro being Futures beloved music producer. The phrase apparently became a funny internet meme among rap fans. However, authorities are claiming that these memes are capable of instilling certain idea in individuals heads, thus causing them to believe it to be a reality, although it was originally just figurative language.
Jackson further claimed that Young Metro didn’t trust many people he knew, and that he was planning to shoot them all. Jackson can face up to 40 years in prison for first-degree murder and the conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.Image caption Mark Gallagher was found seriously injured at Argyle Park football pavilion
A man has been jailed for 10 years for killing another man who agreed to be stabbed as part of a revenge pact.
Colin McFarlane, 49, struck the deal with victim Mark Gallagher, 37, who had previously stabbed McFarlane's son.
The High Court in Glasgow heard Mr Gallagher bled to death after making an appointment to be stabbed by McFarlane in Alexandria on 15 January.
McFarlane pled guilty to culpable homicide stabbing Mr Gallagher twice, severing a major vein and artery.
The court was told Mr Gallagher, from Alexandria, had appeared in court last November, charged with assaulting McFarlane's son Kieran Frize to his severe injury.
In the weeks leading up to the killing, McFarlane repeatedly contacted Mr Gallagher threatening revenge over the attack on his son.
An agreement was reached between the two that Mr Gallagher would allow McFarlane to stab him.
Revenge attack
In return McFarlane would not identify him in court as the man who had stabbed his son.
Mr Gallagher arranged to meet McFarlane, from Tullichewan, behind the pavilion at Argyll Park, Alexandria, West Dunbartonshire, at 16:00 on 15 January.
Father-of-two Mr Gallagher was said to be anxious and terrified, but told his girlfriend: "I'll just get a wee stab and that will be that."
Judge Lord Turnbull described the attack as "callous and most vicious" resulting in two stab wounds to the depth of 14cm.
The judge said: "What you did has not only ended the life of Mr Gallagher, but has affected forever the lives of those who are close to him.
"You decided to take revenge for what you understood happened to your son - you demanded that he submit to being stabbed by you."Throughout your life you will undoubtedly make many mistakes.
Many times things will happen that you will, with all your heart, wish you could simply undo five minutes later. But the past has passed and is now only a memory, so the only way to change it is to start from the only place that is real – this moment.
The subconscious mind carries within it many negative habitual patterns and programs that direct your thoughts, emotions and consequently, your actions.
Because the strongest of these programs are intertwined with deep emotional imprints (fear, anger, sadness…) it is no easy task to prevent them from coming into manifestation.
A man or woman, cheated on by their partner, full of anger and hate, could do things few people (including themselves) could possibly imagine they are capable of.
Because of lack of consciousness the actions they would take would most likely be something they would later deeply regret. The reaction to the situation would not be one coming from peace, but one that stems from a negative conditioned program in the mind and as such would lead to destructive consequences for both the perpetrator and the victim(s).
In intense situations like that, a very high degree of presence, of conscious awareness is required in order for the preconditioned response to not kick in and wreak havoc and violence through you, onto you and onto others.
Frequently the conscious awareness is not there and the actions happen as they do, spontaneously arising from the habitual response in the subconscious mind. It is in the aftermath of these moments that one must learn to forgive themselves, for ultimately they themselves cannot even be said to have been perpetrators of any outwardly or inwardly destructive act, but were simply the catalysts through which an old karmic energy came into being that they were at that moment unable to stop. Because of this lack of conscious awareness, they became consumed by this energy and blinded by the fog that it cast over their mind.
Forgiving yourself is very important, because mistakes and destructive action (whether you are harming yourself or others, it doesn’t really matter – ultimately whenever you are harming one, you are always in some way also harming the other, you and the other are always linked) will keep coming until you are permanently and absolutely free.
Whether we are talking about small things, such as forgetting to brush your teeth, forgetting that deadline, not studying and failing that test,….or big things such as theft and murder, the same always applies. Forgive yourself, always unconditionally, because if you knew then what you know know, you would not have done what you have done. But that was sadly, impossible, since you were only partially conscious when it happened and mostly ruled by your past mind patterns.
Indeed one could say you always do things to do the best of your ability. Even when it seems this is not so, that feeling is a lie – for you always act in a way that you feel is best for you and will take you to happiness and freedom – even if your thinking on how to get there is completely flawed and your mind covered in a fog of delusion.
You do and always will act, based on the knowledge you have, the level of consciousness you posses, your inner emotional drive and the environment you have found yourself in – in what you see as your best good, in the way you deem is most appropriate for the situation at hand.
Thus you never fail. You never really can.
Forgiving yourself means knowing this and accepting yourself, loving yourself unconditionally. Whether you perceive what you have done in the past or are doing in the present as positive or negative – self acceptance, which in its deepest form is self-love, will transform any and all present and future actions into a flow that is in alignment with the best and highest good of the all.
Become aware of any anger you have towards yourself and let it go (by becoming aware of all its particularities yourself or using a process of releasing (Triple Welcoming Process for example) to help you identify them and drop them; you can also simply make a conscious choice to accept and love yourself unconditionally)
Ultimately, you have to realize that you will always act in a way that you believe will bring you closer to happiness and fulfillment, whatever that means to you. Even when you come to the point where you are completely selfless and acting with total love and compassion, you are still acting in a way that will bring you happiness and peace – only now you have evolved to a point where you find your greatest happiness in sharing and being love. This happens because now you see the other as part of yourself as well.
I would like to share with you a quote about forgiveness that captures its very essence and is thus very fond to me:
“True forgiveness is the realization that there is nothing to forgive”
– Eckhart Tolle
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Like this: Like Loading...Baylor grad named Blue Bell president
Ask any Texan who has had to move away what they miss most about the Lone Star State, and near the top of their list will be Blue Bell ice cream. Made at “the little creamery in Brenham,” Blue Bell has been a tradition for generations of Texans since it was founded a century ago. Being “Pro Texana” and enjoying a product with deep Texas roots goes hand in hand — so it’s only fitting that Blue Bell’s new president is a Baylor graduate.
Ricky Dickson, BBA ’80, was named president of Blue Bell Creameries last month, taking the helm of the company he’s served in various roles nearly all of his professional career. He’s been with the company for 36 years, most recently as vice president of sales and marketing. Dickson follows retiring president Paul Kruse — who also happens to be a Baylor graduate (JD ’80).
For Blue Bell, Dickson’s appointment is a significant milestone. Though not family-owned, a member of the Kruse family has run Blue Bell since 1919 — nearly 90 of the company’s 100 years. To put that in perspective, Dickson is the first non-Kruse to lead Blue Bell since Samuel Palmer Brooks was president of Baylor.
So, the next time you hear one of Blue Bell’s sentimental ads on the radio or dig into a half-gallon of your favorite flavor, know that one of our own is leading Blue Bell into their next century of churning out an iconic Texas taste.
Sic ’em, Ricky Dickson!A Brampton teacher is questioning why her MP sent her a letter in which he expressed "grave concerns" about the province's sexual-education curriculum.
Yasmine Sarruf told CBC News she was shocked that MP Kyle Seeback, the Conservative candidate running in Brampton South, was "meddling in provincial matters like curriculum."
Sarruf, who provided CBC News with Seeback's undated letter, said she was also disturbed by some of the language and wording in his letter.
"It verged on being dismissive of the transgender community," she said, adding that the letter fosters "people's ignorance and fear of that community."
In his letter, Seeback wrote that "the new curriculum proposes to teach concepts that appear to be inappropriate for the age at which they would be taught."
Seeback, who has served as MP for Brampton West for four years, also wrote that "gender identity is a concept that tells us that people can identify with a gender opposite to that which they were born."
In her strongly worded letter, Sarruf told Seeback his definition "has undertones of disbelief that someone can even truly be transgender."
The Grade 5 teacher says her students read "books with characters who might be transgender, books that have a same-sex family in it.
"Kids are so accepting," Sarruf said. "And I think that's something that some people don't understand. If they just came and watched a lesson, they would see it's not scary, nobody freaks out, [the students are] just like, 'Okay, cool.'"
She says "unless [the students] are taught to hate, they come in with open hearts and they're willing to accept."
Voice of constituents
In a statement issued Tuesday, Seeback said it's his job to be his constituents' voice in Ottawa.
"I don't tell them what to be concerned about, they tell me what they're concerned about," Seeback said. "And they are very concerned about this new curriculum which they were not consulted on. Premier Wynne needs to be held accountable for her policies that affect our children and that are of great concern to many parents."
On Monday, the Ontario government released a new ad for the controversial sex-education curriculum that touches on areas including same-sex marriage, sexting and consent. The 30-second ad will air for the next four weeks.
Education Minister Liz Sandals' press secretary, Alessandra Fusco, told CBC News that any parents who have questions or concerns about the curriculum should raise them with the teacher or school principal. Fusco said parents should also contact the school if they want to withdraw their child from the class over content they find objectionable.View from the research vessel Brooks McCall looking toward the site of the leaking Macondo well, June 22, 2010. Smoke plumes are from spill-response crews gathering and burning oil at the surface. (Photo: Dr. Oscar Garcia / Florida State University)
We herald the New Year with a Shell Oil exploratory rig run aground on a frigid Alaskan island as well as the promise of introduction in court of incriminating e-mails said to prove BP managers knowingly lied about the extent of spillage in the last oil rig disaster – that one in warmer, Gulf of Mexico waters.
While the Alaskan rig carries a mere 150,000 gallons of diesel fuel and lubricants, the explosion and destruction of BP’s Deepwater Horizon and the break in its pipeline to its Macondo well pumped 62,000 barrels of crude oil per day into the Gulf in the early days following |
7 ng / g lipids (maternal); 5.8–1308.5 (child) Maternal/child serum CBCL attention problems, CBCL ADHD, K-CPT ADHD Confidence Index assessed at 5 y, CADS maternal report ADHD index, DSM-IV total scale with inattentive and hyperactivity/impulsivity subscales, BASC-2 maternal report hyperactivity scale and attention problems scale, CADS teacher report ADHD index and DSM-IV total scale with inattentive and hyperactivity/impulsivity subscales, BASC-2 teacher report hyperactivity scale and attention problems scale assessed at 7 y Notes: LOD for BDE-47 ranges from 0.3 – 2.6 ng / g lipids for maternal samples and 0.4 – 0.8 ng / g lipids for child samples. For all other congeners, LODs ranged between 0.2 – 0.7 ng / g lipids for maternal samples and 0.3 – 5.6 ng / g lipids for child samples. % > LOD was 97.5% or greater for BDEs 47, 99, 100 and 153 in maternal and child serum. Authors used the machine-read value for values below the LOD if a signal was detected. Authors used imputation at random based on a log-normal probability distribution using maximum likelihood estimation for other samples below LOD. Confounders: maternal age, education, years in the United States, marital status, work outside the home, use of alcohol and tobacco during pregnancy, depression, parity, PPVT or TVIP score, housing density, household poverty, pregnancy exposure to environmental tobacco smoke, number of children in the home, father’s presence in the home, Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) Inventory, preschool and out-of-home child care attendance, psychometrician, location, and language of assessment, child sex, birth weight, and preterm delivery status. Adgent et al. 2014 (PIN Babies study) Pregnant women enrolled between 2004 and 2006 Central NC, USA 192 mother–child pairs 28, 47, 99, 100, 153 BDE-47 range: 4 – 1430 ng / g lipid Breastmilk BASC-2 attention and hyperactivity subscale assessed at 36 months Note: LOD as follows (ng/g lipid): BDE 28: 0.3; BDE 47: 1.3; BDE 99: 1.1; BDE 100: 0.3; BDE 153: 0.3. % > LOD was 90% or greater for all five congeners. For concentrations below the LOD, authors used the LOD / √ 2. Confounders: child sex, maternal age at start of pregnancy, parity, education, maternal race, breast-feeding duration, postpartum income, breast milk omega 3 fatty acid concentration, Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) Inventory, maternal stress. Chen et al. 2014 (HOME study) Pregnant women enrolled between 2003 and 2006 Cincinnati, OH, USA 165–240 mother–child pairs (depending on age of assessment) 47; sum of 47, 99, 100, 153 BDE-47 10thh-90th percentile range: 6.4 – 67.9 ng / g lipid Maternal serum BASC-2 attention and hyperactivity subscales assessed at 24, 36, 48, 60 months Note: LOD as follows (ng/g lipid): BDE 28: 1.0; BDE 28: 0.8; BDE 47: 4.2; BDE 66: 1.0; BDE 85: 2.4; BDE 99: 5.0; BDE 100: 1.4; BDE 153: 2.2; BDE 154: 0.8; BDE 183: 1.7. Among the 279 subjects, 6 had concentrations of BDEs 99, 100, or 153 below LOD, and all subjects had detectable concentrations of BDE-47. For concentrations below the LOD, authors used the LOD / √ 2. Confounders: maternal age at enrollment, maternal race/ethnicity, education, marital status, maternal serum cotinine concentrations at enrollment, maternal IQ, child sex, maternal depression, household income, Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) Inventory. Cowell et al. 2015 Women pregnant on September 11, 2001 New York City, NY, USA 107–109 mother–child pairs (depending on age of assessment) 47, 99, 100, 153 BDE-47 median 12.0, IQR 17.5 ng / g lipid at 48 months and 11.3 IQR 15.5 ng / g lipid at 72 months Cord blood CBCL attention problems assessed at age 48 and 72 months Note: LOD was defined as the highest of (i) 3 times the standard deviation of the blank samples and (ii) the instrument detection limit. The median level detected in blank samples analyzed in parallel to the study samples was subtracted from all sample results. Authors focused statistical analyses on the four congeners detected in more than 50% of samples (BDEs 47, 99, 100, and 153). Among the 201 total cord plasma samples analyzed for PBDEs, at least 50% had detectable levels of BDE-47 (81.4%), BDE-99 (59.5%), BDE-100 (63.6%) and BDE-153 (49.8%). For concentrations below the LOD, authors used the LOD / √ 2. Confounders: age at assessment, sex of child, ethnicity, prenatal environmental tobacco smoke exposure in home, intelligence of mother, maternal demoralization, maternal age and marital status. Sagiv et al. 2015 (CHAMACOS cohort) Pregnant women enrolled between 1999 and 2000 and children enrolled between 2009 and 2011 Salinas Valley, CA, USA 622 mother–child pairs 47, 99, 100, 153; sum of 47, 99, 100, 153 BDE-47 range: 0.5 – 761 ng / g lipid Maternal/child serum CPT II ADHD Confidence Index, CADS parent report ADHD index and DSM-IV inattentive and hyperactivity/impulsivity subscales assessed at 9 and 12 y, BASC-2 parent report hyperactivity scale and attention problems scale, BASC-2 youth self-report hyperactivity scale and attention problems scale assessed at 10.5 y Notes: LOD for BDE-47 ranges 0.2 – 2.6 ng / g lipids for maternal and 0.4 – 8.0 ng / g lipids for child samples. For all other congeners, LODs ranged between 0.2 – 0.7 ng / g lipids for maternal samples and 0.3 – 5.6 ng / g lipids for child samples. BDE-47, 99, 100 and 153 sum had detection frequency ranging from 97.9–99.5%. Authors used imputation at random based on a log-normal probability distribution using maximum likelihood estimation for concentrations below LOD. Confounders: child sex, age at assessment, duration of breastfeeding, whether child attended preinventory, maternal age, education, parity, prenatal smoking status, verbal intelligence, depressive symptoms, family structure, Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) inventory, average monthly income divided by number of household members supported during the study period, psychometrician who administered child-completed tasks or study interviewer who administered the maternal survey instrument, time of day assessment occurred, child video game usage. Cross-sectional Gump et al. 2014 Children recruited from another study regarding lead effects Oswego County, NY, USA 43 children 28, 47, 99, 100 BDE-47 range: < LOQ – 0.378 ng / g lipid Child whole blood Parental Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire SDQ hyperactivity-inattention subscale assessed between 9–11 y Notes: LOD ranged from 0.042 (BDE 47) to 0.003 ng / g on a wet weight basis. Congeners 85, 153 and 154 were not detected in any samples so data were not reported in publication. Minimum % > LOQ was 76.74% for BDE 99 and was 86.05% for BDE-47 ( LOQ = 0.042 ). LOQ was 0.003 ng / g wet weight. For concentrations below the LOQ, authors used the LOQ/2. Confounders: BMI percentile standing age and gender adjusted, socioeconomic status score, total blood lipid levels, age race.
Studies of Intelligence
Nine of 10 studies that evaluated intelligence were prospective birth cohorts, and one was a cohort study that reanalyzed data previously collected from a prospective birth cohort (Chao et al. 2011). Seven studies conducted assessments using BSID (Chao et al. 2011; Chen et al. 2014; Gascon et al. 2012; Herbstman et al. 2010; Lin et al. 2010; Shy et al. 2011) or Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL) (Adgent et al. 2014) at ages up to 36 months Five studies assessed FSIQ at ages 4 to 8 y (Chen et al. 2014; Eskenazi et al. 2013; Herbstman et al. 2010; Zhang et al. 2016) or MSCA total cognitive score at age 4 y (Gascon et al. 2011). Studies measured PBDE exposure in maternal serum or cord blood ( n = 4 ), both maternal and child blood/serum ( n = 2 ), or breast milk ( n = 4 ) (Table 3a). One included study relevant to ADHD outcomes (Roze et al. 2009) also reported measuring outcomes related to intelligence [Total and Performance Intelligence levels assessed using a short form of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence, Revised Edition (WPPSI-R)] but did not report estimates of association in the publication, and the authors did not respond to requests for these data. Risk of bias generally differed for studies evaluating IQ at a later age and those evaluating children at younger ages. Studies of FSIQ at a later age were consistently rated as “low” or “probably low” risk of bias across domains. The only exception to this was Herbstman et al. (2010), which received a rating of “probably high” risk of bias for incomplete outcome reporting because of concerns regarding missing data. In contrast, many of the studies conducted only at younger ages utilizing the BSID were rated as “probably high” risk of bias in one or more domains (Figure 2a and Tables S4–S18). Four studies measuring BDE-47 in maternal serum during gestation or at birth or cord blood at birth and assessing FSIQ or MSCA in children 4–7 y old were amenable to a meta-analysis (Chen et al. 2014; Eskenazi et al. 2013; Gascon et al. 2011; Herbstman et al. 2010) (Table 4). The meta-analysis reported an overall decrement of 3.70 IQ points (95% CI: 0.83, 6.56; I 2 = 0 % ; Figure 3) per 10-fold increase (in other words, times 10) in lipid-adjusted PBDE concentration (PBDE concentration range: < LOD – 761 ng / g lipid). Our updated search on September 27, 2016, identified a newer study (Zhang et al. 2016) assessing the same cohort of children as Chen et al. (2014) but at a later time point (8 y old instead of 5 y old). However, because Zhang et al. (2016) assessed children at an older time point than the other three studies included in our meta-analysis did (4, 6, and 7 y), we decided to keep Chen et al. (2014) in the meta-analysis to stay within the age range at assessment. We performed a sensitivity analysis replacing the Chen et al. (2014) with Zhang et al. (2016) and found that the overall estimate changed minimally from − 3.70 to − 3.52 (Figure S1).
Figure 2. Summary of risk of bias judgments (low, probably low, probably high, high) for the human studies included in our systematic review of PBDE exposure and a) IQ or b) ADHD outcome. Risk of bias designations for individual studies are assigned according to criteria provided in Supplemental Material, “Instructions for Making Risk of Bias Determinations” and the justification for each study is provided in Tables S4–S18.
Figure 3. Meta-analysis of human studies ( n = 4 studies, 595 children) for PBDE exposure (represented as congener BDE-47, lipid-adjusted) measured in cord blood or maternal serum during gestation or at birth for IQ outcome (FSIQ or McCarthy Scale) assessed in children between 48–84 months: reported effect estimates [95% confidence interval (CI)] from individual studies (inverse-variance weighted, represented by size of rectangle) and overall pooled estimate from random effects (RE) model per 10-fold increase (in other words, times 10) in PBDE exposure. Heterogeneity statistics: Cochran’s Q = 0.1367 ; p = 0.99 ; I 2 = 0 %. Estimates were adjusted as follows: Herbstman et al. 2010: age at testing, race/ethnicity, IQ of mother, sex of child, gestational age at birth, maternal age, environmental tobacco smoke exposure, maternal education, material hardship, breastfeeding, language and location of interview; Gascon et al. 2011: sex, age of the child, preterm, evaluating psychologist, maternal age, social class, education, parity, smoking during pregnancy, alcohol consumption, prepregnancy BMI; Eskenazi et al. 2013: child’s age, sex, HOME score at 6-months visit, language of assessment, and maternal years living in United States before giving birth; Chen et al. 2014: maternal age at enrollment, race, education, marital status, maternal serum cotinine concentrations at enrollment, maternal IQ, child sex, maternal depression, household income, and HOME (Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment) inventory.
Table 4 Human studies included in the meta-analysis of developmental exposure to PBDEs and IQ in children. Table 4 lists studies in the first column; the corresponding study population details, meta-analysis estimate (95 percent confidence interval), and relevant details are listed in the other columns. Study reference Study population details Meta-analysis estimate [95% CI] Relevant details Herbstman et al. 2010 New York (urban) − 2.69 (95% CI: − 9.28, 3.89) BDE-47 measured in cord blood at birth. FSIQ assessed for 96 children at 6 y. Adjusted for age at testing, race/ethnicity, IQ of mother, sex of child, gestational age at birth, maternal age, environmental tobacco smoke exposure, maternal education, material hardship, breastfeeding, language and location of interview. Maternal high school completion rate: 81.5% Estimate from publication was − 1.17 (95% CI: − 4.03, 1.69), from Table 3: change in FSIQ per ln-unit increase. We converted from natural log to log 10 by multiplying by a factor of ln (10). Race/ethnicity: 40.4% white, 28.0% Chinese, 6.4% Asian (non-Chinese), 15.2% Black, 10.0% Other Gascon et al. 2011 Spain (small island population) − 3.10 (95% CI: − 17.63, 11.43) BDE-47 in cord blood at birth. McCarthy Scales of Children’s Abilities (total cognitive score) assessed for 78 children at 48 months. Adjusted for sex, age of the child, preterm, evaluating psychologist, maternal age, social class, education, parity, smoking during pregnancy, alcohol consumption, prepregnancy BMI. Maternal secondary school completion rate: 41.6% Estimate from publication was − 1.4 (95% CI: − 9.2, 6.5), from Table 4: regression estimate comparing “exposed” group ( > LOQ ) with “referent” group ( < LOQ ), LOQ = 0.002 ng / mL. Study authors provided additional data re-analyzing with continuous linear regression using log10-transformed exposures. Race/ethnicity: not reported Eskenazi et al. 2013 California (rural/agricultural) − 3.80 (95% CI: − 8.30, 0.70) BDE-47 measured in maternal serum during pregnancy or at delivery. FSIQ assessed for 231 children at 7 y. Adjusted for child’s age, sex, HOME Inventory at 6-months visit, language of assessment, and maternal y living in United States before giving birth. Maternal high school completion rate: 20.5% From publication, Table S6 Race/ethnicity: “predominantly Mexican-American” Chen et al. 2014 Ohio (urban) − 4.17 (95% CI: − 8.91, 0.56) BDE-47 measured in maternal serum during gestation. FSIQ assessed in 190 children at 5 y. Adjusted for maternal age at enrollment, race, education, marital status, maternal serum cotinine concentrations at enrollment, maternal IQ, child sex, maternal depression, household income, and HOME inventory. Maternal high school completion rate: > 77 % From publication, Table S5 Race/ethnicity: 67% non-Hispanic white
Estimates of association from studies using the BSID were extracted but could not be combined in a meta-analysis or visually displayed collectively in a figure because estimates were reported on different scales and used different association metrics (Table 5). Based on comparison of the body of evidence to prespecified criteria, we concluded that the quality of the overall body of evidence for the intelligence outcome was “moderate” (Table 1a); i.e., the evidence did not warrant downgrading or upgrading.
Table 5 Reported association estimates for BSID outcome and 95% confidence interval (CI) or p-value, as available from individual studies. Table 5 lists study reference in the first column; the corresponding N value, child age at assessment, exposure/matrix, association measure, and association estimate (95 percent confidence interval) (or p-value) and data source are listed in the other columns. Study reference n Child age at assessment Exposure/matrix Association measure Association estimate (95% CI) (or p-value) & data source Chen et al. 2014 220 36 months Lipid-adjusted BDE-47 in maternal serum Adjusted beta (log10) 0.58 ( − 4.37, 5.53) Negative estimate indicates higher exposures associated with poorer outcomes Supplemental Material, Table S2 Gascon et al. 2012 290 12–18 months Lipid-adjusted BDE-47 in maternal colostrum − 2.81 ( − 6.66, 1.06) Table 3a Herbstman et al. 2010 114 36 months Lipid-adjusted BDE-47 in cord blood − 2.42 ( − 7.71, 2.90) Table 3a Chao et al. 2011 70 8–12 months Lipid-adjusted BDE-47 in breastmilk Spearman rho correlation 0.065 (0.591) Positive estimate indicates high exposures associated with poorer outcomes Table 3 Shy et al. 2011 36 8–12 months Lipid-adjusted BDE-47 in cord blood Adjusted odds ratio 1.04 Estimate > 1 indicates high exposures associated with poorer outcomes Table 4b
We found some evidence of a dose–response gradient in several studies. Eskenazi et al. (2013) reported a significant dose-response trend across quartiles of the sum of BDE-47, BDE-99, BDE-100, and BDE-153 in maternal serum in decreasing WISC verbal comprehension evaluated in children at age 7 y ( p = 0.02 ). Adgent et al. (2014) investigated the relationship across quartiles of BDE-28, BDE-47, BDE-99, BDE-100, and BDE-153 in breastmilk and reported similar small and imprecise estimates that were generally in a positive direction for MSEL composite scores. Herbstman et al. (2010) reported significant differences for BDE-47 measured in maternal serum comparing the 25th to 75th percentile ( IQR = 19.77 ng / g lipid) for FSIQ at when children were assessed at 48 months, but not at 72 months. A dose–response relationship was also supported by the results of our meta-analysis (Figure 3) that demonstrated a statistically significant decrement in intelligence with increased PBDE exposures, assuming a linear relationship. However, Zhang et al. (2016) evaluated trends for FSIQ across quartiles of prenatal exposures to the sum of BDE-47, BDE-99, BDE-100, and BDE-153 and reported significant differences comparing the third with first quartile, but no overall trend ( p = 0.11 ). We judged these collective findings to be not consistent or strong enough to warrant upgrading the overall quality of evidence for dose response.
We rated the overall strength of the evidence as “sufficient” for intelligence (Table 1a) based on: a) “moderate” quality of the body of evidence; b) direction of the association (i.e., consistent evidence of an inverse association between PBDEs exposure with intelligence across studies and among the combination of similar studies in the meta-analysis); c) confidence in the association with multiple well-conducted studies (i.e., most studies) (all, for those included in the meta-analysis) were prospective cohort studies and were of “low” or “probably low” risk of bias overall; the cohorts as a group represented geographically and socioeconomically diverse populations (Tables 3 and 4); and a statistically significant overall estimate of association from the combination of similar studies in a meta-analysis (Figure 3).
We agreed that it was not possible to eliminate the possibility of publication bias, particularly because we did not find enough studies to perform a formal statistical analysis for publication bias; however, we judged that the potential for risk of publication bias was not enough to alter our conclusions. Our rationale for this judgment was based on a) having conducted a comprehensive search that included the gray literature to identify government reports, conference abstracts, theses, and dissertations that may not have been subsequently published, in an attempt to capture a comprehensive collection of studies; and b) the results of our quantitative evaluation of the association estimate that an unpublished study would have to have to change our confidence in the estimate of our meta-analysis for intelligence. Our analysis reported that to enlarge the CI of our meta-analysis association estimate such that it would overlap zero, a new or unpublished study would have to report 0.69 (95% CI: − 3.82, 5.20) increased IQ points per 10-fold increase in (in other words, times 10) PBDE exposure (Figure S2a). We judged the unpublished existence of a well-conducted study with such a result to be unlikely, given that this association estimate was in the opposite direction of all the other studies (including the four prospective cohort studies included in our meta-analysis) and would indicate that an increase in PBDE exposure would be associated with an increase in IQ, which we thought, based on current human and animal evidence, to be highly unlikely. Further, this central estimate (0.69) represents an association 3.38 IQ points [per 10-fold increase (in other words, times 10) in PBDE exposure] higher than the smallest association estimate reported by studies included in our meta-analysis [ − 2.69 from Herbstman et al. (2010)], and we judged it to be unlikely that an unpublished study would report such a finding.
To shift our meta-analysis to have an overall association estimate of zero would require a new study reporting an estimate of 12.0 (95% CI: 7.49, 16.51) increased IQ points per 10-fold increase (in other words, times 10) in PBDE exposure (Figure S1). We concluded this to be highly unlikely, and as such, collectively, these results increased confidence in our final rating of “sufficient” evidence that PBDE exposure diminishes intelligence even if the potential for publication bias could not be entirely ruled out.
Studies of ADHD and Attention-Related Behaviors
Eight of nine studies that evaluated ADHD and attention-related behaviors were prospective birth cohorts; the remaining study (Gump et al. 2014) was a cross-sectional study that we decided met our inclusion criteria because exposure was assessed a week prior to evaluating the outcomes. Assessments of ADHD and attention-related behaviors included Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC) (Adgent et al. 2014; Chen et al. 2014; Eskenazi et al. 2013; Sagiv et al. 2015), CADS (Eskenazi et al. 2013; Sagiv et al. 2015), CBCL (Cowell et al. 2015; Eskenazi et al. 2013; Roze et al. 2009), Conners’ Continuous Performance Test (CPT) (Sagiv et al. 2015), DSM of Mental Disorders (Gascon et al. 2011; Sagiv et al. 2015), Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment (ITSEA) (Hoffman et al. 2012), Kiddie Continuous Performance Test (K-CPT) (Eskenazi et al. 2013), parental ADHD questionnaire (Roze et al. 2009), or Parental SDQ (Gump et al. 2014) at a wide range of ages (2–11 y). Studies measured PBDE exposure in maternal serum or cord blood ( n = 3 ), both maternal and child blood/serum ( n = 3 ), child whole blood ( n = 1 ), or breast milk ( n = 2 ).
We rated most risk-of-bias domains as “low” or “probably low” across all nine studies of ADHD and attention-related behavioral conditions (Figure 2b and Tables S4–S18). The most prevalent instances of “high” or “probably high” ratings in the body of evidence were for confounding and/or incomplete outcome reporting (Adgent et al. 2014; Cowell et al. 2015; Gump et al. 2014; Roze et al. 2009). For example, Roze et al. (2009) received a “high” risk-of-bias rating for incomplete outcome data because they reported only statistically significant results, whereas Cowell et al. (2015) received a “probably high” rating for this domain because reviewers had concern about missing outcome data that could not definitively be ruled out as related to participant’s exposure levels. Roze et al. (2009) also received “probably high” ratings for the blinding domain because the authors did not discuss blinding of outcome assessor to the exposure of participants. Roze et al. (2009), Gump et al. (2014), and Adgent et al. (2014) received “high” or “probably high” risk-of-bias ratings for the confounding domain because they did not adjust for all the important confounders that we determined beforehand, and in particular lacked adjustment for maternal characteristics (maternal age, education, marital status, exposure to alcohol/smoking during pregnancy, etc.). Furthermore, Gump et al. (2014) received a “high” rating for the “Other” category because PBDE exposures were measured the week prior to assessing ADHD outcomes, technically satisfying our inclusion criteria of assessing exposures prior to outcome but raising some concerns regarding whether the exposure truly preceded the outcome.
Meta-analyses were not feasible because there were not enough combinable studies. We assessed association estimates related to ADHD outcomes (BASC-2, CADS, CBCL, DSM-IV, K-CPT) by evaluating linear regression estimates from the fully adjusted models for lipid-adjusted BDE-47 exposures measured in cord blood, maternal serum, or breastmilk when available and dichotomous/categorical/correlation estimates when continuous estimates were not available (Table 6). We saw positive associations between PBDE exposures and ADHD or attention-related behavioral effects generally, although data were limited and CIs generally overlapped the null (Table 6). We agreed that the possibility of publication bias could not be confidently eliminated, as there were not enough studies to combine in a meta-analysis (and thus quantify the size of the association estimate needed to change our confidence in the meta-analysis estimate, as above for IQ) or to perform a formal statistical analysis for publication bias. However, we identified findings from the gray literature through our comprehensive search, and many studies reported findings that were not statistically significant. As such, we judged that there was insufficient evidence to warrant downgrading the body of evidence for publication bias.
Table 6 Reported association estimates for ADHD outcome and 95% CI or p-value, as available from individual studies. Table 6 lists study reference in the first column. The corresponding N value; assessment (child age); exposure and matrix; association measure and interpretation; and association estimate (95 percent confidence interval) (or p-value), data source, and confounders are listed in the other columns. Study reference n Assessment (child age) Exposure and matrix Association measure and interpretation Association estimate (95% CI) (or p-value), data source, confounders Chen et al. 2014 183 BASC-2, Hyperactivity (5 y) Lipid-adjusted BDE-47 in maternal serum Adjusted beta (log10) 3.29 (0.3, 6.27) Positive estimate indicates higher exposures associated with nonoptimal behavior Plotted in Figure 2 in manuscript; authors provided data Adjusted for maternal age at enrollment, race, education, marital status, maternal serum cotinine concentrations at enrollment, maternal IQ, child sex, maternal depression, household income, HOME inventory Adgent et al. 2014 192 BASC-2, Hyperactivity (3 y) Lipid-adjusted BDE-47 in breastmilk 0.3 ( − 2.7, 3.3) Table S1 Adjusted for sex, parity, maternal education, maternal race, breastfeeding duration, income maternal age, fatty acids, and fatty acid analysis batch BASC-2, Attention (3 y) − 0.9 ( − 3.9, 2.2) Table S1 Adjusted for same confounders as above Roze et al. 2009 60 CBCL, Attention sustained (5–6 y) Lipid-adjusted BDE-47 in maternal serum Adjusted correlation coefficient − 0.264 ( p < 0.05 ) Table 4 Negative estimate indicates higher exposures associated with poorer outcomes Adjusted for: socioeconomic status, HOME inventory score, child sex Eskenazi et al. 2013 233 K-CPT, ADHD Conf. Index (5 y) Lipid-adjusted BDE-47 in maternal serum Adjusted odds ratio (log10) 6.2 (1.1, 11.4) Estimate > 1 indicates higher exposures associated with poorer outcomes Table S6 Adjusted for child age, at assessment, sex, maternal education, number of children in the home, psychometrician 266 Maternal-reported CADS, ADHD Index (7 y) 2.6 (0.4, 4.8) Table S6 Adjusted for same confounders as above 266 Maternal-Reported CADS, DSM-IV ADHD (7 y) 2.2 (0.0, 4.5) Table S6 Adjusted for same confounders as above Gascon et al. 2011 77 Teacher-Reported ADHD DSM-IV (4 y) Lipid-adjusted BDE-47 in cord blood Adjusted relative risk 0.4 (0.1, 1.7) Estimate > 1 indicates higher exposures associated with poorer outcomes Table 4 Adjusted for sex, age of child, preterm, maternal age, prepregnancy BMI, fish consumption, duration of breastfeeding Cowell et al. 2015 107 CBCL (6 y) Lipid-adjusted BDE-47 in cord blood Adjusted incidence rate ratio 0.91 (0.75, 1.10) Table 2 Estimate > 1 indicates higher exposures associated with poorer outcomes Adjusted for age at exam, sex, ethnicity, environmental tobacco smoke, maternal intelligence, maternal age, marital status, maternal demoralization at exam
The overall strength of the evidence was “limited” for the outcome of ADHD and attention-related behaviors (Table 1b) based on: 1) “moderate” quality of the body of evidence; 2) direction of the effect, i.e., evidence of an increasing adverse effect with increasing exposure to PBDEs existed, but it was not consistent over all studies; and 3) confidence in the effect (multiple well-conducted studies). Generally, given the limitations of the body of evidence, overall chance, bias, and confounding could not be ruled out with reasonable confidence.
Discussion
Understanding what puts children at risk for neurological disorders is critical to preventing harm. To our knowledge, this study was the first systematic review and meta-analysis of developmental exposure to PBDEs. Our review found “sufficient evidence of toxicity” based on diminished intelligence associated with increased exposure to PBDEs, and “limited evidence of toxicity” based on increases in ADHD and attention-related behaviors with increased exposure to PBDEs. We identified nine reviews of this topic published between 2003 and 2016 (Berghuis et al. 2015; Brandt 2012; Chao et al. 2014; De Cock et al. 2012; Kim et al. 2014; Muir 2003; Pinson et al. 2016; Roth and Wilks 2014; Vrijheid et al. 2016), none of which conducted a meta-analysis or consistently applied all nine components of a systematic literature review as described in the Literature Review Appraisal Toolkit (LRAT), a tool derived from a number of standard practice appraisals of the methodological quality of the literature reviews conducted in the medical sciences (see http://policyfromscience.com/lrat/) (Ades et al. 2012; Garg et al. 2008; Higgins and Green 2011; Moher et al. 2009; Mulrow 1987; Oxman et al. 1994; Schulz et al. 2010; Shea et al. 2007). Broadly, our results that PBDEs are associated with adverse neurodevelopment (either directly or indirectly, e.g, as a thyroid hormone disruptor), were generally consistent with the findings of all but one of the nine reviews (Roth and Wilks 2014). That review concluded that the available evidence “raises questions” but does not “support a strong causal association” between PBDEs and adverse neurodevelopmental and neurobehavioral outcomes in infants and children (Roth and Wilks 2014). The authors of that study also did not specify a definition of “strong causal association,” so it is not possible to directly compare their findings with the findings from our review. Possible explanations for the different conclusions are that we performed a meta-analysis, which strengthened our capacity to detect an association beyond individual study findings or that Roth and Wilks (2014) did not include the Chen et al. (2014) study that was included in our review (Chen et al. 2014).
We found an association of 3.7-point reduction in IQ per 10-fold increase (in other words, times 10) in PBDE exposure when combining results from four prospective birth cohort studies investigating PBDE exposures within the range < LOD – 761 ng / g lipid. In comparison, for the well-studied adverse effects of lead on IQ, it has been estimated in a pooled analysis of 1,333 children participating in seven international population-based longitudinal cohort studies followed from birth or infancy until 5–10 y of age that there is a 7-point reduction in IQ per approximately 10-fold increase (in other words, times 10) in child blood lead levels (6.9-point decrement in IQ associated with blood lead level increase from 2.4 to 30 μ g / dL ) (Lanphear et al. 2005). Even mild decrements in individual IQ can result in serious consequences at the societal level (Bellinger 2012), and as such, these neurological health effects are of great concern to public health. These results underscore the importance of strengthening efforts to prevent the widespread entry of potential neurotoxicants into the environment and to remove PBDEs and other toxic industrial chemicals that have become ubiquitous in our environment. Although public health efforts to reduce lead exposures in the U.S. have significantly reduced childhood blood lead levels (Needleman and Gee 2013), strong policies and regulations are still needed to eliminate lead exposures that persist in communities (Bellinger 2016) and in workplaces (Hipkins et al. 2004) and to reduce other environmental chemical exposures also associated with adverse neurodevelopmental risks (Bennett et al. 2016).
Preventing the entry of toxic environmental chemicals into the marketplace is critical: Once chemicals are released into commerce, exposures can persist long after the chemicals have been “recalled.” Since 2003, several restrictions, phase-outs, and bans on PBDE |
2:15 PM Burt H. Oak Brook, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 1:34 PM Harold S. Oak Brook, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 1:34 PM Charlotte S. Oak Brook, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 1:34 PM Elaine H. Oak Brook, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 1:34 PM P. Riverwoods, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 1:10 PM J. Riverwoods, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 1:10 PM Harold B. Chicago, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 10:09 AM Sharon B. Chicago, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 10:09 AM Cheryl Y. La Grange Park, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 7:56 AM Thomas C. La Grange Park, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 7:56 AM Mary B. Chicago, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 7:50 AM Michele A. Chicago, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 7:50 AM Patryce S. Glen Ellyn, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 7:30 AM Brenda L. Glen Ellyn, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 7:30 AM Georgiann C. Glen Ellyn, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 7:30 AM Ranae F. Glen Ellyn, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 7:30 AM Debbie B. techny, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 7:13 AM Charvette H. techny, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 7:13 AM Susan N. Chicago, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 7:13 AM Angeline H. Chicago, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 7:10 AM Angeline H. Chicago, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 7:10 AM Edith T. Chicago, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 6:52 AM Joan P. Chicago, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 6:52 AM Brant R. Evanston, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 5:40 AM Hallie R. Evanston, IL United States Jun 19, 2013 5:40 AM Susan W. Evanston, IL United States Jun 18, 2013 6:21 PM Allen S. Evanston, IL United States Jun 18, 2013 6:21 PM Eric O. Seattle, WA United States Jun 18, 2013 2:23 PM Ray A. Chicago, IL United States Jun 15, 2013 11:08 AM Jacque A. Chicago, IL United States Jun 15, 2013 11:08 AM Keenan B. Chicago, IL United States Jun 09, 2013 9:16 AM Diane W. Chicago, IL United States Jun 09, 2013 9:16 AM Name Withheld Bartlett, IL United States Jun 07, 2013 4:31 PM Name Withheld Bartlett, IL United States Jun 07, 2013 4:31 PM Robin L. Chicago, IL United States Jun 07, 2013 12:55 PM Emily C. Chicago, IL United States Jun 07, 2013 12:55 PM Steve J. Arlington Heights, IL United States May 11, 2013 5:44 AM Hank B. Arlington Heights, IL United States May 11, 2013 5:44 AM Noreen N. Arlington Heights, IL United States May 11, 2013 5:44 AM William H. Arlington Heights, IL United States May 11, 2013 5:44 AM Name Withheld Chicago, IL Apr 30, 2013 9:36 PM Name Withheld Apr 30, 2013 10:52 AM Name Withheld Apr 30, 2013 10:52 AM Name Withheld Apr 30, 2013 10:52 AM Name Withheld Apr 30, 2013 10:52 AM Name Withheld Apr 30, 2013 10:52 AM Name Withheld Apr 30, 2013 10:52 AM Name Withheld Apr 30, 2013 10:52 AM Name Withheld Apr 30, 2013 10:52 AM Name Withheld Apr 30, 2013 10:52 AM Name Withheld Apr 30, 2013 10:52 AM Name Withheld United States Feb 04, 2013 11:38 AM View All 350 Attendees Hide Attendee ListLoading... Loading...
With the recent UN panel deeming Julian Assange’s detainment “arbitrary,” Assange has still been unable to find his way to freedom so far, but this doesn’t mean that progress isn’t being made. Now, more than ever, alternative media has made efforts to dive deeper still into the case of Sweden vs. Assange; not surprisingly, the trail of information quickly demonstrates the fraudulence of his rape allegations, and the heavy amount of political espionage involved in the efforts to keep Assange detained. It has recently surfaced through documentation that Sweden, by deduction of the case versus the WikiLeaks founder, is clearly operating in Intelligence conglomeration with NATO, and has even been subsequently hiding this from Parliament.
Now, documentation reveals that a highly esteemed and awarded investigative journalist in Sweden who was a key voice in the actions against Assange, named Martin Fredriksson, was formerly an agent of SÄPO, Sweden’s security police. Taken from an article by The Indicter that helped break the story,
“The former SÄPO agent was significantly involved in the government’s efforts to ensure that the Swedish section of Amnesty International… would not advocate for the Swedish government to issue guarantees against the onward extradition of Julian Assange to the US, as called for by Amnesty International, Amnesty Sweden’s parent organization headquartered in London.”
This is just one of many revelations that have come out elaborating on this intimate connection between Sweden and NATO characterized by Sweden vs. Assange. Another example is the recent reporting done by Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, stating that leaked Snowden documents reveal communication between NATO and Sweden regarding a prosecution against Assange. However, it should be addressed that The Intercept has heavy corporate funding from NSA-friendly Paypal/eBay owner, and so Greenwald’s overall authenticity could be considered speculative (something Assange himself has called into question about Greenwald). Additionally, the Snowden documents in question have not actually been released in their entirety, and remain in excerpts of articles by The Intercept.
In regards to Intelligence operatives in the journalism/activism community, it is important for all to know that they are real, and that they are around. However, empirical speculation could deduce that since these type of operatives are being used against Julian Assange, it gives credence to the Aussie’s authenticity for those alternative researchers still skeptical, yet nothing is set in stone. While Assange does seem to be getting closer to his freedom, it doesn’t seem like NATO and the Western Surveillance State are ready to give up the fight against WikiLeaks. Likely, they will never be ready, and with the complete lack of prosecution ability due to the lack of any discernible case, it is hard to imagine a quick resolution to this scenario.
Sources: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/12140993/Julian-Assange-detention-ruling-panel-finds-in-favour-of-detainees-99pc-of-the-time.html, http://professorsblogg.com/2014/11/05/who-are-behind-the-assange-prosecution-and-why/, http://theindicter.com/former-paid-agent-of-swedish-security-police-dictated-amnesty-swedens-stance-against-assange/, http://professorsblogg.com/2014/10/07/snowden-document-reveals-swedish-prosecution-of-asange-ordered-by-the-u-s/, https://theintercept.com/2014/02/18/snowden-docs-reveal-covert-surveillance-and-pressure-tactics-aimed-at-wikileaks-and-its-supporters/
Help Us Be The Change We Wish To See In The World.News
The Yankees have hired former major league pitcher, Armando Galarraga, to join the coaching staff per Newsday’s Erik Boland. He will serve as a minor league pitching instructor.
Galarraga played for four teams during his six-year career in the bigs. He’s best known for what didn’t happen in his career—a perfect game with the Detroit Tigers on June 2, 2010.
On the final out needed for perfection, the Indians’ Jason Donald hit a grounder to first baseman Miguel Cabrera who then flipped to Galarraga covering the base, but umpire Jim Joyce called Donald safe. Replays disproved Joyce’s call and Donald was actually out.
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Before playing for the Tigers from 2008-2010 he pitched for the Texas Rangers in 2007. Galarraga also pitched for the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2011 before finishing his MLB career with the Houston Astros in 2012. The righty went 26-34 with a career 4.78 ERA.
He played in Taiwan, Mexico and Venezuela before retiring in 2015.The development of CRISPR-Cas9 systems has revolutionized genome engineering in living organisms. This novel technology opens up a new era in genomics, along with a wide range of applications. Several bioinformatics tools have recently been developed for researchers designing CRISPR/Cas9 experiments, and analyzing and evaluating CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing.
A few weeks ago, we asked OMICtools members to choose their top 3 CRISPR/Cas9 favorite tools among those most used by the scientific community. Here are the results of your votes.
1. CRISPR-GA, CROP-IT, CRISPRTarget tools 2. Zifit 3. Crass and MAGeCK
First position for CRISPR-GA, CROP-IT and CRISPRTarget tools
Three web applications came out equally on top – each voted as a number #1 tool by 45% of the users surveryed: CRISPR-GA (CRISPR Genome Analyzer), CROP-IT (CRISPR/Cas9 Off-target Prediction and Identification Tool) and CRISPRTarget.
The CRISPR-GA platform has become an essential tool for anyone wanting to assess the quality of their CRISPR/Cas9 experiment. It provides an easy (three mouse clicks), sensitive (detection limit 50.1%), and comprehensive analysis of gene editing results. The CRISPR-GA platform maps the reads, it estimates and locates insertions and deletions, computes the allele replacement efficiency, and then provides you with a report integrating all this information.
CRISPR-GA pipeline. (A) From experiment to report. Schematic pipeline of a gene editing assessment. (B) Output of CRISPR-GA estimating a range of information. Deletions, insertions, homologous recombination (HR) and corresponding efficiencies. Upper panels estimate the number of insertions and deletions and each corresponding size. Middle panels estimate the number of insertions and deletions, and their corresponding location within the genomic locus of interest. The bottom panel shows the number of deletions and HRs at each corresponding location, and outputs the HR and NHEJ (non-homologous end-joining) efficiency. (C) Experimental results assessed by CRISPR-GA from testing several mutants of cas9, gRNAs and a DNA template. HR and NHEJ values are shown. From Güell et al., 2014. Genome editing assessment using CRISPR Genome Analyzer (CRISPR-GA). Bioinformatics.
CROP-IT (CRISPR/Cas9 Off-Target Prediction and Identification Tool)
CROP-IT is a userfriendly web application where users can design optimal sgRNA guiding sequences and can search for potential off-target binding or cleavage sites. The CROP-IT tool integrates knowledge from experimentally identified Cas9 binding sites, cleavage sites as well as information on chromatin state (data from multiple studies and 125 cell types). CROP-IT scores predict off-target binding and cleavage Cas9 sites and outputs a list of the top sites.
Schematic of CROP-IT algorithm based on a computational model where each position of the guiding RNA sequence is differentially weighted based on experimental Cas9 binding and cleavage site information from multiple independent sources. Furthermore, it incorporates chromatin state information for the human genome by analyzing accessible chromatin regions from 125 human cell types. By integrating observed information from Cas9 DNA binding, CROP-IT performs significantly better than existing computational prediction tools. From Singh et al., 2015. Cas9-chromatin binding information enables more accurate CRISPR off-target prediction. Nucleic Acids Research.
CRISPRTarget is one of the first tools developed for predicting the targets of CRISPR RNA spacers. This web application interactively explores diverse databases. CRISPTarget provides the flexibility to search for matches in either or both orientations of the input, and to discover targets with protospacer adjacent motifs, as well as any adjacent pairing potential.
Graphical output of CRISPRTarget. Output of a search for targets of the Streptomyces thermophilus DGCC7710 CRISPR array. The direction of transcription is known, however both strands are shown in the diagram as if the direction of transcription was unknown. Two relatively low-scoring matches using these interactive settings are shown (rank 44–45). They have good spacer-protospacer base pairing but lack a WTTCTNN PAM. Match 45 is a match to a phage to which this strain is sensitive (Φ2972). Yellow indicates spacer/protospacer, blue shows flanking sequences, and mismatches between the crRNA and the target DNA protospacer are indicated in red. From Biswas et al., 2013. CRISPRTarget: bioinformatic prediction and analysis of crRNA targets. RNA Biology.
Second position for ZiFit
Second place went to ZiFiT (Zinc Finger Targeter v4.1), with 36% of the votes.
Originally developed to identify potential zinc finger nuclease (ZFN) sites in target sequences, ZiFiT also provides support for the identification of CRISPR/Cas target sites and reagents as well as a user-friendly guidance for construction of TALEN-encoding plasmids.
Third position for Crass and MAGeCK tools
Equal third place went to Crass (CRISPR Assembler) and MAGeCK (Model-based Analysis of Genome-wide CRISPR/Cas9 Knockout), with 31% of the votes each.
Crass identifies and reconstructs CRISPR loci and spacers from raw metagenomic data without the need for assembly or prior knowledge of CRISPR in the data set. The sensitivity, specificity and speed of Crass facilitates analysis of metagenomic data, phage-host interactions and co-evolution within microbial communities.
Comparison between different CRISPR loci visualization techniques. (A) Traditional approach to visualization where the spacers are shown as differently colored rectangles (the same color refers to the same spacer) anchored to the leader sequence (white triangle). (B) The same CRISPR loci reconstructed by Crass into a spacer graph. From Skennerton et al., 2013. Crass: identification and reconstruction of CRISPR from unassembled metagenomic data. Nucleic Acids Res.
MAGeCK (Model-based Analysis of Genome-wide CRISPR/Cas9 Knockout)
The MAGeCK algorithm was developed for prioritizing single-guide RNAs, genes and pathways in genome-scale CRISPR/Cas9 knockout screens. It identifies both positively and negatively selected genes simultaneously, and reports robust results across different experimental conditions. This computational method, with a low false discovery rate (FDR) and high sensitivity, brings new clues for answering biological questions and addressing therapeutic needs.khaaan said: It might be a Japanese game but the scope the game will have is global. It doesn't matter if the Vita is doing okay only in Japan, because they loose out on too many potential sales from the world wide market. I agree that the jump to the PS4 is only going to benefit the franchise, the trailer was amazing. I am however still very frustrated with Sony's abandonment of the Vita. Personally, I also believe that the potential sales were a bigger factor in moving the game over to the PS4. Click to expand...
GhostTrick said: Well to be fair, Gravity Rush 2 was never announced explicitely for Vita, was it? I mean, I don't remember the first trailer to mention Vita at all. Click to expand...
You assume that the franchise will be popular in the west -- this is a gamble and is far from certain. It may do alright or even great, if the people who loved the Vita original adopt the shift to PS4 as the platform for Kat and buy then advocate for it. But if Sony just releases it and leaves it to die as it has with other games/franchises, I'm not sure it's a safe bet to think that your "world wide" argument is going to pan out.No, I don't think this is a Type-0 fiasco... people who were fans of the first game and have love for their Vita just want it to remain on the platform they own, rather than potentially requiring them to buy a PS4 to get the next game. If it wasn't for Bloodborne forcing my hand and getting me to adopt a PS4 early in the lifecycle, I would share the sentiment I just described, as I would not want to be forced to get a PS4 to play GR2.After a long absence, the Revere Commission on Disabilities has been revived for 2017. This panel works to identify and address issues relating to persons with disabilities in the City of Revere, including offering policy suggestions to the Mayor and to the City Council.
The first meeting of the Commission for 2017 will be held on Tuesday, January 10, from 6:00-7:30 PM. The Commission's meetings are all public meetings in the Council Chambers at City Hall, so all residents interested in these issues are encouraged to attend.
The topic of the Commission's 2017 annual report will be accessibility of public buildings and accommodations (city buildings, schools, the library, etc.). This will also be a focus of monthly conversation during Commission meetings, so residents are welcome to discuss accessibility needs at the meeting.
Part of the agenda will also be discussing relaunching a constituent service drop-in and call-in office for residents with disabilities to discuss disability-related issues and access to programming and services. In previous years, the City had a disability office that referred residents to services, followed up on ADA compliance questions, and loaned equipment such as wheelchairs and crutches to residents in need. Mayor Arrigo's administration is looking to revive this office and welcomes suggestions and input.
"The Commission on Disabilities serves as a voice and an advocate for residents of all ages and abilities," said Mayor Arrigo. "My office will work together with the Commission to improve quality of life for all Revere residents regardless of ability."
All residents with suggestions for this office should feel encouraged to attend the meeting or submit comments in writing via the new email address set up for disability-related issues: disabilities@revere.org, or via mail - Mayor's Office, City Hall, 281 Broadway, Revere, MA 02151.
To help spread the word about the Commission, residents are encouraged to share a Facebook event invitation for the January 10 meeting: https://www.facebook.com/events/350430951990419/.Preface
Revolution breaks the social forms grown too narrow for man. It bursts the molds which constrict him the more solidified they become, and the more Life ever striving forward leaves them. In this dynamic process the Russian Revolution has gone further than any previous revolution.
The abolition of the established — politically and economically, socially and ethically — the attempt to replace it with something different, is the reflex of man’s changed needs, of the awakened consciousness of the people. Back of revolution are the millions of living humans who embody its inner spirit, who feel, think, and have their being in it. To them revolution is not a mere change of externals: it implies the complete dislocation of life, the shattering of dominant traditions, the annulment of accepted standards. The habitual, measured step of existence is interrupted, accustomed criterions become inoperative, former precedents are void. Existence is forced into uncharted channels; every action demands self-reliance; every detail calls for new, independent decision. The typical, the familiar, have disappeared; dissolved is the coherence and interrelation of the parts that formerly constituted one whole. New values are to be created.
This inner life of revolution, which is its sole meaning, has almost entirely been neglected by writers on the Russian Revolution. Many books have been published about that tremendous social upheaval, but seldom do they strike its true keynote. They treat of the fall and rise of institutions, of the new State and its structure, of constitutions and laws — of the exclusively external manifestations, which nearly make one forget the living millions who continue to exist, to be, under all changing conditions.
Justly Taine said that in studying the French Revolution he found statistics and data, official documents and edicts least illuminative of the real character of the period. Its significant expression, its deeper sense, he discovered in the lives, thoughts, and feelings of the people, in their personal reactions as portrayed in the memoirs, journals, and letters of contemporaries.
The present work is compiled from the Diary which I kept during my two years’ stay in Russia. It is the chronicle of an intense experience, of impressions and observations noted down day by day, in different parts of the country, among various walks of life. Most of the names are deleted, for the obvious reason of protecting the persons in question.
So far as I know it is the only journal kept in Russia during those momentous years (1920–1922). It was a rather difficult task, as those familiar with Russian conditions will understand. But long practice in such matters — keeping memoranda even in prison — enabled me to preserve my Diary through many vicissitudes and searches, and get it safely out of the country. Its Odyssey was adventurous and eventful. After having journeyed through Russia for two years, the Diary succeeded in crossing the border, only to be lost before it could join me. There followed an anxious hunt through several European lands, and when hope of locating my notebooks was almost given up, they were discovered in the attic of a very much frightened old lady in Germany. But that is another story.
Sufficient that the manuscript was finally found and can now be presented to the public in the present volume. If it will aid in visualizing the inner life of the Revolution during the period described, if it will bring the reader closer to the Russian people and their great martyrdom, the mission of my Diary will be accomplished and my efforts well repaid.
Alexander Berkman.
Chapter 1. The Log of the Transport “Buford”
On Board the U.S.T. “Buford.”
December 23, 1919. — We are somewhere near the Azores, already three days at sea. No one seems to know whither we are bound. The captain claims he is sailing under sealed orders. The men are nearly crazy with the uncertainty and worry over the women and children left behind. What if we are to be landed on Denikin territory.
* * *
We were kidnapped, literally kidnapped out of bed in the dead of night.
It was late in the evening, December 20, when the prison keepers entered our cell at Ellis Island and ordered us to “get ready at once.” I was just undressing; the others were in their bunks, asleep. We were taken completely by surprise. Some of us expected to be deported, but we had been promised several days’ notice; while a number were to be released on bail, their cases not having been finally passed upon by the courts.
We were led into a large, bare room in the upper part of the building. Helter-skelter the men crowded in, dragging their things with them, badly packed in the haste and confusion. At four in the morning the order was given to start. In silence we filed into the prison yard, led by the guards and flanked on each side by city and Federal detectives. It was dark and cold; the night air chilled me to the bone. Scattered lights in the distance hinted of the huge city asleep.
Like shadows we passed through the yard toward the ferry, stumbling on the uneven ground. We did not speak; the prison keepers also were quiet. But the detectives laughed boisterously, and swore and sneered at the silent line. “Don’t like this country, damn you! Now you’ll get out, ye sons of b—.”
At last we reached the steamer. I caught sight of three women, our fellow prisoners, being taken aboard. Stealthily, her sirens dumb, the vessel got under way. Within half an hour we boarded the Buford, awaiting us in the Bay.
At 6 A. M., Sunday, December 21, we started on our journey. Slowly the big city receded, wrapped in a milky veil. The tall skyscrapers, their outlines dimmed, looked like fairy castles lit by winking stars and then all was swallowed in the distance.
* * *
December 24. — The Buford is an old boat built in 1885. She was used as a military transport during the Philippine War, and is not seaworthy any more. We ship sea constantly, and it pours through the hatches. Two inches of water cover the floor; our things are wet, and there is no steam heat.
Our three women companions occupy a separate cabin. The men are cooped up in crowded, ill-smelling steerage quarters. We sleep in bunks built three tiers high. The loose wire netting of the one above me bulges so low with the weight of its occupant, it scratches my face whenever the man moves.
We are prisoners. Armed sentinels on deck, in the gangways, and at every door. They are silent and sullen; strict orders not to talk to us. Yesterday I offered one of them an orange — I thought he looked sick. But he refused it.
We caught a radio today about wholesale arrests of the radicals throughout the United States. Probably in connection with protests against our deportation.
There is much resentment among our men at the brutality that accompanied the deportation, and at the suddenness of the proceedings. They were given no time to get their money or clothing. Some of the boys were arrested at their work-benches, placed in jail, and deported without a chance to collect their pay checks. I am sure that the American people, if informed, would not stand for another boat-load of deportees being set adrift in the Atlantic without enough clothes to keep them warm. I have faith in the American people, but American officialdom is ruthlessly bureaucratic.
Love of native soil, of home, is manifesting itself. I notice it especially among those who spent only a few years in America. More frequently the men of Southern Russia speak the Ukrainian language. All long to get to Russia quickly, to behold the land they had left in the clutches of Tsarism and which is now the freest on earth.
We have organized a committee to take a census. There are 246 of us, besides the three women. Various types and nationalities: Great Russians from New York and Baltimore; Ukrainian miners from Virginia; Letts, Lithuanians, and one Tartar. The majority are members of the Union of Russian Workers, an Anarchist organization with branches throughout the United States and Canada. About eleven belong to the Socialist Party in the United States, while some are non-partisan. There are editors, lecturers, and manual workers of every kind among us. Some are bewhiskered, looking typically Russian; others smooth-shaven, American in appearance. Most of the men are of decided Slavic countenance, with broad face and high cheek bones.
“We’ll work like devils for the Revolution,” Big Samuel, the West Virginia miner, announces to the group gathered around him. He talks Russian.
“You bet we will,” comes from a corner bunk in English. It’s the mascot of our cabin, a red-cheeked youth, a six-footer, whom we have christened the “Baby.”
“Me for Baku,” an older man joins in. “I’m an oil driller. They’ll need me all right.”
I ponder over Russia, a country in revolution, a social revolution which has uprooted the very foundations, political, economical, ethical. There are the Allied invasion, the blockade, and internal counter-revolution. All forces must be bent, first of all, to secure the complete victory of the workers. Bourgeois resistance within must be crushed; interference from without defeated. Everything else will come later. To think that it was given to Russia, enslaved and tyrannized over for centuries, to usher in the New Day! It is almost beyond belief, past comprehension. Yesterday the most backward country; today in the vanguard. Nothing short of a miracle.
Unreservedly shall the remaining years of my life be consecrated to the service of the wonderful Russian people.
December 25. — The military force of the Buford is in command of a Colonel of the United States Army, tall and severe-looking, about fifty. In his charge are a number of officers and a very considerable body of soldiers, most of them of the regular army. Direct supervision over the deportees is given to the representative of the Federal Government, Mr. Berkshire, who is here with a number of Secret Service men. The Captain of the Buford takes his orders from the Colonel, who is the supreme authority on board.
The deportees want exercise on deck and free association with our women comrades. As their chosen spokesman I submitted their demands to Berkshire, but he referred me to the Colonel. I refused to apply to the latter, on the ground that we are political, not military, prisoners. Later the Federal man informed me that “the higher authorities” had granted us exercise, but association with the women was refused. Permission, however, would be given me to convince myself that “the ladies are receiving humane treatment.”
Accompanied by Berkshire and one of his assistants, I was allowed to visit Emma Goldman, Dora Lipkin-Perkus, and Ethel Bernstein. I found them on the upper deck, Dora and Ethel bundled up and much the worse for sea-sickness, the motherly nurse ministering to them. They looked forlorn, those “dangerous enemies” of the United States. The powerful American Government never appeared to me in a more ridiculous light.
The women made no complaints: they are treated well and receive good food. But all three are penned in a small cabin intended for one person only; day and night armed sentinels, guard their door.
No trace of Christ appeared anywhere on the ship this Christmas Day. The usual espionage and surveillance, the same discipline and severity. But in the general messroom, at dinner, there was an addition to the regular meal: currant bread and cranberries. More than half of the tables were vacant, however: most of the men are in their bunks, sick.
December 26. — Rough sea, and more men “laid out.” The six-foot “Baby” is the sickest of them all. The hatches have been closed to keep the sea out, and it is suffocating below deck. There are forty-nine men in our compartment; the rest are in the two adjoining ones.
The ship physician has asked me to assist him on his daily rounds, as interpreter and nurse. The men suffer mostly from stomach and bowel complaints; but there are also cases of rheumatism, sciatica, and heart-disease. The Boris brothers are in a precarious condition; young John Birk is growing very weak; a number of others are in bad shape.
December 27. — The Boston deportee, a former sailor, claims the course of the Buford was changed twice during the night. “Perhaps making for the Portugal Coast,” he said. It is rumored we may be turned over to Denikin. The men are much worried.
Human psychology everywhere has a basic kinship. Even in prison I found the deepest tragedies lit up by a touch of humor. In spite of the great anxiety regarding, our destination, there is much laughter and joking, in our cabin. Some wit among the boys has christened the Buford the “Mystery Ship.”
In the afternoon Berkshire informed me that the Colonel wished to see me. His cabin, not large, but light and dry, is quite different from our steerage quarters. The Colonel asked me what part of Russia we were “expecting to go to.” The Soviet part, of course, I said. He began a discussion of the Bolsheviki. The Socialists, he insisted, wanted to “take away the hard-earned wealth of the rich, and divide it among the lazy and the shiftless.” Everyone willing to work could succeed in the world, he assured me; at least America — the freest country on earth — gives all an equal opportunity.
I had to explain to him the A B C of social science, pointing out that no wealth can be created except by labor; and that by complex juggling — legal, financial, economic — the producer is robbed of his product. The Colonel admitted defects and imperfections in our system — even in “the best system of the world, the American.” But they are human failings; we need improvement, not revolution, he thought. He listened with unconcealed impatience when I spoke of the crime of punishing men for their opinions and the folly of deporting ideas. He believes “the government must protect its people,” and that “these foreign agitators have no business in America, anyhow.”
I saw the futility of discussing with a person of such infantile mentality, and closed the argument by inquiring the exact point of our destination. “Sailing under sealed orders,” was all the information the Colonel would vouchsafe.
New Year’s Day, 1920. — We are getting friendly with the soldiers. They are selling us their extra clothing, shoes, and everything else they can lay their hands on. Our boys are discussing war, government, and Anarchism with the sentinels. Some of the latter are much interested, and they are noting down addresses in New York where they can get our literature. One of the soldiers — Long Sam, they call him — is especially outspoken against his superiors. He is “sore as hell,” he says. He was to be married on Christmas, but he got orders to report for duty on the Buford. “I’m no damn tin soldier like them Nationals (National Guard),” he says; “I’m sev’n years a reg’lar, an’ them’s the thanks I get. ‘Stead of bein’ with me goil I’m in this floatin’ dump, between Hell an’ nowhere.”
We have organized a committee to assess every “possessing” member of our group for the benefit of the deportees that lack warm clothing. The men from Pittsburgh, Erie, and Madison had been shipped to Ellis Island in their working clothes. Many others had also been given no time to take their trunks along.
A large pile of the collected apparel — suits, hats, shoes, winter underwear, hosiery, etc. — lies in the center of our cabin, and the committee is distributing the things. There is much shouting, laughing, and joking. It’s our first attempt at practical communism. The crowd surrounding the committee passes upon the claims of each applicant and immediately acts upon its verdict. A vital sense of social justice is manifested.
January 2, 1920. — In Bisay Bay. Rolling badly. The sailors say last night’s storm threw us out of our course. Some ship, apparently Japanese, was signaling for help. We ourselves were in such a plight that we could not aid.
At noon the Captain sent for me. The Buford is not a modern ship — he spoke guardedly and we are in difficult waters. Bad time of the year, too; storm season. No particular danger, but it is always well to be prepared. He would assign twelve lifeboats in my charge, and I should instruct the men what to do should the contingency arise.
I have divided the 246 male deportees into a number of groups, putting at the head of each one of the older comrades. (The three women are assigned to the sailors’ boat.) We are to have several trial alarms to teach the men how to handle the life belts, take their place in line, and get without confusion to their respective boats. The first test, this afternoon, was a bit lame. Another trial, by surprise, is to take place soon.
January 3. — Rumors that we are bound for Danzig. It is certain now we are making for the English Channel and expect to reach it tomorrow. We feel greatly relieved.
January 4. — No channel. No land. Very bad night. The old tub has been dancing up and down like a rubber shoe thrown into the ocean by vacationists at Coney Island. Been busy all night with the sick.
Everyone except Bianki and myself is keeping to his bunk. Some are seriously ill. Bianki’s nephew, the young school boy, has lost his hearing. John Birk is very low. Novikov, former editor of the New York Anarchist weekly, Golos Truda, hasn’t touched food for days. In Ellis Island he spent most of his time in the hospital. He refused to accept bail as long as the others arrested with him remained in prison. He consented only when almost at the point of death, and then he was dragged to the boat to be deported.
It is hard to be torn out of the soil one has rooted in for over thirty years, and to leave the labors of a life-time behind. Yet I am glad: I face the future, not the past. Already in 1917, at the outbreak of the Revolution, I longed to go to Russia. Shatov, my close friend and comrade, was about to leave, and I hoped to join him. But the Mooney case and the needs of the antiwar movement kept me in the United States. Then came my arrest for opposing the world slaughter, and my two years’ imprisonment in Atlanta.
But soon I shall be in Russia. What joy to behold the Revolution |
turn the car and go.”The UFC commentator, comedian and podcast host opines about Arnold Schwarzenegger, Channing Tatum and why getting jacked is ultimately a waste of your time.
I was looking at past and present pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger the other day when two things struck me: one, time is a real motherfucker. The man who possessed one of the most beautiful physiques the world has ever known is now reduced to moving through life in an advanced-stage version of "dad bod". The other thing is that building a perfect body is ultimately a lot like making a beautiful sand castle.
Part of what's cool about sand castles—especially the more elaborate ones—is that we know they're not going to be around for long. With our bodies, though, that's something that we like to ignore. Pump that iron and drip that sweat, but the reality is you've only got about 20 summers to enjoy your hard work before the wheels start to fall off.
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The difference between building beautiful bodies and sand castles of course, is that no one is going to want to fuck you just because you made an awesome sand castle. It might happen, but it's much more likely that you'll be struck by lightning and then immediately eaten by bears.
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Building a nice body, on the other hand, is pretty much all you need to ensure that someone, somewhere, will want to have sex with you.
Now, there are people that will tell you that it's shallow to want to have sex with someone just because they have a nice body, but those people almost always look like shit naked. They might even actually believe what they're saying. But the reality is that if a pharmaceutical company created a pill that could instantly transform your body into that perfect specimen people lust over in magazines and Magic Mikemovies, every one of those motherfuckers would take it.
Some people say they don't care what others think, and that they work out just because they want to look good for themselves. This, of course, is utter bullshit. If you were the only person on earth, the last place you would go to is the gym. There would be no shaving your arms or flexing in front of a mirror, and no one would be posting videos of themselves on Facebook in yoga pants doing squats.
No. You would be alone at the beach, talking to a coconut, and trying to decide when to kill yourself.
One thing that's strange about the temporary nature of the human body is that this transient state of vibrancy is one of the very reasons why it's so exciting to look good.
If we never grew old and never died, I think life would probably devolve into something that resembles the boring experience of playing a video game in "God" mode. A huge part of the fun of gaming is the awareness that you could get fucked up at any moment. As soon as you remove that threat of vulnerability, running around shooting things becomes meaningless.
I'm betting that's what it would be like to be perfect and immortal.
Our reality is that the physical bodies we all move through this world with are ultimately slaves to the savage demands of the past.
The human race didn't survive plagues, wolves and barbarian hordes by being non-judgmental about love handles and crotch fat. We made it to 2015 because women are attracted to men that look like Channing Tatum, and they want him to shoot his vibrant DNA inside their vaginas so that they can make babies that will survive an invasion.
One day though, he too will go the way of Arnold, and of the sand castle—reclaimed by an infinite process that doesn't give a fuck about your six pack or your sculpted pecs, or your stupid moat and turrets.
Joe Rogan is a UFC commentator, stand-up comedian and host of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.This is pretty much exactly what it appears to be -
Finn and Jake, from Adventure time, as MLP Ponies.
I am pleased with this.
Oh, and in case it's hard to tell, Jake's cutie mark is a rubber band. Since his talent is stretching. XD
Samcat and I were discussing this. Princess Bubblegum's cutie mark would be a science beaker (and maybe a piece of candy too).
The Ice King would have a snow-covered mountain (but he'd have scribbled Princess Bubblegum over it with a pencil).
Tree Trunks, we realized, is actually Granny Smith. (Older, wrinkled, green, apple pie cutie mark).
Marceline would have a bat or maybe a guitar...
and Lumpy Space Princess would have a cell phone. XD
Maybe I'll paint the others...I was just feeling inspired and had a spare minute, so I whipped this up.
Adventure Time (c) Pendleton Ward
My Little Pony (c) HasbroBI Intelligence
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Efforts to launch a Bitcoin-related exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the US are evidently not waning: In March, the Winklevoss brothers and cryptocurrency fintech SolidX both submitted filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), only to be shot down. Now, incumbent fund manager VanEck has followed suit, submitting a prospectus to the SEC.
The proposed actively managed ETF wouldn't invest directly in Bitcoin, instead it would allow investors to buy stakes in derivatives based on the cryptocurrency. As such, investors would be able to bet on Bitcoin's price gains or losses without buying the asset itself. The ETF would also invest in more conventional assets like US Treasury bonds and cash, presumably to diversify risk. The goal would be to list the ETF on the Nasdaq exchange, according to the filing.
Although the SEC's track record bodes ill for VanEck, there is some hope. To date, the SEC has rejected Bitcoin ETF proposals on the grounds that their governance structure and investor protection mechanisms weren't robust enough, rather than due to the regulator's opposition to Bitcoin itself.
As such, it's possible that if and when the regulator is given a proposal that seems legally sound, the SEC would work to bring the product to market. This is further suggested by the fact that the SEC has agreed to review its ruling on the Winklevoss brothers' proposal. Given that VanEck is an established incumbent with 70 years of markets experience, and likely an extensive compliance team, its attempt may stand a higher chance than its predecessors' of gaining regulatory approval.
Sarah Kocianski, senior research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on blockchain in banking that:
Outlines banks' experiments with blockchain technology.
Details blockchain projects at three major banks — UBS, Credit Suisse, and Banco Santander — based on in-depth interviews.
Discusses the likely trends that will emerge in the technology over the next several years.
Highlights the factors that will be critical to the success of banks implementing blockchain-based solutions.Reputation: Giant pandas are cute and harmless, with an amusing habit of sneezing. But their insistence on eating bamboo is dumb and they are rubbish at sex, so they deserve to go extinct. Except, of course, those proficient in kung fu.
Reality: They are cute, for sure. But don't go in for a cuddle; pandas can deliver one heck of a bite. Eating bamboo is a blinding evolutionary strategy. They have an intense and productive sex drive. They do not deserve to go extinct.
There is a lot of confusion about giant pandas, possibly more than any other species alive. This is because of the absolutely massive symbolic, political and economic baggage that is heaped on captive pandas. This burden far outweighs what we really know about this species in the wild.
Take a deep breath and purge your mind of everything you think you know about giant pandas
This division between captive and wild pandas is important. Because the truth about pandas depends on which kind of panda you're talking about.
If it's the captive panda you are interested in, then the fluffy, sneezing, clownish, reproductively-inept stereotype stands.
But if it's the truth about wild pandas you're after, then you need to shut down the panda-cam, take a deep breath and purge your mind of everything you think you know about giant pandas. Most of it is wrong.
What is undeniably true is that pandas are striking animals. In 1966, the zoologist Desmond Morris put forward 20 factors to explain the human obsession with pandas. About half of them were to do with appearance: flat face, large eyes, soft appearance, rounded outline, contrasting colours and so on.
A panda can deliver one of the highest bite forces of any carnivore
But appearances can be deceptive and it would be a mistake to get too close to a wild panda.
Even in captivity, where pandas are used to being cooed over by humans, they can be dangerous. In 2006, a drunken 28-year-old man by the name of Zhang clambered into the panda enclosure at Beijing Zoo and tried to pet the internee. He'd been showing off to his companion, but all he had to show for his exploits was a right calf savaged beyond recognition. There are photos here, but they are very, very ugly. You've been warned.
Such injuries are possible because of the giant panda's incredibly chunky skull and Mohican-like sagittal crest. This is the anchor point for a massive chewing muscle that can deliver one of the highest bite forces of any carnivore. The panda needs this impressive bite if it is to crack its way into the tough sheath of a bamboo stem.
The panda also boasts an enlarged radial sesamoid bone or "false-thumb" to get a grip as it munches, a complex suite of gut microbes to help its digestion, and a readiness to spend more than half its life collecting, preparing and eating bamboo.
With adaptations like these, the giant panda has performed a remarkable evolutionary switcheroo. It is a carnivore that has found a way to eat bamboo, a food source that is pretty dependable from one season to the next. Even better, unlike the prey of most carnivores, bamboo is not in the habit of running away.
But it is on the subject of sex where the reputation of captive pandas is at greatest odds with the reality in the wild.
Giant pandas have a peculiar reproductive cycle, with adult females becoming fertile just once a year for less than two days.
With such an unusual arrangement, it is inevitable that pandas struggle to breed in captivity. So humans often intervene, imagining that "panda porn" might spark some randiness, or resorting to rectal probes to trigger an ejaculation. But to smirk at the diminutive size of the male panda's winkie, to mock the female panda for being frigid and to propose the species only has itself to blame for its endangered status is nothing short of biological ignorance.
We humans have only been studying giant pandas in the wild since 1980 and we still have so much to learn. But from what we can tell, pandas do sex very, very differently in the wild.
It was the legendary zoologist George Schaller who made some of the first observations of real, wild panda sex. In 1981, he'd been tracking a female called Zhen-Zhen, as were two male pandas – one large, one small. "The small male comes near, moaning, and is promptly attacked again, though I only hear growls, roars, and whines like a pack of dogs fighting and see the bamboo shake violently," he wrote in The Giant Pandas of Wolong.
This species has been around for some 20 million years
It turns out that threesome or more-somes are pretty standard for giant pandas in the wild, an arrangement that would be hard to replicate in any zoo. In just over three hours, Schaller recorded the large male mating with Zhen-Zhen at least 48 times, roughly once every three minutes. This is way more sex than most humans get in a year.
This intensity and frequency of sexual congress may account for the observation that pandas are so much more productive in the wild than they are in captivity. A long-term study of radio-collared pandas in the Qingling Mountains in Shaanxi Province revealed that females reliably give birth every other year and 60% of cubs survive to see in their first birthday. "On the basis of its reproductive potential, the giant panda therefore remains an evolutionarily successful species," wrote zoologist Pan Wenshi and his colleagues in 2004.
If you are still clinging to the panda-bad-sex stereotype, there is one more truth about pandas that you need to digest. This species, in one shape or form, has been around for some 20 million years. That, boys and girls, is the definition of good at sex.
Tweetable truths about giant pandas
Tweet: The giant panda delivers one of the highest bite forces of any carnivore
Tweet: The giant panda spends around 55% of its life collecting, preparing and eating bamboo
Tweet: In the wild, giant panda sex usually involves one female and two or more males
Tweet: In the wild, a female panda may mate over 50 times in a matter of hours, more than most humans get in a yearYanagiba. 15n20 steel with spalted maple handle and saya. Brass and copper bolster with mother of pearl inlay. Blade etched with bamboo, then treated with plum brown for a hint of copper color in the etched areas. Sealed with polyurethane and renaissance wax for UV and water resistance.
The blade is single beveled, right-handed. It is incredibly sharp and meant for slicing sashimi and sushi. Full tang. Knife was taken for a test-drive by a skilled sushi chef who was impressed by the aesthetics and sharpness. Edge has been tested on wood, paper, and a soda can. Despite the thin edge angle, edge retention is great (edge re-sharpened after testing to bring it back to a brand-spanking new condition).
Handmade by Stephanie Aust: www.facebook.com/copperrein
Blade Length: 7 3/4"
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$250 usd shipped to the lower 48. Paypal please.The report calls for a major overhaul of the US justice system
There are more than 1.5 million people in US state and federal jails, a report by a Washington-based criminal justice research group, the JFA Institute says.
Inmate numbers are projected to rise by 192,000 in five years, costing $27.5bn (£13.44bn) to build and run jails.
The JFA recommends reducing the number and length of sentences.
The Unlocking America report, which was published on Monday, also advocated changing terms of parole and finding alternatives to prison as part of a major overhaul of the US justice system.
"There is no evidence that keeping people in prison longer makes us any safer," said JFA president James Austin.
Women convicts
The report said that US crime rates, which have been in decline since the 1990s, are about the same as those for 1973.
The report said that every year hundreds of thousands of Americans are sent to jail "for crimes that pose little if any danger or harm to society".
It cited several examples including a Florida woman's two-year sentence for throwing a cup of coffee at another car in a traffic row.
Its recommendations run counter to the Bush administration's policy of longer, harsher sentences, which the government says has contributed to falling violent crime and murder figures.
The JFA researchers found that women represented the fastest-growing sector of the US prison population.
The report was funded by the Rosenbaum Foundation and the Open Society Institute.Leigh Montagna on the bottom of the pack against Carlton
ST KILDA veteran Leigh Montagna will begin weighing up whether to extend his career into a 17th season from the Saints' round 11 bye.
The 33-year-old had an injury-interrupted start to 2017, missing the opening round of the season because of a right calf strain that kept him out of the JLT Community Series.
Montagna, who continues to provide a steadying influence for the Saints, said talks about his playing future would begin next month.
"I've never been in the situation before where you start thinking about when to talk about the next season," Montagna told Channel Seven on Sunday.
"We've got two more games until the bye. I reckon we'll get to mid-season and start having some conversations and thoughts about it then.
"I'm just trying to worry about getting a kick up until then."
Montagna has played 278 games for St Kilda since debuting in 2002 and is averaging 26 disposals, five marks and four tackles in his seven appearances so far this season.Not your father's surf music
Think you know what surf music is? The Beach Boys? Well, they made really great surf/hot rod albums in their early days, and then didn‘t anymore. The Ventures? They recorded some of the best surf music albums of all time during and even after the heyday of the First Wave of surf music, including the landmark “Ventures in Space“ but they have always rejected the surf music label. Dick Dale? 2011 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the release of “Let’s Go Trippin’”, considered the first surf single ever released. And, of course, Dale’s “Misirlou” from 1963 became the sound of “Pulp Fiction.“ What about another classic surf tune? 1961 also marks the release of “Mr. Moto” by The Belairs. Ever hear “Baja” by The Astronauts? The average person hasn‘t.
Surf music’s popularity was wiped out with The Beatles’ arrival, but not held down. It quietly spread around the world, influencing musicians for now more than five decades. There are more surf bands performing today that at any previous time, and the music many surf bands make, though recognizably surf music, is unlike anything that came before.
Which leads me to the release of “It’s About Time!” by the Tomorrowmen. It’s original. Inventive. Brilliantly written. Brilliantly played and produced. It’s traditional, in that incorporates the classic surf instrumental elements of driving beat, frenetic glissandi, electrifying tremolo picking and crashing waves of reverb. Yet it doesn‘t sound traditional at all. “It’s About Time!” is not your father’s surf music. Tunes like “Midnight at the Chronolab” and “Phistful of Photons” sound almost like spaghetti westerns, but from the 4’th millennium. And that’s the idea. The musical theme isn’t going surfing; it’s the sound-track to a fast-paced visit to the future.
The quality of the musicianship is extraordinary. Danny Snyder (with co-writer Miles Braten on “Phistful of Photons“) has written something like a surf concerto in twelve, three minute movements, plus a beautiful and inventive arrangement of Claire de Lune. Produced and recorded by Ferenc Dobronyi (Pollo del Mar) who did everything from mic selection and placement to providing all the neat old-fashioned spacey sci-fi sound effects so essential to the time-travel musical imagery. It was mixed and mastered by Gary Hobish, master recording engineer extraordinaire (just check his discography). The result is a stunning symbiosis of inventive music played with great skill and production values, perfectly matched to the material, that enhance the listening experience without overwhelming the performances. Recordings don’t get better sounding than this.
Great music isn’t limited to what we are used to and expect. Remember “Ventures in Space“? As I wrote above, this isn’t your father’s (or grandfather’s) surf music. If you try it, “It’s About Time!” just might be your surf music.President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday said the recent killings of teenagers were meant to sabotage his anti-crime efforts.
“Silipin mong (PNP Chief Ronald dela Rosa) mabuti kasi sinasabotahe kayo. Alam mo magbaril iyan, if at all. Pero hindi yung nakabalot. It’s not a job of the police. Sinasadya talaga ‘yan,” Duterte said during the 17th founding anniversary of Digos City.
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(Look deeper into it because you (PNP chief Ronald dela Rosa) are being sabotaged. It’s not the job of the police [to kill kids]. These killings were intentional.)
The President said he and 19-year-old Carl Arnaiz who was killed in Caloocan City by the police were related.
But he did not say how he was related to the victim, who was killed allegedly in a gun battle with Caloocan policemen who were responding to a report of a taxi holdup. His companion, 14-year-old Reynaldo de Guzman was later found dead with his head wrapped in plastic.
“At eto masasabi ko sa inyo –ang diyan sa mga pinatay relative ko. Carl Arnaiz. Relative ko ‘yan. Papayag ako na papatayin ng police? Ako? Papayag ako na papatayin ng police ang kamag-anak ko? he said.
(I have to say this – one of the teenagers killed was related to me: Carl Angelo Arnaiz. We were related. Would I allow police to kill him? Would I allow police to kill my relatives?)
Aside from Arnaiz, 17-year-old Kian Loyd delos Santos was killed by the police in an anti-drug operation also in Caloocan City.
Duterte denied police were carrying out vigilante-style killings of criminals.
“Mag-salvage ng tao (summary execution), we do not do that… Kalokohan iyan (That’s foolish)… Just follow the law. Only when your life is in danger, lumaban (fight) and because you have to place him under the custody, you have to overcome the resistance,” he said.
Duterte said there were people out “to discredit” his administration.
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“May nagluluto diyan to discredit us (There’s a plot to discredit us),” he said.
He ordered dela Rosa to look into the recent killings involving teenagers.
“Silipin mo kasi hindi natin trabaho iyon at hindi ako pumapayag ng ganon (Investigate these killings. These were not the work of police). Kami, we operate within the bounds of the law,” Duterte said./ac
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MOST READThe race to find, and save, ancient artifacts emerging from glaciers and ice patches in a warming world
By ANDREW CURRY
September/October 2013
The Lendbreen ice patch is located high in the mountains of southern Norway, in a range that runs like a spine through Scandinavia. In the 1800s, the area was dubbed the Jotunheim Mountains, or the home of the jötnar, the rock and frost giants of Norse mythology. Its peaks are the highest in northern Europe and are snowbound year-round. The summer of 2006 was unusually warm in the Jotunheim Mountains, with temperatures high enough to melt not just the previous winter’s snow, but also layers of ice beneath, representing thousands of past winters. One day, a woodworker and hobby archaeologist from the nearby town of Lom, in Oppland County, came across a well-preserved leather shoe while hiking near Lendbreen. He carried it back to town and turned it over to curators at the Norwegian Mountain Museum. When archaeologists examined it, they were stunned. It wasn’t a modern shoe, but one that was last worn in the Bronze Age, some 3,400 years ago. It turned out that the conditions at Lendbreen had long been perfect for preserving such ancient artifacts. Objects left on the surface ages ago were covered with snow that eventually compacted to ice, shielding them from decay and disturbance for thousands of years. But the summer of 2006 was warm enough to melt this protective shell, exposing the shoe. The archaeologists wondered, could there be more ancient artifacts hidden in various ice patches? Perhaps more importantly, were some of these artifacts now at risk from the elements? The fortuitous discovery of the Bronze Age shoe helped the local heritage management office push for an organized rescue program to locate, assess, and search dozens of sites in the mountains of Oppland. It’s an effort that combines archaeology with high-tech mapping, glaciology, climate science, and history. When conditions are right, it’s as simple as picking the past up off the ground. “The ice is a time machine,” says Lars Pilö, an archaeologist who works for the Oppland County council. “When you’re really lucky, the artifacts are exposed for the first time since they were lost.” In Scandinavia and beyond, the booming field of glacier and ice patch archaeology represents both an opportunity and a crisis. On one hand, it exposes artifacts and sites that have been preserved in ice for millennia, offering archaeologists a chance to study them. On the other hand, from the moment the ice at such sites melts, the pressure to find, document, and conserve the exposed artifacts is tremendous. “The next 50 years will be decisive,” says Albert Hafner, an archaeologist at the University of Bern who has excavated melting sites in the Alps. “If you don’t do it now they will be lost.”
It’s physically demanding, highly unpredictable work that sometimes involves sitting in tents for days through rain, snow, and high winds, until it is safe to work on the steeply pitched slopes. In summer 2012, I followed Pilö and two archaeologists to the Lendbreen ice patch to get a sense of the challenges involved. There’s no way to get to Lendbreen except on foot (or by helicopter, though that is prohibitively expensive). When we talked on the phone weeks before, Pilö asked for reassurance that I was “fit” before he agreed to take me along. At the trailhead, I began to understand his concern. From an unpaved road in the valley below, we’d gain 3,600 feet in a hike of under four miles, scrambling along gravel-strewn switchbacks at grades of more than 20 percent. A local farmer had gone ahead, leading a pair of horses carrying the heaviest gear—survey equipment, stoves, and camping fuel. But each of us still carried a backpack loaded with food, tents, more survey gear, and extra clothes. Elling Utvik Wammer, a sturdy-looking young Norwegian archaeologist with a beard and a big smile, seemed as heavily loaded as one of the horses, yet I struggled to keep pace with him. The last stretch crossed a few hundred yards of snow; it was like going the wrong way up a ski slope. Underneath, I could hear the rush of a hidden stream, a reminder of the melting ice above. Finally, we made it up and over the last stretch, and I got my first glimpse of Lendbreen. The whole climb up I’d been picturing something massive and glacier-like, but the reality was different. The site looked more like a dirty patch of snow a few hundred yards across, sitting on a steep, rocky incline. Meltwater fed a tiny, dark blue lake at the base of the slope. Moss was the only green to be seen. Not long after we pitched our “Everest-rated” tents next to the lake, the wind picked up. It moaned loudly around the walls of the tent all night. Dawn revealed a miserable scene: Heavy fog obscured the side of the mountain completely, and a mix of sleet and wet snow blew nearly horizontally. It was too dangerous to ascend farther that day. We tried to make the best of it, and sat in a tent as Pilö explained his work and what it means. In Norway, ancient artifacts have been emerging from glaciers and ice patches since the 1930s. Usually the finds amounted to little more than an arrow here or a spear there—isolated misfires lost in the snow in times past. But since that first prehistoric shoe turned up in 2006, archaeologists have found more than 1,600 artifacts in Oppland County alone, sometimes hundreds at a time. Pilö said Oppland’s finds represent more than half the total number found so far in ice patches worldwide. By comparison, the Alps, another hotbed of melting ice, have yielded about 850 objects in recent years.
Pilö told me about the previous year’s trip to Lendbreen, at the end of 2011’s unusually warm summer. He had brought a team of nearly a dozen up to the ice patch. On their last day at the site, as they picked their way across freshly exposed rock in heavy fog, they found a sodden tunic, or kyrtel, woven from heavy wool. A few yards farther on, more cloth objects and wet leather were lying on the rocks. Then, Pilö recalled, the fog lifted a bit. The view was breathtaking. “We were in this hollow with hundreds of artifacts. The whole place was just littered with leather, textiles, wood, and animal dung. It was a fantastic experience, one of the best I’ve had in my career.” As Pilö and others analyzed the artifacts, they realized that almost all were related to elaborately organized reindeer hunting. In the summer, reindeer crowd together on the glaciers and ice patches of the Norwegian highlands. The animals have a strong aversion to botflies, parasites that lay eggs under the skin of large mammals, so they spend summer days on the ice, safe from the flies. That predictable behavior made the reindeer tempting targets for ancient hunters. Melting ice at Lendbreen has revealed evidence of one of their common hunting techniques. The archaeologists have found hundreds of “scare sticks,” wooden stakes with flat wooden shingles attached to them by string so the shingles blow around in the wind. The sticks were planted in the snow in long rows. According to an eighteenth-century report from a Danish missionary in Greenland, the unfamiliar moving objects unsettled the reindeer just enough—without spooking them—to guide them toward stone hunting blinds, where hunters waited with bows or spears. “They had to be quite still in the blinds—the scaring sticks only work if the reindeer aren’t stressed,” Pilö said. In 2009, while working on another ice patch, Pilö’s team spooked a herd of domesticated reindeer and watched them charge through a line of bamboo survey poles topped with strips of tape, an accidental confirmation of the historical accounts. The hunts took place regularly for thousands of years, essentially unchanged until the advent of firearms. “Hunting on your own with a bow and arrow is extremely difficult,” Pilö said. “Reindeer are very shy, and it’s difficult to hit a running reindeer at 100 meters. It was easy to lose equipment, which was quite precious.” The hunting gear found atop the ice patch ranges from scare sticks and arrows to a spear and even a crossbow bolt. The ice patch at Lendbreen also straddles a ridge linking two valleys. Moss-covered rock cairns nearly as tall as a man, along with jagged stones placed upright, mark a trail across the pass that people and their livestock may have used for centuries. The team found plenty of evidence of high-mountain traffic, from that Bronze Age shoe to a Viking mitten, an elaborately carved walking stick, fragments of a ski, and copious horse and sheep dung.
All the artifacts along the pass were lost and frozen some time between A.D. 300 and 1200, but age can be impossible to tell by location alone. Unlike a typical archaeological site, where the oldest finds are on the bottom and the latest artifacts are on the top, Lendbreen is “flat”—when the ice melts, artifacts from separate layers wash down and end up in one layer together. “They were probably lost or dumped in the snow all during this period, but are now found together on the ground,” Pilö said. Though they were all released from the ice during a single summer, radiocarbon dating shows they were once trapped across centuries of accumulated ice. The reason for their emergence together is as clear as melted snow. The world is getting warmer, a phenomenon an overwhelming majority of scientists blame on a sharp increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The consequences of global warming are vividly displayed in the world’s icier regions. An Oppland ice patch called Juvfonne, which sits near the bottom of a glacier that Norwegians ski on year-round, was 65 feet thick when Pilö and his colleagues started working there in 2009. In the last four years, it has lost 13 feet of ice. “It’s very impressive when you can say this melting ice is 5,000 years old, and this is the only moment in the last 7,000 years that the ice has been retreating,” says Hafner. “Ice is the most emotional way to show climate change.” Lendbreen hasn’t melted quite so much, but satellite photos reveal that the 2011 warm spell caused the ice to retreat up to 20 yards in some places. On our last day at the site, I was awakened before dawn by shouting outside the tent. The wind hadn’t slackened all night, and two of the tents had finally given way, aluminum poles crumpling under the assault. Wammer and Julian Martinsen, the third member of the survey team, crowded into the two still-standing shelters for a few more hours of sleep. When the sun finally rose, the storm seemed to have passed. There was still a stiff breeze, but the clouds had parted to reveal patches of blue sky. Pilö decided it was safe enough to hike up to the ice patch itself. Lendbreen, as I saw from below, is no glacier. It is tempting to think of all these melting sites as glaciers, and the field as “glacier archaeology,” but that is a bit of a misnomer. Ice patches like Lendbreen are more conducive to the preservation of ancient artifacts. Glaciers are like rivers of ice. Pushed by accumulating snow and ice at higher altitudes, they flow downhill a few dozen feet a year. Glaciers move, glaciers grind, glaciers pick up boulders the size of SUVs and deposit them miles away. Imagine a slow-motion washing machine filled with rocks. Archaeological material rarely survives inside a glacier for more than a century, and it invariably ends up far from where it was first lost. “Glaciers aren’t suitable for preserving prehistoric items—they’re always moving,” says Hafner.
Ice patches, however, are stationary accumulations of snow and ice, often in isolated basins or on shady mountainsides. Centuries of snowfall accumulate and freeze, creating blocks of ice that can be 65 feet thick or more. Artifacts lost or left in the snow atop an ice patch don’t get churned as they would in a glacier. They are not only perfectly preserved by the ice, but they may also lie close to where they were left or dropped thousands of years ago. “The remains from hunts are preserved on-site,” Pilö said. “[Projectiles] are sometimes still lying in the direction they were originally shot, so you can see the direction the hunter was facing.” Even iron corrodes very slowly in ice patch conditions. Arrowheads have been discovered sitting on bare rock, easily spotted thanks to trickles of rusty meltwater. Among the items preserved by the ice, fabric and leather are the most remarkable—and the most fragile. Wood artifacts may last a few years once they melt out of the ice, but for these items, the clock runs out much faster. “You really have to be there when the leather comes out, because it goes away very quickly,” Pilö said. “You have a week or less to recover leather—it dries out, becomes light and brittle, and blows away.” The discovery of the kyrtel in 2011 was just such a stroke of luck. Made of lamb’s wool and big enough to fit someone about five foot nine, the garment is 1,700 years old. While it is easy to explain how arrows, a walking stick, and even a shoe were lost in this ice patch, why the garment was left behind is a mystery. As I looked up to where the kyrtel was discovered, I wore a lined parka and three pairs of pants. It was hard to imagine why someone would have taken his or her warm wool top off up here. Then Pilö reminded me about the latter stages of hypothermia, which, grimly and counterintuitively, include a feeling of intense warmth. “Maybe they started to feel the last stages of hypothermia and removed their clothing,” Pilö said. I shivered. As the team began to work its way uphill to the ice patch, I quickly fell behind. Pilö, Wammer, and Martinsen picked nimbly along, but the rocks— sharp enough to cut through thick leather hiking boots—shift unpredictably underfoot and slow me down. The team spread out in a loose line, each one a few yards apart, and began walking, heads down. To narrow their search area in vast mountainsides covered with jagged rock, Pilö and his team look for spots not covered in gray-green scales of lichen. Lichen grows slowly, so rocks without it are likely to have been exposed relatively recently—from a few days to a few decades before.
“It’s such a vast landscape, if you’re not right on top of [artifacts] you don’t see them,” Pilö said, eyes on the ground. At least it’s not hard to figure out what’s an artifact: Nothing grows here besides lichen and hardy moss, so the smallest fragment of wood or bone is certain evidence of human activity. Using a GPS device mounted on a long carbon-fiber pole, the archaeologists documented locations of artifacts and where they searched, so they could pick up where they left off if there is another warm summer soon. “We wanted to get control of the situation so in years of heavy melting we can go monitor the sites,” Pilö said. “We have to revisit sites and collect artifacts as the ice disappears. That work is ongoing, and easier to deal with.” Bamboo poles topped with black tape marked areas they had searched. More poles, with blue tape, marked finds. At the end of the day, they would work their way back and gather what they had found. It was slow going, and for an hour or so there was nothing to find but scraps of reindeer antler and fragments of wood. Suddenly there was a shout and a wave. Martinsen had spotted what looked like a sun- |
The cables highlight an often ignored factor in the Pakistani and Afghan conflicts: that the violence is partly bankrolled by rich, conservative donors across the Arabian Sea whose governments do little to stop them. The problem is particularly acute in Saudi Arabia, where militants soliciting funds slip into the country disguised as holy pilgrims, set up front companies to launder funds, and receive money from government-sanctioned charities. In other words, a small fraction of the Saudi money may have gone directly to ISIS, but it is definitely Saudi money that armed and trained terrorists in Russia's Chechnya, Dagestan, North Ossetia, Ingushetia; in Pakistan; along the Afghanistan-Pakistan borders; in the Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan belt in Central Asia and also in Europe, particularly in Britain's Londonistan. These militants have come in droves to the Syrian theater with their expertise to boost ISIS's killing power. In short, the Saudis have shipped money, sermons, and volunteers to Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Russia's North Caucasus, just as they're doing now in Syria. In Chechnya, Saudis such as Ibn al-Khattab, Abu al-Walid, and Muhannad (all noms de guerre) indoctrinated, armed, and trained militants who mired the Chechens in an endless war that killed some 160,000 people, while forcing Chechen women into Saudi-style isolation, and throwing Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, and North Ossetia into turmoil. Many of these jihadis are now on full display in the Syria-Iraq theater on behalf of ISIS. In Afghanistan, Saudi money, and the Pakistani military, backed by Saudi money and support, have created a relatively small, but hardcore, Wahhabi capability in a number of provinces. Although these Afghan Taliban were not notably visible in either Syria or Iraq, they have helped facilitate movement of Saudi-funded Wahhabi terrorists coming down from the north to participate in the Caliphate-formation war in Iraq and Syria. In Pakistan, myriad Saudi-financed Wahhabi and anti-Shi'a terrorists are growing in strength, and trying establish inroads into the Pakistani military; while in Afghanistan, the Saudi- and opium-funded Taliban, spewing Wahhabi venom, are trying to seize power again. In addition, Saudi money is also being distributed to build bases in several nations for recruitment and training of jihadis for future operations. It is evident that such a widespread operation cannot be carried out in stealth for years; it is therefore fair to assume that such base-building is done in collaboration with the targeted nation's intelligence community. These recruits remain available for use by the mother-nation. This became visible when the Libyan Islamic Fighters Group (LIFG) was used to dismantle the Libyan state and kill Colonel Qaddafi. Pakistan and Britain are two important centers where the Saudis operate hand-in-glove with those nations' intelligence apparatus. Britain in the Spotlight Take, for instance, the recent beheading of the American photo-journalist James Foley by a British jihadi working with ISIS. Whether the British jihadi actually carried out the execution, or not, it was evident that ISIS was keen to project its strength, boasting that it has muscle in developed countries, such as Britain. And, indeed, it has. The identified British jihadi was a product of the East London Mosque, situated at the heart of Londonistan, in the borough of Tower Hamlets in East London. Londonistan is a world unto itself, where British intelligence recruits and trains Saudi-funded radical and criminal Sunni Muslims to kill and assassinate, and then deploys them wherever needed to serve the "Empire's interest." Tower Hamlets is where the Shi'a-hating radical Saudi cleric and head Imam of Mecca, Sheikh Adel al-Kalbani (who last year was refused entry into Britain) went to meet local council leaders for a "private meeting" in 2008. He was the guest of the Mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman, a fanatic Islamist who heads the Saudi-funded Jamaat-e-Islami in Britain. According to a Bangladeshi journalist, Tower Hamlets has been converted into the "Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets" under the mayor. That statement was right on the mark. On Aug. 9, The Guardian reported that some 20 Asian youths had gathered around the Tower Hamlets gates, where a black flag, resembling that of ISIS, was hoisted. The flag was subsequently taken down by a Catholic nun. Tower Hamlets is one of many centers where the Saudis breed their Wahhabi recruits. In 2013, when Sheikh al-Kalbani was denied entry to the U.K., followers of radical hate preacher Anjem Choudary, spokesman for the Islamist group Islam4UK, led a demonstration in London in May against Shi'a Muslims, three years after Islam4UK was officially proscribed, on Jan. 14 2010, under the U.K.'s counter-terrorism laws. In other words, the proscription of Islam4UK is a paper job to cover up that group's activities. It is also evident that the Saudi funding for Wahhabi-indoctrinated jihadi fighters has not gone to waste. Among the ISIS foreign fighters, the Londonistan-created jihadists are the largest and most dominant group. The Telegraph, in an Aug. 21 article, "More British Muslims fight in Syria than in U.K. Armed Forces," cited Khalid Mahmood, the Member of Parliament from Birmingham, another recruiting and training center of Londonistan, saying that "1,500 British Muslims have gone to wage jihad since 2011, as opposed to the 400-500 the government estimates and the 650 serving in the British armed forces." [1] Ted Thornton, "The Wahhabi Movement, Eighteenth Century Arabia," Islam Daily, Dec. 7, 2004. [2]Steve Clemons, "Thank God for the Saudis: ISIS, Iraq, and the Lessons of Blowback," The Atlantic,June 23, 2014.Maybe Oprah needs to have another sit down with Chris Christie?
Chris Christie has vowed to veto any gay marriage bill that passes his desk—causing him political headaches since it looks like he may have to put that vow to the test. Also giving the roly-poly governor of New Jersey headaches? A comment he made earlier this week suggesting white Southerners should have been allowed to vote civil rights gains for blacks during the 1960s. Let's just say some people respectfully disagree with the presumed 2016 GOP presidential candidate.
See, as part of his push to have New Jersey voters vote on gay marriage in a referendum (so that he doesn't have to be on the record vetoing or not vetoing gay marriage) Christie said: "The fact of the matter is, I think people would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South." But would they have?
Newark mayor Cory Booker, to name just one of a chorus of Christie critics, certainly didn't agree with the sentiment. "I shudder to think what would have happened if the civil rights gains, heroically established by courageous lawmakers in the 1960s, were instead conveniently left up to popular votes in our 50 states," he said.
But Christie isn't backing down, even if he is changing his wording. At another presser he told reporters, "My point is, they’re trying to say the only way to deal with a civil rights issue is through legislation, and my point is that in a state like this, the fact of the matter is their own polling [which shows 52 percent support for gay marriage] belies that position."
And yet the point remains that, as Assemblyman John Wisiewski puts it, "Rosa Parks didn’t get to the front of the bus through a ballot question and Jim Crow laws weren’t repealed by public referendum."A second fire in less than five weeks occurred at a mosque in Joplin, Missouri early Monday morning. The cause of the latest inferno is still unknown, but Monday’s flames were much more devastating than those that occurred July 4, in an incident that authorities later determined was an act of arson.
Video shot by local television news station KSNF on Monday captured massive flames engulfing the building.Firefighters were called to the scene at the Islamic Center of Joplin around 3:30 a.m., according to KSNF.
The Jasper County Sheriff’s Office told TPM a news conference has been planned for Monday afternoon, and that ATF and the FBI will be involved in the investigation.
“The building was completely destroyed; along with the security cameras,” Jasper County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Sharon Rhine said in an email. “We don’t know at this time if it was arson.”
The FBI was involved with the investigation of the July fire, which was also set at approximately 3:30 a.m. The fire was contained on the roof, and extinguished by the Jasper County Fire Department. On July 16, the FBI announced that surveillance video showed “an unidentified white male walking up to the building and throwing an ignited object onto the roof.” The bureau released a still image of the suspect from the video, and announced that the FBI and ATF were offering a combined reward of $15,000 for information leading to the arrest and indictment of the person or people responsible.
Update 12:18 p.m.: A FBI spokesperson confirmed to TPM that the bureau is assisting the investigation of the latest fire.
“We’re still waiting on a determination on what the cause of the fire was,” spokesperson Bridget Patton said.
Patton added that the mosque was vacant at the time of the fire.Machines quietly tunneling in Muni's Central Subway project Machines bore holes under congested downtown area
Visitors get a peek at the progress in the northbound tunnel of Muni's Central Subway project in San Francisco. Visitors get a peek at the progress in the northbound tunnel of Muni's Central Subway project in San Francisco. Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 24 Caption Close Machines quietly tunneling in Muni's Central Subway project 1 / 24 Back to Gallery
Traveling from South of Market, past Moscone Convention Center and to the far end of Union Square on Saturday morning was an other-worldly experience: no cars, no stores, no tall buildings, no crowded sidewalks, no panhandlers.
Everything was gray. And noisy - a loud constant buzz bordering on a roar mixed with the incessant metallic hammering sound interspersed with occasional beeps. Even the weather was odd. It was warm and humid, yet dry. Still, the pavement underfoot was covered in a sticky layer of mud.
This trip, seemingly out of a science fiction novel, was a tour of the under-construction northbound bore of the Central Subway - the Municipal Transportation Agency's $1.6 billion transit link between the Caltrain station and Chinatown.
The line will stretch 1.7 miles, with a twin-bore tunnel going underground where Interstate 80 crosses Fourth Street. An above-ground station will be built at Fourth and Brannan streets with subterranean stations near Moscone Center at Fourth and Folsom streets, at Union Square and in Chinatown at Stockton and Washington streets, where the tracks will end.
But the tunnel will extend to Powell Street and Columbus Avenue, the site of the old Pagoda Palace Theater in North Beach, where the two tunnel-boring machines will be plucked from the ground and an extension might someday be built.
For now, the two machines - each longer than a football field and weighing 750 tons - are steadily and surreptitiously gnawing 20-foot wide tunnels beneath one of the most-congested parts of the city. Tunneling crews work five days a week, 12 hours a day, with maintenance work taking place when they're not digging.
Borers named after women
Mom Chung, the machine named for the nation's first American-born female Chinese physician, got a head start in July and is now at Stockton and Clay streets in Chinatown. Big Alma, dedicated to socialite and philanthropist Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, started work in November and has made it past Union Square. She's now sitting beneath the Nike store.
Mike Sinon, safety manager for contractor Barnard Impreglio Healy, said it's a tradition as well as a safety precaution to name the tunneling machines - usually after women.
"It's bad juju to not name tunnel-boring machines," he said. "It's done all over the world."
Imperceptible on surface
So far, it seems to be working. John Funghi, the MTA's Central Subway project manager, said the work has been imperceptible on the surface, even when passing beneath some of the city's busiest areas, such as Fourth and Market streets, where the boring machines had to dig beneath Old Navy and Forever 21.
"You could be in the Nike store shopping and you wouldn't feel a thing," Funghi said. "We've been very fortunate. Nothing on the surface has moved. We crossed under BART without stopping or even disrupting service."
The boring machines are made of three parts: a rotating cutting wheel, known as the cutter head, attached to a steel cylinder that serves as a shield and operations center and 300 feet of tunneling equipment. The machine spews a conditioning foam that softens the rock and dirt, which is ground up and inhaled by the cutter head and transported by a giant screw onto conveyor belts that haul the diggings out of the tunnels.
As they lurch forward, 5 feet at a time, the machines install prefabricated curved concrete slabs that form the tunnel's linings. Workers bolt them together and inject caulk behind them, and the boring machines press forward.
The machines excavate and build about 50 feet of tunnel a day, Funghi said. Big Alma is quicker at 54 feet a day compared to Mom Chung's 44-foot average, but Mom Chung holds the performance record of 96 feet in a single day.
As the machines continue to chew their way north, construction crews are working on the North Beach shaft where the machines will be removed. Mom Chung is expected to be pulled out in May with Big Alma following a few months later.
The tunneling may be done this summer, but it will be another 4 1/2 years before passengers can ride the Central Subway in 2019. Construction crews need to build the subway stations, lay the rail beds and install the tracks, overhead power systems and train control and communication equipment.
Metro system connector
"This will be the Metro system connecting north and south, which has not been connected by rail so far," said Paul Rose, an MTA spokesman. "It's connecting Chinatown, one of the densest areas not only in the city but in the state and country."
He said the project is on schedule and on budget.
While the tunneling may be going smoothly, subway opponents, particularly in North Beach, continue to fight the project, which they contend is disrupting businesses. Howard Wong, a member of Save Muni, which opposes the subway, said two North Beach restaurants have closed, in part because of the noise and dust from construction, and several Chinatown businesses have seen huge drops in business due to the closure of Washington Street at Stockton Street.
"The impacts on Chinatown and North Beach have been severe," he said.Ukraine offers joint production of rocket engines with US to replace Russian models Thursday, June 2, 2016 2:25:00 PM
Ukraine has proposed a joint development and production of a rocket engine designed to replace Russian models that are currently used for the launch of U.S. military satellites, Radio Svoboda reported.
On the 31st of May, the Head of the State Space Agency of Ukraine, Luybomyr Sabadosh stated that he proposed a plan to replace Russian RD-180 rocket engines during his visit to the U.S.A. Congress decided to stop using RD-180 engines until 2019.
“This is a challenging task but we can handle it,” Sabadosh said. He noted that the U.S. expressed interest in this idea and that further negotiations will take place in November in Kiev.
Congress instructed U.S. servicemen to find an alternative to Russian rocket engines after relations between Russia and the United States deteriorated sharply in 2014 because of the annexation of Crimea and Moscow’s role in the armed conflict in the Donbas.
The Pentagon stated that U.S. private contractors need time and incentives for the development of alternative options. Attempts to immediately replace Russian rocket engines will require significant resources.
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Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.A 34 year old man from Southampton is celebrating a life changing win after betting just £30 with William Hill.
The mechanic, who told he wishes to remain anonymous, picked all seven winners in an accumulator bet on the racing at Wolverhampton on Wednesday.
“I chose the horses based on their names,” he revealed. “I looked at ones who were favourites and selected them at random based upon names that I liked.
“I was watching the results come in and after the first three had won, I started texting the wife. When the seventh had won, I was jumping around the place. It’s the biggest high I have ever had.”
The married punter, who also has three children, is planning on buying his very first house with the winnings – but the mystery mechanic now plans on keeping his feet firmly on the ground.
“I’ll be working this weekend and I don’t plan on telling many people, else they’ll all be wanting discounts!”
LUCKY SEVEN SELECTIONS
12.50 Wolverhampton – Whitecliff Park (odds 5/4)
1.20 Wolverhampton – Artful Mind (odds 9/2)
1.50 Wolverhampton – Mr Boss Man (odds 7/4)
2.20 Wolverhampton – Oakley Girl (odds 4/1)
2.50 Wolverhampton – Perfect Cracker (odds 5/1)
3.20 Wolverhampton – Bank Of Gibraltar (odds 7/2)
3.50 Wolverhampton – Ohsosecret (odds 11/4)
The exact details of the bet were a £10 each-way accumulator on the seven horses and a further £10 win accumulator on the same seven horses, totally £30 in stakes.A tale of an wannabe fighter.
The hours spent at the gym, punching and kicking pads, jumping and running like a lion is chasing you and when you’re feeling like you’re done, the trainer saying “20 sec rest, two more to go!” and you look thinking “are you fucking serious?”
I couldn’t complain, it was my choice to fight. But i couldn’t help it, doubts started to crawl in my mind: “Can i do this? Maybe i should fight next time. No, the fight is set, no backing down.”. Your gym mates talking to you, saying you’re good and capable of pulling this off, but in fact, instead of convincing me that i’m good enough, i thought: “Dammit, i can’t disappoint them now.”. Sure, no pressure. =)
Last day of training before the fight, the coach seemed to smell my doubt, and his solution was giving me the toughest training he could, putting me to jump rope, run, punch, kick without rest saying: “Don’t slack!! you’re going to fight! It will be much worse than this!”. “Wow, thanks for the info, coach.”. And when i began wanting to give up, he came at my side with a pad on his hand: “I’ll hit you if you stop. Do not stop.” After this training, i felt confident, and again, my mates said i would win. This wasn’t necessarily true, but at this point, anyone stepping on a ring don’t need truth, they need confidence.
Fight day. I didn’t knew who i was going to fight and i began to look for “potential threats” among the participants, but later i stopped. No use doing so. Instead, i started to try to keep my cool, even knowing it is almost impossible.
After seeing my fight was the #16 of 18 fights, i cursed, because what kills you inside it is not fight itself, it is the wait. Damn… it’s torturing, specially for an anxious guy like me.
Fight time. I became oblivious of the crowd, heck, i could barely notice my coach. The bell sang, and my blood turned into cold water. It is a strange sensation, your punches don’t “feel right”, like they haven’t any weight behind it, and things i’ve done with eyes closed at the gym, felt like trying to launch a rocket using an abacus, even breathing.
Round over. Poor me, thinking i wouldn’t tire so much because i could handle the training. At least, i remembered to clinch and knee, and truth to be said, that saved me. Last round, after landing some good blows, i heard from my corner: “He’s tired! Get him!!”. “Fuck, i’m tired too your bastard”- i thought. Ding! Fight is over. So tired that even trying to pay attention to the results announcement was hard.
But at the end, it was my arm raised. It felt good. =)Reading books and writing reports are forms of punishment familiar to many high school students.
But an Iranian judge believes that reading could help deter offenders from committing further crimes, and is sentencing criminals to read books instead of spending time in prison.
Judge Qasem Naqizadeh, president of a criminal court in the northeastern Iranian city of Gonbad-e Kavus, is trying to reduce the local prison population by ordering criminals to buy and read five books each. The convicts then have to write a summary of their reading, which is handed into the judge, reports the BBC.
The punishment is mainly for young people without previous convictions and individuals found guilty of minor crimes. Offenders may choose their reading from a selection of approved texts and are also required to study a saying from the hadith, which is a collection of quotes attributed to the Prophet Muhammad.
Reading books “strengthens the spirit of faith and the will to solve social problems,” Judge Naqizadeh told state-run news agency IRNA (link in Farsi). He added that the sentence would avoid the “irreversible physical and psychological impact on convicts and their families” that comes from time in prison.
Judge Naqizadeh began handing out reading sentences after a recent law ruled that judges could decide on alternative punishments to prison in certain cases. The selection of books includes simple texts as well as more sophisticated writing, so even uneducated criminals are able to read the literature.
It’s an unusual sentence, but Judge Naqizadeh’s policy could prove effective. After all, education is an essential tool used to help rehabilitate convicts.
And while reading may not be a foolproof solution to recidivism, neither is prison.Luas operator Transdev has placed all staff on protective notice with immediate effect and has warned of pay deductions to offset the cost of their industrial action.
In a letter to staff the company said future employment will be on a day-to-day basis and it will impose an "appropriate financial deduction" for unacceptable part-performance of duties.
Staff refusing to perform full duties will be deemed to have removed themselves from the payroll.
Staff who continue the industrial action after 24 April will face pay deductions to offset the cost of the dispute, it said.
The workers have also been given until 17 April - this Sunday - to accept a revised pay offer which is lower than the Workplace Relations Commission proposals overwhelmingly rejected by staff some weeks ago.
Any future offer will be even lower.
At a meeting yesterday, the company told SIPTU representatives they would be writing to employees outlining the consequences of continuing the dispute, including the risk of breach of contract proceedings against employees due to part-performance of their employment contracts.
Transdev Managing Director Gerry Madden said the company will do everything reasonable to ensure it remains as the operator of Luas.
He said the company has a responsibility to its customers but SIPTU is making demands that are unreasonable and that cannot be met.
He added that Transdev does not want a full stoppage of the service and further strikes cannot be tolerated, but it cannot magic money it does not have.
Mr Madden said SIPTU has an opportunity to bring the dispute to an end.
SIPTU divisional organiser Owen Reidy said the union will support Luas members against what he said was aggressive actions by Transdev.
He said the union is now considering a ballot for an all-out strike and Transdev's move makes a negotiated settlement in the pay dispute even more remote.
He accused Transdev of pursuing aggressive measures while operating a multi-million euro publicly funded State contract.
Earlier, Mr Reidy said there were many possibilities to try to resolve the dispute, but said there were others who needed to "step up to the plate".
"I think there are many possibilities but what I think needs to happen is that beyond Transdev and SIPTU, who are the two main actors in this dispute, the other stakeholders who have a responsibility for public transport and the operation of the contract need to step up to the plate," Mr Reidy said.Mar 12, 2017; Carson, CA, USA; Portland Timbers midfielder Darlington Nagbe (6) dribbles the ball against the LA Galaxy during a MLS soccer game at StubHub Center. The Timbers defeated the Galaxy 1-0. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
The Portland Timbers have won their first two matches of the season for the first time ever, defeating the Los Angles Galaxy 1-0 on Sunday.
An early goal in the eighth minute proved to be the match-winner as Diego Chara tapped in a pass from Diego Valeri.
The LA Galaxy’s comeback hopes took a hit when captain Jelle Van Damme received a second yellow card and was sent off in 34th minute. However, the home side continued to attack and almost found an equaliser at the very last breath, but Timbers goalkeeper Jake Gleeson made a terrific save to preserve the win.
Here are three takeaways from Sunday’s match.
#1 Timbers off to a good start
A 5-1 win last week and 1-0 result this week will have Timbers fans pleased with their clubs start. Their win against the Galaxy is the club’s first away result since the 2015 MLS Cup Final. Granted, it wasn’t a win against a full squad, but a result is a result in this league and the Timbers have something going here.
#2 Galaxy fight for points
It was a tough match for the Galaxy, losing Giovani dos Santos in the first half, and being a man down for almost two-thirds of the match was a tall ask of them. However, they made an effort to try and rescue a point at the end and they probably would have if it wasn’t for some fine goalkeeping by Gleeson.
There were holes in the defense at times and the Timbers goal was an awful display as defending as Valeri and Chara just walked into the box. On the contrary, Rafael Garcia’s last stitch save on Fernando Adi’s breakaway was one of the best hustle plays of the weekend.
With dos Santos reportedly being evaluated Monday, the Galaxy could take a big hit if the results are not good.
#3 Gleeson was fantastic
The Timbers goalkeeper had some big saves in the match and was the man of the match in that aspect. He records his seventh career clean sheet and improves to 2-0 as a starter this season.
What a save by Jake Gleeson to preserve the Timbers lead. #LAvPOR https://t.co/fdGwypjeFa — Major League Soccer (@MLS) March 13, 2017
Next, the Timbers will play host to the Houston Dynamo on Saturday. Both teams have won their first two games of the season. The LA Galaxy will travel to Rio Tinto Stadium to play Real Salt Lake on Saturday as well.While not very glamorous, Bitmap Marking Garbage
Collection is a dramatic, creative innovation!
You may have heard last week how Innokenty Mihailov’s great Enumerable::Lazy feature was accepted into the Ruby 2.0 code base. But you may not have heard about an even more significant change that was merged into Ruby 2.0 in January: a new algorithm for garbage collection called “Bitmap Marking.” The developer behind this sophisticated and innovative change, Narihiro Nakamura, has been working on this since 2008 at least and also implemented the “Lazy Sweep” garbage collection algorithm already included in Ruby 1.9.3. The new Bitmap Marking GC algorithm promises to dramatically reduce overall memory consumption by all Ruby processes running on a web server!
But what does “bitmap marking” really mean? And exactly why will it reduce memory consumption? If you know Japanese you can read a detailed academic paper published in 2008 by Narihiro Nakamura along with Yukihiro (“Matz”) Matsumoto. I was so interested I spent some time this week studying the garbage collection code in MRI Ruby myself, and this article will summarize what I learned. You won’t get any Ruby programming tips here today, but hopefully you’ll come away with a better understanding of how garbage collection actually works internally, of why Ruby 2.0 is something to look forward to, and of how innovative and creative the Ruby core developers really are.
Mark and Sweep
As I explained in my article from January, Never create Ruby strings longer than 23 characters, every Ruby string value is saved internally by MRI in a C structure called RString, short for “Ruby String.” Each RString structure is split into two halves like this:
At the bottom we have the actual string data itself, while at the top I’ve shown the word “flags” to represent various internal metadata values about the string that Ruby keeps track of. It turns out that all values used by your Ruby program are saved in similar structures called RArray, RHash, RFile, etc. They all share the same basic layout: some data and the same set of flags. The common name for this type of structure, which is shared across all the internal object types, is RValue – meaning “Ruby Value.”
Ruby allocates and organizes these RValue structures in arrays called “heaps.” Here’s a conceptual diagram of a Ruby heap array, containing the three string values along with many other RValue’s:
As your Ruby program runs, whenever you create a new variable or value of some type the Ruby interpreter finds an available RValue structure in the heap and uses it to save the new value. Of course, you don’t need to worry about this at all; it’s all handled automatically and smoothly for you.
Well – it’s not that smooth at times, actually. What happens when the RValue structures in the heap run out? …when there are none left to save a new value your program requires? This actually happens more frequently than you might expect because there are many RValue structures that you might not be aware of created internally by Ruby. In fact, your Ruby code itself is converted into a large number of RValue structures as it is parsed and converted into byte code.
When there are no more RValue structures available and your program needs to save a new value, Ruby runs its “garbage collection” (GC) code. The garbage collector’s job is to find which of these RValue’s are no longer being referenced by your program and can be recycled and reused for some other value. Here’s how it works, at a high level….
First, the GC code “marks” all of the active RValue structures, That is, it loops through all of the variables and other active references that your program has to RValue structures, and marks each one using one of those internal flags called FL_MARK.
This is the first half of Ruby’s “Mark and Sweep” GC algorithm. The marked structures are actively being used by your Ruby program and cannot be freed or reused.
Once all the structures in the system are marked, the remaining structures are “swept” into a single linked list using the “next” pointer in each RValue structure: In this diagram, I’ve shown the FL_MARK flags in the heap array with the letter “M,” and below that you can see the list of unmarked RValue’s, called the “free list:”
As you might guess, the free list can now be used to provide new RValue structures to your Ruby program as it continues to run. Now every time your Ruby program allocates a new object or value, it uses an RValue from the free list, and removes it from the list. Eventually the free list will become empty again and Ruby will have to start another garbage collection.
After a while it might be that there are no unmarked structures left in the heap at all, that all of the available RValue’s are being used, in which case Ruby will allocate an entire new heap with more RValue structures. (Actually it allocates new heaps 10 at a time.) A typical Ruby program might end up having many different heap arrays.
Copy-On-Write: how Unix shares memory across different child processes
Before we can get to “Bitmap Marking” and why it’s important, we first need to learn about a feature of Linux and other Unix and Unix-like operating systems that is related to memory management and memory allocation: Copy-On-Write optimization. On these OS’s when a process calls fork to create a child process which is a copy of itself, the new child process will share all of the memory – all of the data, variables, etc. – that the parent had previously allocated. This makes the fork call much faster by avoiding copying memory around unnecessarily, and also reduces the total amount of memory required.
This is called “Copy-On-Write” because separate copies of a shared memory segment are made when and if one of the child processes tries to modify the shared memory. This is similar to the trick that the Ruby interpreter itself uses to manage RString values; for details check out a post I wrote in January about this: Seeing double: how Ruby shares string values.
To understand this better, take a look at this conceptual diagram of a Ruby process:
Here I’ve shown a Ruby program that has two heaps as an example. Now suppose this Ruby program is running on a web server – maybe it’s a Rails web application – and now a second HTTP request arrives from another user:
Now we have two Ruby processes running. Possibly this server is running Apache with something like Passenger that forks a separate Ruby process to handle each HTTP request.
The nice thing about Copy-On-Write optimization in Linux is that many of the RValue structures in the heap arrays can be shared between these two Ruby programs, since they often contain the same values. It might not seem that this would be the case at first glance; why would many – or any – of the variables in two Ruby programs be the same? But remember on a web server you are actually running two or more copies of the same code, creating the same variables over and over again. Also, many of the RValue structures in the heap actually correspond to the parsed version of your Ruby program itself – the nodes in the “Abstract Syntax Tree” (AST). Since each process is running the same code, all of these nodes will have the same values and won’t ever change. Of course, some of the data values will be different and will be saved separately inside each process – user data typed into web forms and submitted, results of SQL queries on different records, etc.
But, as great as this sounds, it doesn’t actually work for Ruby!
Why not? Well, because as soon as Ruby has to run the Mark & Sweep garbage collection algorithm I explained above, all of those AST nodes and many other RValue structures in the heap are all marked, since they are still being used by the Ruby program. This means they are modified to set the FL_MARK flag, and the Copy–On-Write code in the operating system has to start creating new copies of the memory. So in fact on a typical Ruby web server this is what happens:
That one little FL_MARK bit is wreaking havoc! It prevents what would normally be a tremendous reduction in server memory usage from actually happening.
One important note here: Hongli Lai from Phusion, the creators of the popular Passenger middleware component that connects Apache with Rack based Ruby apps, patched Ruby 1.8 and created a new version of Ruby known as Ruby Enterprise Edition that solves this problem and contains a number of other performance improvements. So in fact many Ruby 1.8 apps that use REE have been able to take advantage of Unix Copy-On-Write for years now. But Copy-On-Write still doesn’t work with standard MRI Ruby 1.8 or 1.9.
Garbage Collection in Ruby 2.0: Bitmap Marking
Here’s where Narihiro Nakamura’s changes for Ruby 2.0 come in! Instead of using the FL_MARK bit in each of the RValue structures to indicate that Ruby is still using an value and that it cannot be freed, Ruby 2.0 saves this information in something called a “bitmap” instead. No… here “bitmap” does not refer to an image file; “bitmap” in this context refers to a literal collection of bits mapped back to the RValue structures:
For each heap in Ruby 2.0 there is now a corresponding memory structure that contains a series of 1 or 0 bit values. As you might guess, the 1 values are equivalent to the FL_MARK flag being set in a Ruby 1.8 or Ruby 1.9 process, while a 0 is equivalent to the FL_MARK flag not being set. In other words, the FL_MARK bits have been moved out of the RString and other object value structures, and into this separate memory area called the bitmap.
Narihiro implemented this by adding a header structure to the beginning of each heap which contains a pointer to the bitmap corresponding to that heap’s RValue structures, along with some other values. What this means is that Ruby 2.0 can now mark all of the in-use structures during the “mark” portion of the GC processing without actually modifying the structures themselves, allowing Unix to continue to share memory across different Ruby processes! The bitmaps themselves, of course, are modified frequently by Ruby 2.0, but since they use a contiguous stream of bits they are actually quite small and can be saved separately in each process without using too much memory.
One interesting and important detail here is that the memory allocated for heaps now must be “aligned.” What this means is that when allocating memory for the heap, instead of calling malloc as usual, the Ruby C code calls posix_memalign which on a Linux or Unix operating system returns the new memory aligned to a power of two address boundary.
What the heck does that mean? Well if you’re familiar with C programming or bitwise arithmetic, it allows the Ruby C code to quickly calculate the location of the “header” structure, which contains the pointer to the bitmap, from a given RValue object’s memory address. Let’s take another look at a Ruby 2.0 heap:
Suppose that |
White Hart Lane he also formed part of the England U20 setup again in 2013, acting as Peter Taylor’s assistant at the World Cup in Turkey, where current man-of-the-moment Harry Kane led the line for the Young Lions.
Building a career
Ramsey was a popular figure at Spurs, having worked with the academy and the first team, with Ledley King one of the many senior players who enjoyed his approach to both the game and youth development – something the QPR squad seem to have bought into already.
Ramsey had a spell as England U20 coach
"He is one of the best coaches around." King told the London Evening Standard in 2012. "The youngsters love the way he works and they have really bought into his methods.
"If you look at what he's done, he's brought fresh ideas and they have filtered through. Chris has changed a lot at Tottenham, in terms of the academy and the improvement of players."
Ramsey started his senior playing career at Brighton and reached the 1983 FA Cup final with the Seagulls, playing out a 2-2 draw with Manchester United before missing the 4-0 defeat in the replay through injury.
After spending three years at Swindon – where he won the old Fourth Division in 1986 – he had a short spell at Southend before finishing his playing career abroad as he moved into coaching, first with Maltese outfit Naxxar Lions and then Cocoa Expos in the US.
Youth investment
Last year Ramsey and QPR club legend Les Ferdinand both moved to Loftus Road after taking an FA course together which qualified them to become boardroom directors. The latter was handed the director of football role at QPR at the beginning of February, while Ramsey has now been entrusted with immediate matters on the field.
The caretaker boss handed youngster Michael Doughty his debut in Wednesday’s win at Sunderland – a move that appears to match the sentiments of club chairman Tony Fernandes.
Ramsey’s experience with the youth set-up at Loftus Road could stand him in could stead to take the job permanently in the summer, with Fernandes keen to develop players from within rather than follow a pattern of bringing in expensive talent.
"We've made a number of mistakes in the transfer market over the last few years and it's something we want to change,” Fernandes told Talksport last week.
"We don't want to be a buying club - we want to nurture young talent and build a young, ambitious team."
He’s been matter-of-fact about things, really clear and direct in his instructions - it’s something the lads have really appreciated and obviously responded to QPR goalkeeper Rob Green on Ramsey
It's clear Ramsey is a popular figure among players, and that could be a key factor in ensuring the Rs keep their top-flight status for another season.
During his time as a coach he has garnered a reputation for being an approachable character, and goalkeeper Rob Green was singing his praises after the win at the Stadium of Light.
“It’s been a great few days – difficult circumstances for him to come into,” said the goalkeeper. “He’s been matter-of-fact about things, really clear and direct in his instructions. It’s something the lads have really appreciated and obviously tonight have responded to."
Whether Ramsey can convince Fernandes to give him a long-term deal remains to be seen, but a champion of youth development such as he is likely prove to be popular, especially if he can unearth the next Harry Kane or Charlie Austin at Loftus Road.By Paul A. Goble.
Ukrainians and others increasingly recognize that Russia will change its approach to Ukraine only when Russia itself changes, a conclusion that has led many to consider how Russia might change and reflect on what Ukraine must do until its eastern neighbor has become very different from what it is today.
Unfortunately, the prospects for Russia changing in a positive direction are slight, particularly as far as Ukraine is concerned, and consequently, many have concluded, Ukrainians must face up to the fact that they will have to change themselves and their country to be in a position to counter a Russian threat well into the future.
One of the most useful and comprehensive of these discussions is offered by Valery Pekar, a research at Kyiv’s GOSH Strategy Center, in a 2500-word article for the Hvylya.netportal in which he considers eight different scenarios according to which Russia might develop.
On the basis of his analysis of Russian history and the current state of Russian society, he dismisses four of them as impossible or at least extremely improbable. They are “an economic revolt of the masses, an economic revolution of the middle class, an oligarchic revolution, and a military coup,” any of which would represent a complete break with Russian traditions.
But he suggests the other four – “the withdrawal of Russia from Ukraine as a result of a shift of focus to Asia or an internal enemy, an economic and infrastructure collapse and disintegration, a New Horde of passionate movements from the North Caucasus, and a palace coup.”
Elements of the last three of these he suggests “could happen simultaneously,” and that would lead Russia to a ninth scenario, one that he labels “the Black Hole” and suggests could easily prove the most frightening of all not only for Russia and Ukraine but for the rest of the world as well.
“Everything would be fine,” Pekar writes, “if after a palace coup, those in office were able to hold on.” But it is likely that “the system is [so] unbalanced” that this may not prove to be the case. In that event, “the new authorities will turn out to be a Provisional Government,” something with which Russia and the world already have experience.
In that event, he continues, the West might be tempted to intervene and seek to “remove from the Russian leadership all the strong and dangerous figures of the old regime, not understanding that this will lead to a power vacuum as occurred in Iraq.” In that event, all the forces in Russian society would emerge and fight with one another for power.
That would lead to “a bubbling pot” of a civil war in which Russia would either become “an anthropological desert” or split up into “a multitude of pieces” or “give birth to a new monster like Soviet Power or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.” And it would put Ukraine and Russia’s other neighbors at risk, however many walls and moats they build.”
Tragically, neither this outcome nor any of the other negative ones can be excluded, Pekar says, and thus “there is not one scenario in which a strong and aggressive Russia would become a peaceful neighbor for Ukraine” while at the same time, “a weak and disintegrating Russia represents for Ukraine no less a threat.”
Given that, some in Ukraine and far more in the West hope for a deus ex machine in Moscow, “a successful pro-Western palace coup;” but such hopes, Pekar says, are almost certainly misplaced. How stable could the outcome of such a turn of events be? he asks rhetorically.
The answer is not encouraging. While it might be successful as the one in Serbia was, it is more likely that it would end unsuccessfully “as in Iraq.” That is because “there are no new forces [in Russia, just as there weren’t in Iraq] prepared to take responsible for the country” after the old order was overthrown.
Moreover, Pekar says, “present-day Russian foreign policy to the full degree is a reflection of the desires of the Russian people, to such a degree that alternative figures like Navalny and Khodorkovsky would be forced to follow the expectations of their electorates,” something that does not bode well for Russia’s approach to Ukraine.
Given that “in the overwhelming majority of the more probable scenarios, Russia will represent a continuing threat to Ukraine,” Pekar argues that Ukrainians must do ten things:
They must “develop a strategy for war with Russia” in all its spheres. They must “complete the transformation of the army” and make it into “a contemporary armed force capable of repelling Russian aggression.” They must gain the support of Western countries by clearly explaining that “only Ukraine stands between them and the chaos coming from the east.” They must shift their military industry to the west given the real threats to Ukraine now. They must “harshly struggle with Russia’s network of agents in the force structures, politics, and the media.” They must oppose Russian propaganda by all possible means, including the establishment of their own counter-propaganda system. They must “gradually but unceasingly break economic ties with Russia, especially as concerns energy dependence.” They must come up with a new migration policy. They must “develop a new Ukrainian culture which will drive out Russian culture from the consciousness of the citizens.” And they must offer the world a vision of Ukraine as a subject of international politics” rather than simply that of a former Soviet republic.
In short, Pekar says, Ukrainians must make their country “strong, independent and economically flourishing,” a task for both the government and the people as well. And they can best achieve these goals by dispensing with “myths about fraternal peoples, close economic ties, and closely related cultures.”New high for prices as sales in S.A. rise
The median price of an existing home in San Antonio passed 2008 levels this month. The median price of an existing home in San Antonio passed 2008 levels this month. Photo: Harry Thomas Photo: Harry Thomas Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close New high for prices as sales in S.A. rise 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
Home sales warmed up with the weather in June, with price hitting an all-time high.
The median price of an existing home jumped 7.9 percent, compared with the same month last year, to $168,800, according to sales data released Wednesday by the San Antonio Board of Realtors.
The previous all-time price high was in July 2010, which saw a median of $161,800, according to the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University.
It was the best June for home prices since the summer of 2008, just before the financial crisis hit the real estate market. And the number of home sales rose 3.7 percent, to 2,018 transactions.
“The numbers are much better than we anticipated,” said Angela Shields, president and CEO of SABOR. “It's proven to be a really good summer for us.”
Shields said that 40 percent of the market in June was for homes priced higher than $200,000. Traditionally, that number has been closer to 30 percent of the market, with 70 percent of house hunting happening below the $200,000 mark.
“I think what we're really seeing from the agents is that consumer confidence is having buyers look above the $200,000 mark,” Shields said. “It's pushing the average and median price up.”
The average home price in June was $209,820, up from $192,514 last June.
The market for resale homes is most active during the summer, as people try to time moves during school summer vacations. Prices usually hit their highest points of the year during June and July.
Tom Patterson of North Loop Inc. Realtors said it is obvious there is more activity in the market this year, with some homes selling within days of listing, although that's not typical.
“There's a lot of traffic out there. There are people looking,” Patterson said.
He recently had one home sell in three days and another in four days, and he has noticed that mortgage loan applications and approvals seem to be going more smoothly.
At the end of June, there were 10,531 existing homes for sale. San Antonio has a 6.9-month inventory of homes. For a long time, buyers have been in the driver's seat during negotiations, but the dropping inventory has been starting to put sellers on more equal footing.
There were 1,705 pending sales at the end of June, according to SABOR.
The Real Estate Center expects the local market to see a 5 percent to 10 percent increase in sales volume for the year and an improvement in the median price of 2 percent to 4 percent.DeAndre Jordan #6 of the LA Clippers is seen against the Denver Nuggets on January 21, 2017 at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado.
“Is it official or unofficial?”
That was the question Los Angeles Clippers center DeAndre Jordan asked his media relations directors when they texted him that they believed he was an NBA All-Star team for the first time on Jan. 26. Jordan expected to be snubbed and had planned a vacation in Hawaii, so he wasn’t going to trust a rumor. But he eventually did get official word from the league that his elusive days of landing an All-Star selection had come to an end.
“They said, ‘We just got a text from the NBA,’ ” Jordan told The Undefeated. “They were like, ‘Yo, they think you’re going to make it.’ [I asked,] ‘They think I’m going to make it or I made it? What do you mean, ‘they think,’ because I’m about to buy this trip.’
“They said, ‘Well, officially you made it.’ And I was like, ‘Oh s—-.’ I was superexcited.”
Jordan was selected as a Western Conference reserve frontcourt player by the conference’s coaches and will be the Clippers’ lone NBA All-Star this year, as usual selections Chris Paul and Blake Griffin were not selected. The defensive-minded big man could arrive at the 2017 NBA All-Star Game in New Orleans as the league’s leader in both rebounds per game and field goal percentage.
Jordan talked to The Undefeated about finally officially becoming an All-Star, why he left practice expecting to be snubbed again, his mom’s reaction to the news, brotherly love and more.
So you didn’t think you would be selected as an All-Star?
After practice on Thursday, I had my trip to Hawaii ready to go. I was superexcited about it. I was waiting for this one last little thing [All-Star announcement]. I was leaving at 6 in the morning [of Feb. 16] and was ready to rock. Someone texted me and said, ‘Hey, you got to cancel that trip to Hawaii.’ I was like, ‘No, this is done. This is set. What’s up?’
I was thinking that they would have known at practice if I made it or not. They didn’t say nothing at practice, so I was like, ‘Cool, I didn’t make it. I’m about to set my trip up.’
Who was the first person you contacted?
I called my mom and said, ‘I’m not going to Hawaii.’ And she was like, ‘Why not? What’s going on?’ So I said, ‘I made the All-Star team.’ She said, ‘Oh, my God. For real? Don’t play with me, boy.’ I said, ‘For real.’ She said, ‘DeAndre, stop playing.’ I said, ‘This is what I was told,’ She said, ‘What they say? They better not be bulls—ing, you.’ I said, ‘Mom, I’m telling you what they told me.’ So she was superexcited.
I called my brothers and told them. They were superexcited. I told my son and he is only 13 months old. And he looked at me like, ‘All right. Whatever. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He wasn’t like, ‘Daddy made the All-Star team.’ He was just like, ‘OK, read me this book. I don’t care what you’re talking about.’ But I was superexcited. Nine years. Some years I thought I was going to make it. Some years I knew I wasn’t going to make it. This was pretty exciting.
What emotions did you have when the news settled in?
There was definitely a couple of those times where I was just thinking, ‘Wow. It’s been a long time coming.’ I’m superexcited about it. I got to be thankful to all my teammates for the time that we’ve put in and I put in. I’m grateful. I’m going to represent us the right way.
Are you disappointed that Chris and Blake weren’t selected to join you?
We could never figure that out. When Chris went down [with a thumb injury], I was like, ‘Oh, s—.’ I know they are both really proud of me. I’m superexcited. It’s my first one. I don’t know what to expect. But I got a lot of phone calls and texts from a lot of my peers from around the league, family, friends and things like that.
Had you given up on the possibility of being an All-Star after not making it the previous eight seasons?
I did. I was at peace with it. I was cool. I know my value around the league. I know my teammates respect me and guys around the league do, too. I wasn’t concerned about it anymore. After three years I was like, ‘All right, cool.’ Starting three years ago, I was looking forward to my vacation, hanging out and supporting my teammates who did go. It’s my ninth season, but better late than never.
Anything in particular that you are looking forward to NBA All-Star weekend?
The experience. Different nights going out there supporting guys [in other events]. Just having a good time, as much as I can, with my family, my friends and the guys I’m going to be playing with and against.
It seemed like much of your NBA career has been overlooked until you were named a 2016 all-NBA first team center and earned a gold medal with USA Basketball during the 2016 Rio Olympics. Now, things are rolling individually. Would you agree with that?
I am having a pretty good few months … It’s just something I want to build on. I don’t want to make the All-Star team just one time now that I have gotten a piece of it. I want to build on that and ultimately reach the team goal by getting out of the second round and winning a championship. It’s been frustrating, but this is another building block and stepping-stone for me. I have more motivation to become a better player.
How hard is it to get respect as a defensive standout?
It’s hit-and-miss. You are valued and respected throughout the league from players and coaches. There are people that don’t know the game of basketball except for points, flash, highlights and all that s—. It’s not really looked at that way. People that really know the game of basketball know what is good and what is not.
They know what helps win games and ultimately championships. I’m going to continue to be the best DeAndre I can be. I know what I’m good at and I’ll just build at that.
Of all the congratulatory messages you received, which one meant the most?
Probably my brothers. I was on a group chat with them and they were like, ‘Man, about time. My brother is an All-Star!’ That’s cool to hear because my brothers are my biggest critics and they are also my biggest fans. For them to be able to experience this with me is amazing. I love each and every one of them so much.
They’ve seen the ups and downs of my career from high school to the NBA. It’s cool that it’s starting to show. They’re going to be there with me and have a good time.References to PC and Orbis (PlayStation 4) versions of GTA V were found some days ago in a XML file of the Xbox 360 version of the game.
Now, more details about GTA V for PC have been discovered by Reddit user “Hal_Nein_Thousand” looking into the same XML file but, in this case, from the PS3 version of the game, which contains a lot of beta changelogs and detailed bug reports left over, including reports tied to PC, DX11 and x64.
985459 – PC – [PT][PB] Crash – > game_win32_beta_ dx11.exe!strRequest::Release() Line 47 + 0xf bytes C++
!strRequest::Release() Line 47 + 0xf bytes C++ 614622 – [LB][PT][LDS][DX11] Blooms too much on smog weather setting.
too much on smog weather setting. 632447 – [PC] All the phones are very dark and hard to read
496009 – [PC] Debug picker seems to be non-functional
(no x64 prebuild cover) – Boot checks completed only.
prebuild cover) – Boot checks completed only. Base AudioCL#s: Playstation 3 and XBOX: 3772801; PC CL 3773483
As you can see, the file shows us a DirectX 11 tag. Max Payne 3 and L.A. Noire for PC featured DirectX 11 effects, so it’s reasonable to believe that a hypothetical version of GTA V for PC will also have support for DirectX 11.
We can also see a x64 reference. It is possible that the game could run on 64 bits systems, so it would be able to use more than 4 Gb of RAM and 2K textures may become a reality.
Of course, take this with a grain of salt. It’s not official info, only a rumor.
Stay tuned.
Thanks, Wccftech.A man wears a headband reading "No Rohingya" during a protest outside the Thilawa Port where a Malaysian aid ship arrived in Yangon, Myanmar on Thursday. The aid ship from Malaysia carrying 230 volunteers, including 20 doctors and 10 medics, along with around 2,200 tons of food and emergency supplies, will drop 500 tons of supplies in Myanmar, while it will take the rest to Bangladesh. Photo by Lynn Bo Bo/EPA
Feb. 9 (UPI) -- Buddhist monks and other protesters demonstrated in Myanmar against the arrival of a ship from Malaysia carrying aid for thousands of Rohingya people.
The protesters on Thursday waved Myanmar's national flag and signs reading "No Rohingya" in Yangon's Thilawa Port. Buddhist national groups are opposed to the presence of the ethnic Rohingya in Myanmar -- calling them illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, though many have lived in Myanmar for generations.
The protesters also oppose using the word "Rohingya" at all because, to them, they are people from Bangladesh living illegally in Myanmar. The Rohingya are a Muslim minority in Myanmar.
The aid ship, the Nautical Aliya, which carried more than 2,200 of cargo for Rohingyas in Myanmar and Bangladesh, docked at about 3 p.m. The ship will drop off 500 tons of aid in Myanmar before departing to Bangladesh.
"We want to let them know that we have no Rohingya here," a Buddhist monk from the Yangon chapter of the Patriotic Myanmar Monks Union said at the docks.
More than 66,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar since October 2016 after the army launched a military crackdown following an attack by a Rohingya militant group.
Malaysia has been critical of Myanmar's treatment of the Rohingya since the start of the military crackdown accused of human rights abuses.
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The ship was met by a crowd of about 100 people -- including protesters but mostly journalists and local officials, such as Myanmar's Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement Minister Win Myat Aye, Deputy Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Reezal Merican Naina Merican and Malaysian Ambassador to Myanmar Mohd Haniff.On 12 April 1955 [CIA officer] Richard Bissell and Col. Osmund Ritland (the senior Air Force officer on the project staff) flew over Nevada with [Lockheed's] Kelly Johnson in a small Beechcraft plane piloted by Lockheed's chief test pilot, Tony LeVier. They spotted what appeared to be an airstrip by a salt flat known as Groom Lake, near the northeast corner of the Atomic Energy Commission's (AEC) Nevada Proving Ground. After debating about landing on the old airstrip, LeVier set the plane down on the lakebed, and all four walked over to examine the strip. The facility had been used during World War II as an aerial gunnery range for Army Air Corps pilots. From the air the strip appeared to be paved, but on closer inspection it turned out to have originally been fashioned from compacted earth that had turned into ankle-deep dust after more than a decade of disuse. If LeVier had atrempted to land on the airstrip, the plane would probably have nosed over when the wheels sank into the loose soil, killing or injuring all of the key figures in the U-2 project.
That's the first acknowledged mention of the Groom Lake site, according to Chris Pocock, a British author who's written extensively about the program and provided his thoughts to the GWU archive. Nor, it seems, has the low-contrast image that accompanies that section (below) been seen.
The name "Area 51," so evocative, was an accident of circumstance.
After consulting with [the CIA's] Dulles, Bissell and Miller asked the Atomic Energy Commission to add the Groom Lake area to its real estate holdings in Nevada. AEC Chairman Adm. Lewis Strauss readily agreed, and President Eisenhower also approved the addition of this strip of wasteland, known by its map designation as Area 51, to the Nevada Test Site. The outlines of Area 51 are shown on current unclassified maps as a small rectangular area adjoining the northeast corner of the much larger Nevada Test Site.
Recognizing that people might not be excited about moving to a place called "Area 51" in the middle of the desert, a new name was offered: "Paradise Ranch, which was soon shortened to the Ranch." It was less appealing, however, in popular culture.
The National Security Archive outlines other new revelations in the documents (all 407 pages of which can be downloaded from the site by torrent). Three new details:
More than three pages (pp. 153-157, previously deleted in their entirety) on British participation in the U-2 program. The authors note that President Dwight Eisenhower viewed British participation "as a way to confuse the Soviets as to sponsorship of particular overflights" as well to spread the risk of failure.
An account (pp. 231-233, previously redacted in its entirety) of U-2 operations from India, between 1962 and 1967, triggered by the 1962 Sino-Indian war.
An account (pp. 222-230 ff., almost entirely deleted in the previous release) of U.S.-sponsored Chinese Nationalist U-2 operations, including tables of the number of overflight and peripheral missions each year.
It also includes a notation regarding the most famous U-2 flight: The May 1, 1960, flight of Francis Gary Powers which ended when Powers' craft was downed by a Soviet surface-to-air missile. In another bit of overlap with modern surveillance, Powers' flight left from an airfield in the Pakistani city of Peshawar.
We're still going through the document, so take a look for yourself. If you see anything interesting, leave it in the comments, below.
Hat-tip: Ryan Reilly. Photo: A U-2.(AP)
This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.So far, the announcement that Jodie Whittaker will play Doctor Who’s Thirteenth (and only female) incarnation of time-travelling hero The Doctor seems to have pleased the majority of former Doctor Who stars, with figures from Colin Baker and Billie Piper to John Barrowman all praising the casting.
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And now former Tenth Doctor David Tennant, who was actually attending the Wimbledon final at the same time as Whittaker’s unveiling during the match (much to fans’ amusement), has also responded positively to his latest successor in the Tardis while speaking at a surprise San Diego Comic-con panel appearance about his new role in video game Call of Duty: WWII Zombie Mode.
While talking about female representation in such video games, Tennant quipped – “Doctor Who – another show with a strong female lead!” – and while he didn’t go into more detail about his feelings about the new Doctor, fans couldn’t help but love his classy response.
David Tennant described Doctor Who as "another story with a strong femake lead" so that's one thing 😍 — Sara Mortensen (@saramrts) July 20, 2017
What a gem that man is — Janae Phillips (@janaeisms) July 20, 2017
Tennant, who co-starred with Whittaker in ITV series Broadchurch, also went on to describe his Call of Duty videogame character Drostan Hynd – “He swears a lot. Full of bad language. I’m terribly shocked,” he told the crowd – and discussed the differences between voice and screen acting.
“You can’t always know what you’re doing but every session ends with screaming your lungs out!” he said of his new zombie-hunting role, adding that it was also significantly different to his recent voice-acting parts in series like Ducktales and Thunderbirds Are Go.
“The latter progress in a linear way, while in video games you just read chunks of lines randomly,” he said.
Tennant will return to San Diego Comic-con tomorrow for a Ducktales panel, where many fans will be hoping to get more out of him about Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor – but for now, she can rest easy that another of her predecessors has given his seal of approval. Doctor Phew!
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Doctor Who returns to BBC1 this ChristmasThe Galapagos Art Space, a performance center and cultural staple in Brooklyn for nearly 20 years, will close this month, another casualty of rising rental prices that its founder says are making it difficult for independent arts organizations to survive in New York.
“A white-hot real estate market is burning through the affordable cultural habitat,” said Robert Elmes, the space’s executive director. “And it’s no longer a crisis, it’s a conclusion.”
Galapagos helped put Williamsburg on the art map when it opened there in 1995 as a bar and performance venue; it moved to Dumbo in 2007, occupying a former stable equipped with an interior 1,600-square-foot lake surrounded by what its organizers called an “operatic-style mezzanine.”
Although the last night of programming is likely to be Dec. 18, the center will have a second life — more than 600 miles away, in Detroit. Over the past year, Mr. Elmes and his wife, Philippa Kaye, have bought nine buildings totaling about 600,000 square feet in that city’s Corktown neighborhood and in neighboring Highland Park, paying what he described as the price of “a small apartment in New York City” for the properties.MEDWAY — The tomato plants needed pruning. The squash and cucumbers needed to be loaded into a van. The lettuce, carrots, and peppers needed to be harvested for the next day’s farmers’ market.
Brittany Sidway Overshiner rattled off her to-do list energetically as the summer sun beat down on the Medway Community Farm. For the 30-year-old novice farmer, it is all a labor of love.
“It’s a lot of fun. I don’t know how you could try it and not like it,” she said.
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Overshiner is part of a wave of new farmers who appear to be stabilizing the state’s farming industry after years of decline.
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The acreage of land farmed has ticked upward slightly from 2002 to 2012, rising 1 percent to 523,517. Meanwhile, the number of farms jumped 28 percent, or 1,680 farms, to 7,755, according to data from the federal Census of Agriculture.
Unlike many US states, Massachusetts has never been known for large swaths of farmland. Instead, it has smaller farms, and those have shrunk in recent years. The average size of a Massachusetts farm was 68 acres in 2012, down from 85 acres in 2002.
Experts say the new, smaller farms are appearing because there’s more demand for local food, which is viewed as tastier, healthier, more environmentally friendly, and better for the local economy. With increased demand and the resulting higher prices, farmers can make more money from smaller plots of land.
“In the last few decades, interest in local food has spurred growth in people getting into farming on smaller commercial scales,” said Brian Donahue, a professor at Brandeis University who studies New England farm history.
Massachusetts agriculture industry ticks up after years of decline Number of farms in the state recorded by the US Census of Agriculture DATA: USDA Globe Staff
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Another indicator of the changes in the state’s agriculture industry: The number of Massachusetts farms offering to sell their products directly to consumers — retail rather than wholesale —increased by nearly a third, from 1,659 in 2007 to 2,206 in 2012, according to the Census of Agriculture. Farmers do this through community-supported agriculture programs, farmers markets, and farm stands.
During the same period, farm operators grew more self-sufficient — the number of farmers whose principal occupation was farming grew by 5 percent, from 3,688 to 3,878.
The land has provided sustenance in Massachusetts since before the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth. Farms spread across the terrain as colonists arrived and the population swelled, with the agriculture industry peaking around the turn of the 20th century.
But then the industry declined. Cheap energy made large-scale irrigation possible and the long-distance shipment of farm products by trucks and planes. Massachusetts growers found themselves competing not with the farm down the road, but with behemoth establishments in Florida, California, or Washington, said Donahue.
“All that undercut vegetable and fruit production closer to cities on the East Coast. That went down slowly up until World War II and rapidly afterwards,” he said.
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The rise of the car and the suburbanization of the Boston, Worcester, and Springfield regions also led to rising land values, pushing out some farmers, said Donahue.
The way of life for thousands of Massachusetts families ceased to be.
Globe Staff/File This plow, pictured in 1961, once tilled fields where houses now stand in Concord.
Now the industry may be finding its footing with the help of a new species that has arrived on the scene — the locavores.
Locavores aim to eat produce, meats, and dairy produced locally. Some maintain that leafy kale, creamy cheeses, or McIntosh apples from the farm down the road have fresher tastes and boast more nutrients. Others worry about the environmental impact of transporting produce long distances on trucks that spew greenhouse gases.
“There are a lot of customers that are excited about buying local,” said Elena Colman, co-owner of Crooked Row Fields, a three-acre farm in Concord. “There’s a long line at the farm stand every weekend August through October. It seems to be just gathering more and more momentum.”
Restaurants have jumped on the bandwagon, touting their use of local foods.
“Chefs wanted to buy directly from farmers because the food tasted better,” said Barbara Zheutlin, executive director of Berkshire Grown, a “Buy Local” organization, adding that Berkshire County chefs pioneered the farm-to-table movement, a trend in the restaurant industry of building seasonal menus around fresh local produce, meat, and fish.
Zheutlin also argues that farmers are good for the local economy.
“We see agriculture as a vital part of not only the community and landscape but also the economy,” said Zheutlin. “The money I pay at the farm stand goes directly into my community.”
Richard Bonanno, president of the Massachusetts Farm Bureau Federation, said many old farms can be readily split up because their acreage is already divided into several parcels instead of one large field.
The newer farmers do not have the equipment, labor, or financial resources to tackle larger plots, so retiring farmers are both selling and leasing out pieces of their land to the beginners, he said.
David L. Ryan/Globe Staff Harvest time at Medway Community Farms, a vegetable farm in Medway.
“There are hobby farmers, and their farms tend to be very small,” said Donahue. “But we’re also seeing two-, five-, or 10-acre farms with young people trying to make a go of it.”
Amelia Conklin, 29, went to George Washington University and studied international development but found herself disillusioned by the politics of the Beltway.
“I was looking for something that felt more authentic, grounding, and fulfilling,” Conklin said.
She found it during a stint in the Peace Corps in Paraguay. Working with multiple generations of farmers in a small community, Conklin realized she had that experience waiting for her back home, where her family had produced dairy for generations in Berkshire County.
“It was important for me to see that model and experience firsthand the benefit and the joys.” said Conklin, who is now in her third year of running Sky View Farm, a 50-acre farm in Sheffield that produces meat.
Seeing a variety of benefits, some towns have joined in the nascent farm revival, moving to preserve open space for agricultural use, and setting up community farms like the Medway farm where Overshiner works.
Overshiner said her desire to farm was born in the classroom.
She studied environmental science at Northeastern University, and one seminar on eating and the environment triggered a passion.
“Farming is the one profession people assume you have to be born into,” said Overshiner. “But it’s a skill. You can learn how to do it.”
Overshiner took over the farm in 2010. That year, she also met her now-husband Kevin.
At the time, Overshiner was so busy at the farm that Kevin would come and help her out in order to spend time together. During that time, Kevin, who had just graduated from Emerson College with a degree in audio and sound engineering, “caught the bug,” Overshiner said.
Farming is “important work,” said Kevin Overshiner. “It fulfills a lot of personal needs: to do meaningful work, to contribute, to work outside.”
David L. Ryan/Globe Staff Brittany Sidway Overshiner of Medway Community Farms.
Catherine Cloutier can be reached at catherine.cloutier@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @cmcloutierSo, when did Ann Coulter start being afraid of Canadians? Well, this week, apparently, when a crowd of roughly 200 college students (the AP puts the number as high as 2,000 whereas both student eyewitnesses and the Ottawa police assert the number was closer to 200) of every political stripe protested her speech at the University of Ottawa, prompting her to cancel it due to "security concerns."
Her three-college tour was organized by the International Free |
it so obvious they really ‘got’ my book and its characters, and shared my vision for its future. Even their editorial notes seemed to highlight little quiet concerns I’d had about the book, but before now, hadn’t been sure how to fix.
Of course, it was the day of my for-real deadline, so now I had to scurry around calling the client whose name they gave me, and also calling a few others whose names were given to me by writing friends. Every single person I talked to just gushed about how amazing Holly and Taylor were. Which was exactly what I wanted to hear.
My hands were shaking when I typed out my acceptance email, and still shaking when I signed the contract and poured the champagne. I’m so delighted to be working with Holly and Taylor, and can’t wait to take the next steps in my publishing journey.
Victoria, how do you feel Pitch Wars helped with your success?
If it weren’t for Pitch Wars, my book certainly wouldn’t be in as good shape as it is. Emily really helped me take a step back and get some clarity on my book and the changes that needed to be made. Plus, as great as the agent round was, I really feel that’s my favorite thing I got out of PW: the mentorship from Emily, and the support of my new writing friends.
Now for some fun! The following questions are for you both to answer.
What fictional character would be your confidante? Enemy? Idol? Kick-butt ally?
Victoria: My confidante is Andrei from WAR AND PEACE. I feel like his snarky attitude would really do a body good. (On the other hand, I feel like hanging out with Dolokhov would never be boring.) Actually, wait can I change it? Or pick another? Because I forgot that Remus Lupin is a fictional human who exists and he would be my best friend forever and ever, and also he respects chocolate the way chocolate oughta be respected. I’m sworn enemies with anyone who hurts Rhy from A DARKER SHADE OF MAGIC, because he’s a precious cinnamon roll who should be protected at all costs. Obviously I idolize Henry Winter from THE SECRET HISTORY, as I too am a pretentious asshole. My kick-butt ally is Inej from SIX OF CROWS, but possibly also Magneto.
Emily:
Confidante: They just don’t come more level-headed or trustworthy than Charlie from JASPER JONES by Craig Silvey. He had my trust from page one.
Enemy: Ugh, Tom Buchanan. He’s a great example of toxic masculinity, so…yeah. Hate that guy.
Idol: Ummm is it a little bit twisted to say Alex Craft from FEMALE OF THE SPECIES? *shrugs* I’m sticking with it.
Kick-butt ally: Veronica Mars. (who else???)
What is your work fuel of choice?
Victoria: I almost always write with either a black coffee or–depending on the hour of day–a neat whisky on hand. I’m really feeling Islay scotches right now. I try not to eat while I’m writing or else I’d just keep mindlessly shoveling chocolate-covered raisins into my mouth ad infinitum.
Emily: Tea and hot chocolate (with whipped cream, not marshmallows) are must-haves for me. Also pretzels and anything involving peanut butter!
Whose work inspired you to start writing?
Victoria: I started writing super, super early, so it’s hard to say who inspired me to start, really. I wrote a novel about a girl on the Oregon Trail–inspired by the videogame of course–when I was eight. It was a hundred handwritten pages long and glorious. There was minimal division for me, at that age, between books and their creators. I felt sure that if someone was out there writing these books, I could write some of my own. My parents probably encouraged this. My childhood favorite authors were Verne and Tolkien. These days, I’m all about Nabokov, Tartt, Schwab, Wilde, Tolstoy, Bardugo, and Ruiz Zafón.
Emily: So many contemporary YA authors turned my love for books into an obsession and a desire to write stories of my own—authors like Jandy Nelson, Melina Marchetta, and Courtney Summers to name a few!
You and your favorite character from your favorite book are meeting at your favorite restaurant. Which character are you with, what restaurant did you choose, and what’s on the menu?
Victoria: I feel like me and Victor Vale’d get along, so long as we just kept talking about science. We’re at a 24-hour diner in some out-of-the-way midwestern town, drinking burnt coffee and eating grilled cheese. We also make fun of self-help book writers.
Emily: I’m with Monty from Mackenzi Lee’s THE GENTLEMAN’S GUIDE TO VICE AND VIRTUE. We’re at La Bonne Excuse in Paris, eating duck and drinking too much wine. I’m getting the inside scoop on his new life with Percy as we work our way through every dessert on the menu (because let’s be honest, self-control isn’t Monty’s strong suit).
What fictional character would best describe your mentor/mentee?
Victoria: I’m going to avoid the obvious answer of Harper from THE YEAR WE FELL APART by Emily Martin because, even though it’s accurate, it feels like a cop-out. Instead I’ll say Tella from CARAVAL, because they’re both fierce and loving and also dangerously after a good time.
Emily: Queenie from CODE NAME VERITY by Elizabeth Wein. (Because they’re both whip smart and tough as nails but mostly because Victoria STILL hasn’t read this book and I’m hoping this will force her hand.)
Thank you for sharing your success story with us! We wish you all the best in your publishing journey and hope you’ll share your future successes with us. CONGRATULATIONS!
Victoria Lee
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Victoria Lee grew up in Durham, North Carolina, where she spent twelve ascetic years as a vegetarian before discovering spicy chicken wings are, in fact, a delicacy. She’s been a state finalist competitive pianist, a hitchhiker, a pizza connoisseur, an EMT, an expat in China and Sweden, and a science doctoral student. She’s also a bit of a snob about fancy whisky. Victoria writes early in the morning, then spends the rest of the day trying to impress her border collie puppy and make her experiments work.
Victoria is represented by Holly Root and Taylor Haggerty at Root Literary.
Emily Martin
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Emily Martin lives and writes in the Greater Boston area, though she will always call Michigan home. She has a penchant for impromptu dance parties, vintage clothing, and traveling to new places. When not writing, she can be found hiking New England’s peaks, searching for the perfect cup of hot chocolate, or baking something pumpkin-flavored.
Emily’s debut young adult novel, THE YEAR WE FELL APART, is out now from S&S/Simon Pulse.Why? For what purpose are you learning this language?
How you intend to use the language in question (Spanish or whatever the case may be for you) is very important in determining which words you should focus on, primarily this comes into play with regards to whether you’re more concerned about the spoken language or the written language. Most language-learners are far more concerned about being able to actually speak to native speakers of the language than they are with anything else, though there are exceptions (people who wish to be able to read certain specific technical journals, such as an engineer who only wants to be able to read the original German or Japanese instruction manuals and schematics for the devices used in his field and does not need to be able to actually speak the language) as well as certain special needs (someone who is most interested in spoken language, but they also need special emphasis in a certain area, such as the businessman who not only wants to speak basic everyday Japanese but also needs to learn certain business terms that are specific only to his job and wouldn’t be common anywhere else).
So…what are you going to use it for? Do you have any special needs or areas of interest that you would like to learn the terminology for in the language you’re learning? I’m a pretty big computer nerd, so in addition to everyday spoken Spanish, I might also like to know how to say things like “hard drive”, “TCP/IP”, “Python [the programming language]”, “blog”, “forum”, “social news”, “search engine”, “link”, etc. See what I mean? Don’t neglect areas like that, everyone has some–whether you’re into cars or rugby or chess or collecting dead insects, you’re likely going to want to know the words and phrases that are common only in those specific subjects.
Practical Application, or: What’s the point of all this?
Look, if you’ll use a quality SRS (Spaced Repetition Software) like Anki and spend 30-45 minutes a day studying vocabulary, you can very easily learn 20, 30, even 50 new words per day up to the point where you’ve got a couple thousand words in your target language within a month or so, it would be very easy. If you’ll do that, and maybe practice speaking a bit by watching subtitled movies and repeating after the native speakers (pause, repeat what someone just said, rewind and repeat as necessary until you’ve got it, wash rinse repeat, etc.) for a couple of weeks, you’ll be at the point where you’ll be able to start conversing with native speakers, albeit poorly (my favorite saying: “You learn to speak a language by doing so, poorly at first”). You’ll be awkward and slow but you will be able to muddle through, and you will pick up speed very rapidly if you’ll make it a habit to speak with a native for an hour or so a day, every day (remember: consistency!). I promise you’ll be conversationally fluent within a couple of months of the time that you started conversing with natives. Voila, you’re there. What are the best ways to do this?
The best way is with a one-on-one tutor, and for that I recommend a service called iTalki (you’re looking at about $8-15/hour for informal conversation practice/instruction, more for a formal course or test prep.). However, given that you’ll want at least 2-3 classes per week and that comes out to $16-$45 per week – or between $64 and $180 per month – that’s too expensive for many people and in that case I really recommend you check out a service called GoSpanish that provides unlimited online classes with a native speaker (live, on a video call similar to Skype) for as little as $39 per month (yes, that’s $39/month for unlimited 1-hour classes, you can take a dozen a day every day if you like). Their class size is typically just 3-5 students per teacher and, having taken classes with them myself, I can tell you they’re excellent. See my review of GoSpanish here for more information. Also, if you’re interested, I’ve reviewed iTalki as well.
Here’s a quote from someone commenting on that HTLAL thread I mentioned above:
“I can add from my experience that knowledge of about 1500 words allows you to get a fairly general picture of everything you read. This is the number of Hungarian words I learned since march. I write them all down on flashcards and count how much each day – that’s why I can pinpoint the number. At the same time it is obvious that my 1500 word vocab isn’t tweaked to efficiency in basic communication. I simply write down and translate everything I read and lately also the words I manage to pick up from radio. That’s why I know the hungarian word for “voter turnout” but I don’t know yet how to book a flight or hotel room :/”
And this leads into my last, and most important point: all of this is just a means to and end, and that end is speaking. You must speak. The whole point of figuring out all this word frequency crap is just so you can get away from it as fast as possible and into the realm of actually talking to native speakers, because that is where you really learn the language. Memorizing all the vocabulary and grammar rules in the world, as my friend Benny loves to say, will not ever get you anywhere near fluent. I’ll leave you with a quote from a native Czech speaker and fellow language nerd (it’s the last post in that HTLAL thread):
“Yesterday I met a woman who has been taking Czech lessons twice a week for two years. I asked her some very simple questions “Do you like coffee?”, “Are you Czech?” and she was completely tongue tied. The best she could manage was “Urm, arm, yes” to the first question, and “no” to the second. At first I imagined she didn’t know much Czech at all. I decided to probe into her vocabulary, and found it was quite extensive. She knew words like “octopus” and “hovercraft” in Czech. Yes somehow couldn’t say “To be honest, I prefer tea”. I gave her a two hour lesson in how to construct useful conversational phrases. Starting off with simple things like “I have to say that..” and “Don’t be upset, but” and building up and chaining these things together into more complex sentences such as “That isn’t something I have given much thought to, but … now that I reflect on it, … my personal opinion is …” She told me it was a very uplifting lesson, since she now felt “fluent” in Czech rather than being frozen with a trapped vocabulary of thousands of words. In fact, she got back to me later that after the lesson, she went into the city and had sophisticated and stressless conversations in a couple shops and with a waitress in an ice-cream parlour. Of course, I was delighted to hear this, and it certainly gave my ego a boost. But, what was most joyful for me to hear is that it would now give her future learning a “usefulness filter”. She said that now she wouldn’t just remember lists of words, but rather filter them through how useful they would be in real conversations, and that real conversations, with real people, will help her get a reality check on this as she goes along.”
You can learn all the vocabulary in the world, but if you don’t learn how to use it, you’re never going to be fluent, and the only way to do that is to speak with native speakers. Again, I really recommend having a look at GoSpanish, they’re super cheap for what they’re offering. Check out my review of them here for more info and/or go to their site for a free trial if you like.
Additional Resources and Further Reading
Please be sure to persuse the whole “Basic Spanish Grammar Rules: Lessons & Explanation” category on my site, I have several other articles there that may interst you, especially What Spanish Verb Tenses You Should Learn First, and Why They’re So Important, a brief guide to regional variation of forms of address (tú, usted, vos, etc.) and my beginner’s guide to the Spanish subjunctive.
Professor Arguelles’ website on language-learning
Part 4 of Iversen’s Guide to Learning Languages: How many words do you need to learn?
Here’s the RAE’s reference corpus of current Spanish taken from a combination (says this site) of spoken and written sources (kind of a problem since it only gives you a very general idea of how common these words are and you can’t sort by spoken/written and, as we noted above, there can be some big discrepancies there between the two). The Real Academia Española (the “Royal Spanish Academy”) is by far the single most respected authority on the Spanish language; see the Wikipedia article on them for more information.
Somebody else did the pull-them-from-subtitles trick on their own and then made their data publicly available. Here’s the Spanish list published so you can read it online without having to download it first.
Here’s an excellent paper by Paul Nation and Robert Waring at the Notre Dame Seishin University in Japan called: Vocabulary Size, Text Coverage And Word Lists
Here are a series of lists on Wiktionary taken from subtitles of movies by somebody back in 2007. As they note, many of these are from translations of English-language movies and so won’t really give you the most accurate picture of what’s naturally used in Spanish.
Here’s a very widely circulated list of the 1000 most common words in English.A new report by the World Bank and the ClimateWorks Foundation says tackling global warming now would also save as many as 94,000 lives a year from pollution-related diseases and reduce crop losses, or an aggregate million lives.
The report - 'Climate-Smart Development: Adding Up the Benefits of Actions that Help Build Prosperity, End Poverty and Combat Climate Change' - shows the potential gains from scaling up pro-climate policies.
"The report's findings show clearly that the right policy choices can deliver significant benefits to lives, jobs, crops, energy, and GDP - as well as emissions reductions to combat climate change", World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said.
Written in advance of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's Climate Summit in New York in September, the report looks at benefits that ambitious climate mitigation policies can generate across the transportation, industry and building sectors, as well as in waste and cooking fuels.
It focuses on Brazil, China, India, Mexico, the United States and the European Union.
Economic gains up to $2.6 trillion to be realised
By 2030, the report said, pro-climate government policies on clean transport and improved energy efficiency in factories, buildings and appliances, improved waste management, renewable energy and clean cooking stoves could increase global GDP growth by $1.8 trillion to $2.6 trillion a year.
Those policies could prevent the production of greenhouse gas emissions roughly equivalent to taking 2 billion cars off the road, the report said, while accounting for 30% of the total emissions reduction needed in 2030 to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius.
"This report shows that well-designed climate mitigation efforts can result in important economic and social benefits, and provides a frameworks for assessing those benefits", ClimateWorks Foundation president Charlotte Pera said.
The alternative - growing climate risks
Meanwhile, another major study published Tuesday showed that the US economy already faces multiple and significant risks from climate change.
The study - Risky Business: The Economic Risks of Climate Change to the United States - said it's clear that staying on the current business-as-usual path will only increase the nation's exposure to climate-change-related risks.
"The US climate is paying the price today for business decisions made many years ago, especially through increased coastal storm damage and more extreme heat in parts of the country", the study said.
"Every year that goes by without a comprehensive public and private sector response to climate change is a year that locks in future climate events that will have a far more devastating effect on our local, regional and national economies."
It's already costing $100 billions
Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, former US Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson and Tom Steyer, retired founder of Farallon Capital Management, co-chaired the Risky Business project.
"Damages from storms, flooding and heat waves are already costing local economies billions of dollars - we saw that firsthand in New York City with Hurricane Sandy", Bloomberg said in a statement.
"With the oceans rising and the climate changing, the Risky Business report details the costs of inaction in ways that are easy to understand in dollars and cents - and impossible to ignore."
Concurring, Paulson said the US economy is vulnerable to an overwhelming number of risks from climate change.
"If we act immediately, we can still avoid most of the worst impacts of climate change and significantly reduce the odds of catastrophic outcomes - but the investments we're making today will determine our economic future", Paulson said.
The longer we wait, the more it costs
Steyer said climate change is nature's way of charging the nation compound interest for doing the wrong thing:
"The longer we wait to address the growing risks of climate change, the more it will cost us all. From a business perspective, given the many benefits of early action, it would be silly to allow these risks to accumulate to the point where we can no longer manage them."
Looking at climate impacts from now to 2100, the study notes that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases can stay in the atmosphere for hundreds or even thousands of years, leading to higher temperatures, higher sea levels and shifts in global weather patterns:
"By not acting to lower greenhouse gas emissions today, decision-makers put in place processes that increase overall risks tomorrow, and each year those decision-makers fail to act serves to broaden and deepen those risks."
This article was originally published on DeSmogBlog.By Bahattin Gonultas
ANKARA
Turkey became the fastest-growing economy among G20 countries after clocking in with 11.1 percent growth in the third quarter of 2017, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) reported on Monday.
Monday’s report makes the country's growth the fastest among the world’s 20 largest economies and marks the third consecutive quarter where annual expansion topped 5 percent. China came in second with 6.8 percent and India was third with 6.3 percent among all G20 countries.
The figure easily exceeded analysts’ consensus estimates of 9.2 percent, the fastest quarter growth rate since 11.4 percent in the first quarter of 2011.
Turkey’s economy grew 5.2 percent in the first quarter of this year and 5.1 percent in the second quarter, according to TurkStat.
Turkish officials previously said the country would achieve annual economic growth of 6 to 7 percent by the end of the year.
Performance in the third quarter pushed up cumulative GDP, reaching 827.2 billion Turkish liras ($216 billion) in current prices, with GDP annualized at $844 billion, TurkStat added.
The growth was triggered by domestic demand, including accelerated investment support by the government and strong contributions from exports.
'Staggering growth'
“Turkey -- with staggering 11.3 percent year-on-year real GDP growth in Q3 -- got ministers talking about full-year growth of over 7 percent. Various government stimulus programs felt in full force,” London-based economist Timothy Ash said.
Growth was driven by all main sectors in the third quarter, with the agricultural sector expanding by 2.8 percent, the manufacturing industry by 14.8 percent, the construction sector by 18.7 percent, and the services sector by 20.7 percent, TurkStat added.
Exports grew 17.2 percent while imports of goods and services rose 14.5 percent in the third quarter of 2017 compared with the same quarter of the previous year.
Capital formation, including investments, came out strong for both consumption and machinery, up 12.4 percent and 15.3 percent, respectively.
Other components also grew, with domestic demand up by 11.7 percent and government consumption up 2.8 percent.
The Turkish lira strengthened after the report was published on Monday. It was trading 0.11 percent higher at 3.8310 per dollar at 11:00 a.m. in Istanbul.Though Disney often deals in fairy tales, not every one of the legendary animation company’s productions has been a case of smooth sailing. From racial controversies to box office bombs, here are some fascinating facts about some of the Mouse House’s most famous animated features.
1. EVERYONE EXPECTED SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS TO BOMB.
Though we now know the film was a massive success, at the time, no one thought it would succeed. Disney took out multiple loans to finance the movie, even mortgaging his own house for it. Believing that it would ruin Walt financially, insiders referred to Snow White as “Disney’s Folly.” Even Walt’s wife, Lillian, thought the movie would completely bomb.
2. DOPEY WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE A LOT OF DIALOGUE.
Dopey was originally slated to be a chatterbox, but producers couldn’t find a voice that was quite suitable for the bald dwarf. Rather than outfit him with vocals they thought were wrong, Dopey went silent instead.
3. SNOW WHITE WAS THE FIRST MOVIE TO RELEASE A SOUNDTRACK.
In 1944, Snow White became the first film to ever release a soundtrack.
4. MICKEY MOUSE MADE A CAMEO IN PINOCCHIO.
Mickey Mouse has been the central mascot of the Walt Disney Corporation since his creation in 1928. The iconic cartoon character has seen many updates over the years, but his mouse ears, red pants, and white gloves are staples in the mouse's design—just three well-placed circles are enough to create Mickey’s recognizable silhouette. This geometric representation of Mickey Mouse is called a “Classic Mickey,” which Disney artists have hidden in a number of movies, including Pinocchio. After the Blue Fairy turns the puppet Pinocchio into a wooden boy, Geppetto and his cat Figaro and goldfish Cleo celebrate his arrival. When Pinocchio sets his finger on fire, Geppetto rushes to put it out. They pass by a chair, which looks like Mickey Mouse’s head.
5. DUMBO ALMOST LANDED THE COVER OF TIME.
TIME magazine had plans to honor Dumbo as “Mammal of the Year.” But then Pearl Harbor happened and they opted for a more serious cover, though they still called the animated elephant “Mammal of the Year” in an inside feature.
6. DUMBO IS DISNEY’S SHORTEST FEATURE.
At just 64 minutes long, it's the shortest feature-length Disney movie. Walt was advised to extend the storyline, but he resisted, saying, "You can stretch a story just so far and after that it won't hold together.”
7. CELS FROM DUMBO ARE EXTREMELY VALUABLE.
Not knowing that original animation cels would someday be worth a lot of money, artists weren’t too careful with preserving their art. In fact, it was just the opposite: while animators were working on movies like Fantasia and Dumbo, they’d take the finished slippery cels and use them to skate down hallways. Between that and the fact that the earth-toned paints used in the Dumbo color palette were particularly prone to flaking, any remaining cels from the film are among the most valuable of any Disney movie.
8. THE VOICE OF BAMBI WENT ON TO BECOME A DECORATED WAR HERO.
Donnie Dunagan spent 25 years in the Marines. He was a decorated Vietnam War veteran who rose up the ranks quickly—13 promotions in 21 years, as he recalls—and held such honors as being the youngest ever drill instructor and receiving a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts for his service. And when he retired as a Major in 1977, he was finally able to talk about a little secret he'd kept from his colleagues all those years: Long before he was barking orders at new recruits, they'd all definitely heard his voice before, as children, when he was far less menacing. Major Dunagan was the voice of Bambi.
9. THERE’S A PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDER KNOWN AS “BAMBI COMPLEX.”
Bambi, the cute little deer whose mother got shot and killed, is also the namesake of this other not-officially-recognized complex. People affected by the Bambi Complex are very sentimental and sympathetic towards wildlife and wild animals. They usually have very strong feelings against hunting, controlled fires, and any other inhumane treatment of animals, especially the cute ones like deer.
10. CINDERELLA’S GOT A COMPLEX, TOO.
Ah, Cinderella. She's stuck cooking and cleaning for her stepmother and stepsisters while they are off having a ball at … a ball. A person, typically a woman, with Cinderella Complex is very dependent on men for emotional and financial purposes. This complex is also characterized by the desire to be swept off her feet and saved by a Prince Charming. This isn’t officially recognized as a psychological disorder—the term was coined in 1981 by Collette Downing, who wrote The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence—but can help some women to understand why they feel the way they do.
11. DISNEY’S DECISION TO MAKE SONG OF THE SOUTH RAISED EYEBROWS RIGHT FROM THE GET-GO.
The NAACP released a statement that said that while the artistic and technical aspects of the film were truly impressive, “the production helps to perpetuate a dangerously glorified picture of slavery … [the film] unfortunately gives the impression of an idyllic master-slave relationship which is a distortion of the facts.” However, other reviewers thought that the issue was handled well. Even the actors defended their parts. Hattie McDaniel told The Criterion, "If I had for one moment considered any part of the picture degrading or harmful to my people I would not have appeared therein." Star James Baskett agreed, saying, "I believe that certain groups are doing my race more harm in seeking to create dissension than can ever possibly come out of the Song of the South.”
12. WALT DISNEY PUSHED FOR AN OSCAR FOR JAMES BASKETT FOR SONG OF THE SOUTH.
Walt Disney himself campaigned for James Baskett to win an Academy Award for his performance in Song of the South. He told Jean Hersholt, then the president of the Motion Picture Academy, that Baskett’s performance was his own creation, “almost wholly without direction.” Disney’s efforts worked: James Baskett received an honorary Oscar in 1948. Sadly, he died just three months later at the age of 44.
13. SONG OF THE SOUTH HAS NEVER BEEN RELEASED ON HOME VIDEO IN THE U.S.
Though the film has been reissued several times, including a “re-premiere” that was held in Atlanta for its 40th anniversary in 1986, it has never been released on home video in the United States. Whether there are future plans for a release remains to be seen. While Disney CEO Robert Iger has called the movie “antiquated” and “fairly offensive,” fans have been rallying for years to get it released. Enterprising consumers can find copies that were released in Japan and Europe. You can also see part of it right here:
14. CINDERELLA FEATURES WALT DISNEY’S FAVORITE PIECE OF ANIMATION.
The moment when the Fairy Godmother transforms Cinderella’s torn dress into a beautiful gown fit for a princess is said to be Walt Disney’s favorite piece of animation ever. It was drawn by Marc Davis, one of Disney’s so-called “Nine Old Men.”
15. LADY AND THE TRAMP WAS INSPIRED BY A REAL DOG NAMED LADY.
In 1937, Disney writer Joe Grant showed Walt Disney some sketches he had done of his Springer Spaniel, Lady. Walt was impressed, and encouraged Joe to create a full storyboard. Like her fictional counterpart, the real-life Lady was learning how to deal with her owners’ new baby, which served as the main inspiration for Grant’s plot. In the end, Walt wasn’t thrilled with the storyline, and the idea was scrapped. Several years later, Disney came across a story by Ward Greene in Cosmopolitan titled “Happy Dan, the Whistling Dog." He believed that the two ideas could be combined into one to create a stronger story, and asked Greene to come up with one.
16. LADY AND THE TRAMP’S SPAGHETTI SCENE ALMOST DIDN’T HAPPEN.
It’s now one of the most famous (and parodied) scenes ever, but Walt was against that cozy pasta scene. Though he wanted the dogs to have human emotions, he just couldn’t wrap his head around two dogs romantically sharing a strand of spaghetti. If you’ve ever watched your dogs fight over a plate of leftovers, you can imagine why. Disney eventually relented after animator Frank Thomas worked up a rough draft of how it might work.
17. LADY AND THE TRAMP WAS THE FIRST ANIMATED FILM TO BE MADE IN CINEMASCOPE.
The widescreen movie format was a brand-new technology at the time. Though it was intended to help the viewer get a broad scope of landscapes and scenery, not everyone thought the format suited the movie so well. A New York Times critic reported, “The sentimentality is mighty, and the use of the CinemaScope size does not make for any less awareness of the thickness of the goo. It also magnifies the animation, so that flaws and poor foreshortening are more plain.”
18. SLEEPING BEAUTY FLOPPED AT THE BOX OFFICE.
In fact, Sleeping Beauty was such a box office bomb (at least, compared to the cost of production) that the company decided that princess movies weren’t exactly the wave of the future. They didn’t make another princess movie until 30 years later, when The Little Mermaid was released in 1989.
19. 101 DALMATIANS WAS THE FIRST MOVIE TO UTILIZE XEROX TECHNOLOGY.
101 Dalmatians was the first feature to use Xerox technology to transfer drawings to cels, saving a lot of time, money, and hands. The Xerox style is what gives the film that sketched look as opposed to the crisp lines seen in earlier Disney features. Walt Disney reportedly disliked the scratchy aesthetic.
20. THE ARISTOCATS WAS THE FIRST DISNEY FILM TO BE PRODUCED AFTER WALT DISNEY'S DEATH.
Though some critics thought the loss of Walt’s direction hurt the movie, The New York Times raved about it, saying, “Bless the Walt Disney organization for The Aristocats, as funny, warm and sweet an animated, cartoon, package as ever gave a movie marquee a Christmas glow.”
It was also the last film to be approved by Walt Disney directly. As such, it’s the last movie to end with the line, “A Walt Disney Production.”
21. MARLON BRANDO ALMOST PLAYED SYKES IN OLIVER & COMPANY.
Sykes, the villainous gangster in Oliver & Company, was almost voiced by "The Godfather” himself—Marlon Brando. Disney wanted the part to feel like an “evil presence” who was often shrouded in smoke and shadows, and then-CEO Michael Eisner reportedly approached the actor himself. After Brando turned down the role of Sykes because he didn't believe the movie would do very well, it went to Robert Loggia, who was known for playing "heavies."
22. THE LITTLE MERMAID WAS ONE OF THE FIRST FEATURES TO USE PIXAR’S COMPUTER ANIMATION PROCESS.
The usual way to make cartoons had always been by transferring animators's drawings to celluloid and then painting the reverse side. This process can yield beautiful results, but it was obviously time-consuming. Pixar’s program allowed animators to upload drawings onto a computer loaded with an infinite color palette and capable of impossibly subtle blending and transparencies. Though computers were used in very few scenes in The Little Mermaid, Pixar continued to develop the process until computer animation became the standard for quality Disney releases.
23. JACKIE CHAN WAS THE VOICE OF THE BEAST FOR SOME VIEWERS.
Jackie Chan dubbed the Beast’s voice for the Chinese translation of the Beauty and the Beast—including the singing. Here he is performing the title track in Mandarin with Sarah Chen.
24. TO LAND ROBIN WILLIAMS FOR ALADDIN, THE ANIMATORS CREATED TEST SEQUENCES OF THE GENIE PERFORMING THE COMEDIAN'S STAND-UP ROUTINES.
Eric Goldberg led the team of animators who were in charge of creating Genie. When he was first handed the script by co-directors Ron Clements and John Musker, Goldberg was also told to dig up some old Robin Williams comedy albums. “John and Ron said, 'Pick a couple of sections from his comedy albums and animate a genie to them,'" Goldberg told Entertainment Weekly. "That’s essentially what I did." Williams came in to see the test, and, Goldberg says, "I think what probably sold him was the one where he says, 'Tonight, let’s talk about the serious subject of schizophrenia—No, it doesn’t!—Shut up, let him talk!' What I did is animate the Genie growing another head to argue with himself, and Robin just laughed. He could see the potential of what the character could be. I’m sure it wasn’t the only factor, but then he signed the dotted line."
25. THE GENIE’S LINES WERE RECORDED UP TO 20 DIFFERENT WAYS FOR ALADDIN.
Williams was available for only a handful of recording sessions. So he’d rapid-fire each line as written, in as many different styles as he could create. “Robin had so much freedom, and [ad-libbing] was always encouraged," Goldberg told Entertainment Weekly. "He always gave us such a huge amount to choose from. He would do a line as written, but he would do it as 20 different characters... [We] would take those tracks back to the studio and really put the ones in that made us laugh the most and were the ones that we thought were best suited to the lines. So even though he gave us a W.C. Fields, Groucho Marx, and a Peter Lorre on 'No substitutions, exchanges, and refunds,' we said, 'OK, the Groucho one goes here.'”
26. THE LION KING WAS THE FIRST TRULY "ORIGINAL" DISNEY CARTOON.
The Lion King was the first Disney animated film to feature a completely original storyline—that is, one that was not an adaptation of a preexisting story.
27. "HAKUNA MATATA" WASN'T IN THE ORIGINAL SCRIPT FOR THE LION KING.
Instead, there was a song about eating bugs called "He's Got it All Worked Out." According to co-director Rob Minkoff, "We couldn’t convince everybody that making the entire song about eating bugs was a good idea. Soon after, the research team came back from their trip to Africa with the phrase ‘Hakuna Matata’. We talked about it in a meeting with Tim Rice—and that’s when the idea struck. I remember Tim saying, ‘Hmmm… Hakuna Matata. It’s a bit like Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo.’ A song was born!”
28. A HYENA RESEARCHER SUED DISNEY OVER THE LION KING.
A hyena researcher sued Disney for “defamation of character” for its portrayal of the animals in the film. [PDF]
29. THE IDEA FOR POCAHONTAS WAS THOUGHT UP OVER A THANKSGIVING WEEKEND.
Co-director Mike Gabriel (who shared directing duties with Eric Goldberg) wanted to do a “western romance,” and at some point the |
of illegal vehicles on the roads. It has been wildly popular in a number of countries, particularly in Britain, where the unconstrained growth of closed circuit television camera networks has led to millions of licence plates captured and tracked every single day. In many cases, systems that were sold to local communities for relatively benign purposes such as parking security, toll roads or catching speeding drivers, have since been incorporated into the British police's vast surveillance network, and there are plans to do the same thing here. Board member of the Australian Privacy Foundation Roger Clarke, says the trend has been growing rapidly under the noses of the general public, and has already started in Canberra. "CrimTrac has been trying to co-ordinate state and territory police for quite some time to try and get mass surveillance in any state they can get into so they can then use that as a beachhead and say, 'well every other state uses it, why don't you?' that's how it started in the UK. "In Canberra the Greens and the government accepted the nonsense put to them by police (when point-to-point cameras were installed. [The government] wants to get a massive surveillance database just like the UK, the likes of which we've never had before."
ACT Policing says no location data is attached to images from its mobile ANPR systems. "It is important to note no location information is stored, and the data is therefore not used for evidential or Intel gathering purposes," a spokesman said. But fixed cameras, be they private or otherwise, are a different story. The federal government certainly seems to think linking up camera networks is a good idea, promising before the last federal election to set up a voluntary registry of private CCTV cameras that law enforcement officers would be able to tap into, vastly expanding their own surveillance reach. The ACT has been an enthusiastic adopter of plate reader technology in Australia, first trialling it around the year 2000 at the time large networks were being set up around London and Northern Island to help police deal with the threat of Irish Republican Army bombings.
Canberra currently has a small number of specific ANPR equipped cameras – 14 mounted in ANPR police vehicles and two point-to-point camera zones along Hindmarsh and Athllon drives. It is also used on average speed cameras on the Hume Highway just beyond the ACT border. But the ACT government is currently considering a report recommending the installation of CCTV cameras placed every 1000 metres along most of the territory's major roads, starting with Northbourne Avenue, potentially within the next year. The report, prepared by AECOM for the ACT government in early 2013, found the ACT's current traffic management systems inadequate, and suggested a staged rollout of a sophisticated integrated traffic management system of 119 CCTV cameras, as well as variable speed signs and monitoring stations. School of Law assistant professor at the University of Canberra Bruce Arnold has been studying the growth of number plate scanning globally and says Canberrans should be concerned about the plans, even if cameras are not initially equipped to scan licence plates.
"There are obvious privacy concerns, because potentially you're able to track everyone in the ACT who's using a car, in most cases a simple software upgrade at a later date is all this is required to add the capability," Mr Arnold says. "Once it's in place you are left with this fairly expensive network, and you have to justify why it's there, so people come along and say, 'for an extra $5 million we can add functionality, we will be able to catch child molesters or drug traffickers' and so it gets expanded and linked to other data." "There are votes in security so the temptation will be to integrate the data from this with other sources such as face recognition systems, from the sorts of cameras like we're already seeing in Garema Place and East Row. You could for example track the car I'm travelling in, and then using face recognition you could track me walking around in Garema Place." Evidence both locally and further afield suggests that where data collection systems have the potential to be used by police or other government agencies for surveillance, sooner or later they will be. In July 2014 police admitted they had been using data from the ACT's MyWay electronic bus tickets to monitor the movements of Canberrans. Since the MyWay system came into place in 2010 the Australian Federal Police have requested information on bus passengers 27 times, with 16 of those requests resulting in data being handed over.
And members of the public might be surprised just how far the cameras that police are already accessing can reach. When two cars slammed into each other head-on in March 2013, killing an 84-year-old man in one of the vehicles, it was unclear from the scene exactly what happened and who was at fault. But a camera on a passing Action bus recorded the entire incident. After a lengthy public debate about privacy concerns ahead of the installation of point-to-point speed cameras and assurances that they would not be used for mass surveillance, a damning ACT Auditor-General's report released in March last year found that since they began operating in 2012, police had made 22 requests for images from the cameras, all of which were approved. Under ACT law, images captured by roadside cameras must be deleted within 14 days if they are not linked to an offence while those that might be are uploaded to a police database. But the auditor's report found that around a quarter of images uploaded to the database and subsequently dismissed were still being retained. A separate audit in 2010 by the Australian Information Commissioner of the ANPR system found ACT Policing's publicity campaigns had not discussed the system's ability to be used to track people of interest, and police were reluctant to publicise those additional functions too widely, for fear their effectiveness may be reduced. Looking further afield gives in insight into where privacy issues can arise.
In 2011 in the United States a Northern Virginia man reported his wife missing, prompting police to enter her plate number into their system. The system detected her car at an apartment complex nearby and police were sent to investigate. When they arrived they found the car parked outside with a note on its windscreen that suggested she was in apartment 3C, and asking that they not tow away her vehicle. When they knocked on the door, the woman came out of the bedroom. They advised her to call her husband. But potentially even more concerning than law enforcement use is the rise of data aggregators harvesting and selling licence plate information to private investigators, debt collectors or anyone else willing to pay. Private company TLO has begun selling access to its database of more than a billion vehicle sightings in the US, allowing customers to request a report on a vehicle showing where it went, when and its most recently detected location. In July 2013 the American Civil Liberties Union sent 587 requests for information to police departments around the country asking how and why they use ANPR technology. The resulting report, "You are Being Tracked", found not only was police data leaking out and ending up in private databases (no such breach has been reported in the ACT), but a plethora of private businesses from parking garages to airports, toll roads and security firms were also recording and storing vast databases of licence plate data. One of the biggest users of this data is repossession agents wanting to track down debtors. TLO's website claims the company adds 50 million sightings to its database every month. "If not properly secured, license plate reader databases open the door to abusive tracking, enabling anyone with access to pry into the lives of his boss, his ex-wife, or his romantic, political, or workplace rivals," that report warned.
While there have been no suggestions that the data is being used improperly in Canberra, a number of other businesses around the city have begun recording the details of their visitors, including the National Portrait Gallery, that scans the plates of every vehicle that enters its carpark. "It is standard technology used in many new car parks in shopping centres and other public spaces … The data is only used in relation to parking," a gallery spokeswoman said, but noted the information could be passed to the police in the event of an incident or accident. Cameras have also been going in along the Majura Parkway construction zone, and their success has encouraged the government to look at installing more, according to Justice Minister Shane Rattenbury. "The ability to see the road network and minimise congestion and maximise the efficiency of the network offers real opportunity for commuters to get a better run across the city … but unfettered access clearly is not an acceptable outcome," Mr Rattenbury said. "It is important that that data can be used, but that it be used in a way that is consistent with privacy principles. Those concerns (about mass surveillance) are fair enough, and this is not about having mass surveillance, I'd expect those principles to be applied across any further use of cameras."
But looking at where its financial priorities lie provides an insight into how important the ACT government views surveillance technology. The strained 2013-14 budget included big hits to some areas including ACT Policing, which had about 10 per cent or $15 million slashed from its total annual allocation of $150 million over four years. At the same time the union was warning the cuts would result in up to 45 job losses, an extra $5m was found to expand the More Police Safer Roads initiative which included increasing the number of ANPR equipped cars to four. According to a police spokesman, there are now 14 ANPR equipped cars on the ACT's streets. The technology is already in use in a number of other states and territories, and there have been several attempts to link up these individual systems. To see where the ACT's embryonic deployment of the technology could lead to, the small land-locked county of Surrey in the Britain provides a useful case study.
In 2001 Surrey Police introduced one van and four ANPR cameras, staffed by six officers. Using data on vehicles linked to terrorism or major crime, Surrey's ANPR intercept team rapidly increased their number of arrests to 100 per officer per year, four times the British national average. Additional funds to the program began to flow. By 2013 that number had grown to 168 cameras at 38 sites reporting 3400 positive hits a day for vehicles of interest. Last year Surrey Police also entered into a joint project with the University of Surrey to develop sophisticated convoy analysis software that allows officers to track not just an individual vehicle, but to identify any others who may have been following a similar route and could therefore have been travelling with them. Convoy analysis is already in limited use in both Britain and the United States. While the US and British experiences may sound paranoid or improbable in Australia, there is significant appetite to roll out systems on a similar scale here. In June 2008 CrimTrac began work on a scoping study for a nationally connected licence plate scanning network that would allow law enforcement, national security and road transport authorities to track vehicles across the entire country. While the study found implementing such a vast network would be expensive and faced potential technical and legislative difficulties, ahead of the last federal election the Coalition announced its intention to try again. In its policy to tackle crime, the now Abbott government pledged to commission an urgent scoping study for the rollout of a licence plate scanning network to be operated by CrimTrac for the approaches to airsides and waterfronts.
"This will enable law enforcement and criminal intelligence agencies to identify people and organisations whose attendance at these locations may be unauthorised or suspicious," the policy document claimed. The document also extolled the virtues of Britain's vast network of CCTV cameras in solving murders and other crimes, and pledged an extra $50 million for local Australian communities to follow British neighbourhoods and install more cameras. According to a spokeswoman for Justice Minister Michael Keenan's office, nearly $20 million of that money had already been spent by the end of 2014. CrimTrac's CEO Doug Smith told a Senate estimates hearing in November 2013 that it would be relatively simple to set-up a national database of vehicles of interest that could be accessed by ANPR systems around the country, but said technology, privacy and other issues had been found to be a serious concern when considered in 2008. "Probably the best example you could use as an analogy is the one that is used in Britain, which is a single national system. It is a very extensive and intrusive system, and the board did not have the appetite at the time and did not approve that particular request," Mr Smith said. The Privacy Foundation's Roger Clarke remains skeptical.
"This is now mature technology that has been around for a number of years and there is plenty of forward compatibility built into this system. It's quite ripe for function creep to occur because it's easily done, and for governments and police, it's easy to see the attraction."LONDON (Reuters) - Financial markets’ shaky start to the year shows they are losing faith in the “healing powers” of central banks, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) said on Sunday while voicing concerns over sub-zero interest rates and emerging economies.
An investor looks at an electronic board showing stock information at a brokerage house in Shanghai, China, July 10, 2015. REUTERS/Aly Song
The Swiss-based organization, which fosters cooperation between central banks in the pursuit of monetary and financial stability, said that recent worries over China’s economy, oil and commodity prices and some European banks had come as fundamental shifts take place in the global economy.
International bank-to-bank lending is contracting for the first time in two years, the use of dollar-denominated debt to drive growth in emerging markets has ground to a halt on a strengthening of the currency that has also served to send U.S. companies rushing to borrow in euros.
At the same time, world growth remains subdued, overall debt continues to rise and negative interest rates in large parts of Europe and Japan suggest that some leading central banks are running low on ammunition to quell market volatility that could pose a threat to the global economy.
“The latest turbulence has hammered home the message that central banks have been overburdened for far too long post-crisis,” the head of the BIS monetary and economics department, Claudio Borio, said in its first quarterly report of the year.
“Market participants have taken notice. And their confidence in central banks’ healing powers has — probably for the first time — been faltering. Policymakers, too, would do well to take notice.”
The comments dovetailed with concerns about the potential side-effects of negative interest rates, which are effectively a charge on commercial banks’ spare cash.
A study in the BIS report showed the different ways negative rates were being implemented by the likes of Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Japan and the European Central Bank, which is expected to go even deeper into negative territory on Thursday.
Related Coverage Carry trades at heart of China capital outflows: BIS
KNOCK-ON EFFECTS
Evidence from Switzerland showed that banks there had not introduced negative rates on customers’ savings but had instead increased costs on loans such as mortgages to curb losses.
“If negative policy rates do not feed into lending rates for households and firms, they largely lose their rationale,” the study said.
“On the other hand, if negative policy rates are transmitted to lending rates for firms and households, then there will be knock-on effects on bank profitability unless negative rates are also imposed on deposits, raising questions as to the stability of the retail deposit base.”
The report also focused on another of the side-effects of the ECB’s rock-bottom interest rates.
There has been a 15 percent-a-year rise in the amount of euro-denominated debt issued by companies outside the euro bloc. If they neglect to put currency hedges in place, that represents some big bets on the euro remaining weak.
Euro debt has become so popular among U.S. companies, for example, that it has acquired its own name — the “reverse yankee”. Total net issuance in euros in the fourth quarter accounted for 48 percent of debt issued by non-financial U.S. companies.
In emerging markets (EM), meanwhile, six years of rising dollar-denominated debt issuance faltered after last year’s EM sell-off pushed currencies lower and increased borrowing costs for both governments and companies.
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International banks’ lending to emerging markets fell 6 percent in the third quarter of last year, while outstanding international debt securities — bonds and other types of loans — contracted by $47 billion in the fourth quarter, the biggest fall in three years.
“And this has been happening as domestic financial cycles (in emerging markets) have been maturing or turning,” Borio said.
“It is as if two waves with different frequencies came together to form a bigger and more destructive one.”Chipotle Mexican Grill recently announced a series of sweeping reforms in how its chicken suppliers must breed, raise and slaughter birds. It’s important progress around an issue that consumers increasingly care deeply about, and represents just the latest in a major shift in how we farm and eat in America.
Specifically, Chipotle is mandating that its chicken suppliers follow the standards set forth by Global Animal Partnership—an organization that sets animal welfare standards and then certifies farms under those standards—when it comes to breeds of birds it uses and providing improved living environments; it’s also requiring that suppliers replace inhumane slaughter methods with a more modern system.
These are among the most important issues facing chickens, who make up more than 90 percent of the animals we eat (excluding fish). While some family farmers raise heritage-breed birds on pasture, the vast majority of chickens come from factory farms where they’re bred to grow so large so fast they suffer crippling leg deformities and heart attacks (because their legs and organs can’t keep up with their enormous size). They live cramped together in barren, dark environments—which is no way to house social, intelligent animals. And they’re killed using a system that’s riddled with cruelty from start to finish, including being forced upside down into metal shackles while fully conscious.
The Humane Society of the United States and other animal protection organizations have been helping fix these problems. And just in the last few months, industry leaders like foodservice companies Compass Group, Sodexo, Aramark, Panera Bread, Starbucks and others have announced policies nearly identical to Chipotle’s.
At the same time, the chicken industry seems to have its head buried in the sand. The industry’s trade association recently released a response to these concerns, attempting to convince companies and consumers that the concerns being tackled by Chipotle and so many others are invalid. But it lacks all marks of serious science: it’s neither published nor peer-reviewed, doesn't disclose its underlying data or methods and doesn’t even disclose the authors. And to top it off, it was produced by a major agribusiness drug company with an interest in maintaining the status quo around how factory farm chickens are produced.
The whole thing smacks of those infamous tobacco industry reports that attempted to convince doctors and consumers that cigarettes are healthy.
It’s also bad business. Take Blockbuster Video. In the early days of Netflix, Blockbuster had a chance to buy the groundbreaking new company for a mere $50 million. But it rejected the offer, thinking it could stave off the inevitable changes happening in its industry. Now, Blockbuster is bankrupt, while Netflix is worth a whopping $55 billion.
The story of our shift to better, more humane farming is a story of adaptation. It’s a story about companies that embrace the future rather than cling to the past—about companies that welcome changes in their industry and ride the wave of progress rather than push against the tide. Indeed, history shows that those which embrace change swim, while those that don’t—the Blockbusters of the world—sink.
Thanks to ever-growing consumer support around these issues—and to companies like Chipotle and so many others—the tide is indeed turning for farm animals. Breeding pigs are on their way out of gestation crates, with most major food companies eliminating those notorious devices from their supply chains and ten states prohibiting them. Egg-laying hens are on their way out of cages, with hundreds of companies mandating a shift to cage-free production. And now countless chickens are on their way toward much better lives, and less cruel ends.
Despite bunk studies and some industry naysayers, the future for farm animals is clearer than ever—and it’s a much more humane one.Contreras plays for #Cubs and country
Carrie Muskat Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jul 23, 2017
On Sunday night, Willson Contreras hit a tie-breaking two-run home run in the sixth inning to lift the Cubs to a 5–3 victory over the Cardinals. But the homer meant more than a win to Contreras. He was playing for his country, Venezuela.
Contreras’ parents and his older brother, Willmer, 27, are still there in the country, which is struggling under the current government. Look at Contreras’ arms. He wore sleeves that represented the Venezuelan flag.
“Today I said I was going to play in honor of my country,” Contreras said. “We’ve been having a tough time and I just wanted to do the best for Venezuela. We’re here [in the U.S.], but our minds after the game go back to Venezuela and our families.
“A lot of people are dying because the [Venezuelan] government wants to do whatever it wants,” he said. “We have to be able to grow up in a country where you can think of your future and your son’s future and your kids, and that’s something we don’t have right now [in Venezuela]. That’s it. I was playing for my country today.”
Contreras has been wearing one sleeve with the Venezuelan flag but Sunday was the first time he had them on both arms. And after his homer, he kissed his forearms as a signal to his family and friends still in his native country.
It would be easy for Contreras to ignore what’s going on back home. He’s batting.346 (34-for-107) with 10 homers and 27 RBIs in his last 30 games.
“He’s just playing his butt off literally right now,” Cubs manager Joe Maddon said. “Everything he’s doing is pretty darn good. He plays with enthusiasm and you’ve got to feel that in the stands. There are some times he might get over enthusiastic. I prefer toning people down as opposed to trying to pump them up. He’s doing everything — he’s hitting fourth, he’s catching, he’s handling a really good pitching staff, he’s throwing people out and he’s blocking the ball really well and he’s hitting homers. God bless him.”
And he’s playing with a heavy heart.
“I know this week is going to be tough in Venezuela,” Contreras said. “I want to make sure Venezuelans know I’m fighting for them.”
— Carrie Muskat2015 has been a relatively turbulent year for the LDS Church. Beginning with the February ex-communication of John Dehlin and culminating in the November release of “The Policy”. Continued releases of LDS Gospel topics essays as well as the release of a photo of the seer stone used by Joseph Smith to produce the Book of Mormon have also contributed to this discussion.
Many have considered this year to be pivotal in the church’s future with very clear statements made about “apostates” and “homosexuals”. Thousands have apparently left, either officially or unofficially. However, a lot of the talk has been around those who have not previously been liberal in their leaning, just your average church attending member. This, to me has been the most interesting development.
A bit of the talk, particularly around “The Policy” spoke of the Church not being very Christlike – that we were not showing the love Christ would have – the Charity… Hearing friends of mine speak of the Church lacking a basic and fundamental aspect of the Gospel was surprising. I read blogs, and their comments, with people expressing very strong emotion, strong spiritual feelings – many were negative. Forgive my crassness – many were dumping on the Church. On the policy, the behaviour, the leaders, those supporting such a policy – people were and are upset.
Allow me to share a short story. In my professional capacity, I received a call from a police officer who was at an Emergency Department following them having just brought in a person. This person had just tried to commit suicide by jumping from a cliff face, but was fortunately talked back by these fine police. The police indicated to me that the head Doctor was refusing them entry, which was seemingly against the law. I was able to later speak with the Doctor in an attempt to resolve the impasse. During my first sentence where I was introducing myself, the Doctor interrupted and said, “Look, I don’t care who you are. I’m running one of the busiest Emergency Departments in the state. I don’t have time to be dealing with these people. Your police are bringing in these people all the time! It takes me away from the genuinely sick people that need my help” He then hung up.
Apart from being one of the rudest people I have ever spoken to, this Doctor did not have the belief that a person who, only 15 minutes earlier wanted to kill himself, belonged in an Emergency Department. He saw these people as outside his area of responsibility. People with a mental illness were not able to receive his help as genuine people with sore stomachs, broken limbs and whiplash were more deserving.
I have often reflected on this most heinous example of discrimination to remind me that there are some people and organisations in this world who have the legal, cultural or moral obligation to care for a certain population of people – but who don’t. School teachers who sexually abuse, carers who fail to extend proper care and treatment to those in their charge and churches who condone and support systematic sexual abuse of children fall within this category.
I have often thought about the way in which our church responds and deals with the poorest and most vulnerable in our society. My experience is we don’t do it very well. Unlike most Christian churches we do not have much ability to extend ourselves into our local communities to reach out. No soup kitchens, no visits to homeless, no community gardens. (I have heard very few and isolated examples of this happening across the church population). Most of our humanitarian efforts seem to be focused on developing and struggling nations. A couple I know recently served as a Humanitarian companionship in Bosnia – doing some wonderful work. But such work is limited and is directed at a general level of the church. What about the poor and suffering here in Australia – what are we doing to help them? Not much.
A recent example highlighted my frustration at our response to this population.
A member friend of mine indicated that the missionaries had brought a homeless man to his Ward. This member began to outline, rather negatively, the fact that this man was wearing a leather coat and pants that did not match – totally, in his opinion, inappropriate for visiting his Ward. He continued. Apparently at some stage during the meeting, the man took himself to the bathroom and, due to the cubicle being occupied, did his business (number 2) on the floor in the corner. He was also seen to be taking food from the fridge and eating it.
This friend of mine then made a remark similar to the Doctor I mentioned above. He said, “What sort of people are the missionaries bringing here to Church. Can’t they find anyone normal”. What a comment!!! There was some chatter about this situation with the many family and friends that were in attendance and once it settled down I said, “So, what did you offer him – how did you help” He didn’t answer and was somewhat taken back by my challenging remark. I noticed that he was a bit embarrassed and then, to take the heat off, I said, “So with 15 million members, billions of dollars in the kitty, churches dotted all over this city, missionaries in record numbers – with all of this, what, as a Church, can we offer him”. He looked similarly puzzled and I ended up answering for him, “Nothing. With everything available to us we can offer him nothing”.
And so like my Doctor friend, there are apparently people in the Church who think that we should exclude people on the basis of complex or difficult needs. Further that there is a lack of ecclesiastical support to provide such assistance. And finally, that there is a culture that promotes the benefits of baptising of functional rich people over the care of the poor and needy.
This man obviously had complex and significant needs. He obviously needed a suite of services to help him. But, with all of what we have, the best we could do was ultimately to kick him out the door. My experience is that the missionaries would not bring him to church again and probably not work with him to get him help or assistance. We actually could do so much more and it saddens me that as a church we just don’t engage very well with people unless they come to church clean, married, employed and with kids.
For all the “crap” people heaped on the Church for the issues in 2015, this homeless man, to me, highlighted our most critical flaw. That with all the resources available to us as a church, that we do not honour the admonition contained throughout the scriptures we profess to believe – to relieve the suffering of the poor:
Old Testament
Deuteronomy 15:11
11 For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land
New Testament
Matthew 19:21
21 Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.
Book Of Mormon
Mormon 8:37
37 For behold, ye do love money, and your substance, and your fine apparel, and the adorning of your churches, more than ye love the poor and the needy, the sick and the afflicted.
Doctrine and Covenants
Doctrine and Covenants 52:40
40 And remember in all things the poor and the needy, the sick and the afflicted, for he that doeth not these things, the same is not my disciple.
And so it is with this thought that I enter this Christmas season. I will try to do my bit to help those around me who are poor and needy. Unfortunately, this will not be achieved through the institutional church. I will have to leave that space and search out a need to assist.
It is my hope that for those who literally crap on the Church that we find a way to see that as an opportunity to help and not a distraction to our meeting schedule.Say your employer wants you to get a genetic test. You politely decline because you consider it a gross infringement of privacy. Well, too bad—your monthly health insurance payments just spiked 30%.
This could be the reality under HR 1313, the Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act, a House GOP-sponsored bill that would essentially allow companies with workplace wellness programs to demand your genetic information (or force you to pay a big penalty).
The legislation has now passed a House committee on a straight party line vote, reports STAT News, with all 22 Republicans unified in support against 17 Democratic detractors. The bill is expected to be latched on to a second Obamacare-related legislative effort that will be a followup to the main GOP health care plan now working its way through Congress.
Click here to subscribe to Brainstorm Health Daily, our brand new newsletter about health innovations.
Currently, employers with ostensibly voluntary workplace wellness programs can force their workers to pay 30% more (and up to 50% more for smokers) toward their company-provided health insurance benefits if they choose not to participate – provisions that were actually passed as a part of Obamacare and then cemented by the Obama administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The wellness programs typically include basic biometric screenings, access to gym memberships, and health care-related questionnaires.
But two older, milestone laws don’t allow these wellness programs to include genetic testing: the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the 2008 Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA). These laws bar employers from even asking workers to undergo a genetic test.
Interest groups representing the employer-provided benefits lobby told Congress that those laws aren’t in synch with Obamacare’s workplace wellness program initiatives and therefore hamper their ability to control costs and improve employee health, according to STAT. But it’s unclear how having this sort of information would actually do anything to control spending or improve health outcomes, and how employees’ genetic information could be safe-guarded from abuse (such as selling it to targeted ad companies).
In fact, there’s minimal evidence that workplace wellness programs even work in the first place. That’s why some large employers have been scrutinizing them in recent years and pulling back initiatives that haven’t provided tangible results.Getty Images
Packers cornerback Damarious Randall left for the locker room on a cart to be checked for a concussion, according to the team.
Randall appeared to take a shot to the head on a block.
He walked walk off without assistance after being attended to by Packers’ medical staff.
According to Jason Wilde of ESPN, Dr. John Gray, a team physician, rode on the cart with Randall, indicating it was a head injury.
Randall, a first-round pick in 2015, did not perform as the Packers expected last season after Sam Shields‘ season ended with a concussion in the season opener. Randall underwent groin surgery midway through the season, missing six games, and Ladarius Gunter, an undrafted free agent from the same draft class, became the team’s No. 1 cornerback down the stretch.× Trapped and dying in Utah, man leaves behind love notes
UTAH — David Welch hopped into his maroon Pontiac Montana van last month and drove for hours. Without expressing where he was going, he kept on driving, police say.
Nearly seven weeks later, a hitchhiker found him in a deep, isolated desert patch in Utah, hundreds of miles from his Kansas home.
Injured and trapped in his car, he’d spent his final days penning love letters to his wife of 32 years and four sons.
Authorities say his car plummeted into the ravine in early September after it veered off the road.
Welch, 54, sat in his mangled car for days, maybe weeks, police say. Nights became days, then weeks, then over a month.
And as his family searched for him, he was trapped in his car, scribbling his last words.
What is in the letter is private, authorities say. But the notes have been handed over to Welch’s family.
His family’s ordeal started on September 2 when he left his home in Manhattan, Kansas.
A day later, relatives contacted the police to report he had not returned home.
“At this time officers confirmed that there was no reason to believe Welch was currently in danger of harm or had known medical issues that may cause him to be in danger,” the Riley County Police Department said.
It said it notified law enforcement agencies in areas where Welch may have gone.
Four days after he left home, a missing persons report was filed. Long stretches of time passed with no news of his whereabouts.
The retired Pepsi Co. representative was an avid outdoors man who loved landscaping, scuba diving and snow skiing, according to his obituary posted on a funeral home’s website.
Forty-six days after he left home — on October 18th — a pedestrian walking along the edge of the desolate road saw an overturned car in a deep ravine.
It was about 850 miles away from his home on a deserted section off of Interstate 70.
Straight tire marks led off the road down to where his vehicle crashed, authorities said.
It didn’t appear like he was braking or attempting a turn, just that he went straight off the road, said Cpl. Todd Johnson, a spokesman for the Utah Highway Patrol.
Authorities believe Welch fell asleep while driving, sending the car crossing into the ravine and rolling onto its passenger side, CNN affiliate KSNT reported.
Welch was trapped alive in the ravine for an unknown number of days.
He was found dead. What police don’t know is how long he lived.
And with his passing, a lot of questions remain, like why he was so far away from home.Been much too long since I’ve written one of these, which I’d like to blame on a lack of good ideas crossing my desk (so to speak) but is really just because I’ve been a bit lazy about searching them out.
So sue me. You’d get tired of searching after scrolling past the 3856934th “IDEA: NERF AFK CLOAKING” thread too.
Anyway, Pirate Logs. Who remembers these, raise your hand? If your hand’s up you’ve been playing for quite a long time, as these things have not dropped in ages. They used to be intended to lead people to the old static complexes, or something, which was rather pointless since everyone knew where those were anyway. After all, they were static. At some point – probably when CCP shifted the static complexes to scanning – they were removed from the game and forgotten.
Until now, apparently. A player by the name of Andrea Griffin wrote a post proposing they be brought back and repurposed. The idea, quite simply, would be to add to exploration, a different way to find content similar to what CCP is adding in Odyssey, but distinct in flavor and hopefully in mechanics, to keep it interesting.
Great idea. There is not a single bad thing I can say about this, and I hardly even have to say anything good about it, because the poster identified virtually everything already.
It can introduce players to the idea of exploration and expeditions.
It can encourage more high-sec players to explore lowsec. They can see that expedition right there in their journal, calling to them. They know exactly where to go.
A new market segment opens up for trading ship logs – people who won’t want to do the expeditions can sell the logs.
It helps tell stories in Eve. Some of the ship logs are funny, some are creepy, but all of them add important bits of flavor.
It’s easy to iterate on.
Most of the work has already been done.
Just about the only thing I can think of to add to this is that if they were to drop in nullsec (and I really don’t see any good reason why they shouldn’t), it’s a tool with which to tune ratting income. Want it higher? Leave things as is. Or maybe it’s high enough already, so they can nerf bounties again (thus reducing the faucet) and leave the sale of the logs or the loot gleaned from them to make up the difference. Sounds like a win-win to me.
Count on this being something I’ll be bringing to CCP’s attention as a future means of iterating on their new exploration features.
And before signing off on this post, I’d like to mention how great I think the new exploration feature is. They’re quick to find and complete, which is a boon to the more casual player. They require active engagement, both to break the lock and to grab the loot. If CCP hits their mark (and odd as it sounds to say, I have faith that they will, or will quickly revisit it if not) they’ll be rewarding to a solo player, and proportionally more rewarding to a small group of players, thanks to the “space pinata” mechanic for getting |
-ethnic groups disappeared.
Economic and social correlates of IQ IQ <75 75–90 90–110 110–125 >125 US population distribution 5 20 50 20 5 Married by age 30 72 81 81 72 67 Out of labor force more than 1 month out of year (men) 22 19 15 14 10 Unemployed more than 1 month out of year (men) 12 10 7 7 2 Divorced in 5 years 21 22 23 15 9 % of children w/ IQ in bottom decile (mothers) 39 17 6 7 – Had an illegitimate baby (mothers) 32 17 8 4 2 Lives in poverty 30 16 6 3 2 Ever incarcerated (men) 7 7 3 1 0 Chronic welfare recipient (mothers) 31 17 8 2 0 High school dropout 55 35 6 0.4 0 Scored "Yes" on "Middle Class Values Index"[c 1] 16 30 50 67 74
Values are the percentage of each IQ sub-population, among non-Hispanic whites only, fitting each descriptor.[4]
^ Received at least a high-school diploma
Never interviewed while incarcerated
Still married to one's first spouse
Men only: In the labor force, even if not employed
In the labor force, even if not employed Women only: Never gave birth outside of marriage Excluded from the analysis were never-married individuals who satisfied all other components of the index, and men who were not in the labor force in 1989 or 1990 due to disability or still being in school.[3] According to Herrnstein & Murray the "Middle Class Values Index" was intended "to identify among the NLSY population, in their young adulthood when the index was scored, those people who are getting along with their lives in ways that fit the middle-class stereotype." To score "Yes" on the index, a NLSY subject had to meet all four of the following criteria:Excluded from the analysis were never-married individuals who satisfied all other components of the index, and men who were not in the labor force in 1989 or 1990 due to disability or still being in school.
Part III. The National Context [ edit ]
This part of the book discusses ethnic differences in cognitive ability and social behavior. Herrnstein and Murray report that Asian Americans have a higher mean IQ than white Americans, who in turn outscore black Americans. The book argues that the black-white gap is not due to test bias, noting that IQ tests do not tend to underpredict the school or job performance of black individuals and that the gap is larger on apparently culturally neutral test items than on more culturally loaded items. The authors also note that adjusting for socioeconomic status does not eliminate the black-white IQ gap. However, they argue that the gap is narrowing.[1]
According to Herrnstein and Murray, the high heritability of IQ within races does not necessarily mean that the cause of differences between races is genetic. On the other hand, they discuss lines of evidence that have been used to support the thesis that the black-white gap is at least partly genetic, such as Spearman's hypothesis. They also discuss possible environmental explanations of the gap, such as the observed generational increases in IQ, for which they coin the term Flynn effect. At the close of this discussion, they write:[1]
"If the reader is now convinced that either the genetic or environmental explanation has won out to the exclusion of the other, we have not done a sufficiently good job of presenting one side or the other. It seems highly likely to us that both genes and environment have something to do with racial differences. What might the mix be? We are resolutely agnostic on that issue; as far as we can determine, the evidence does not yet justify an estimate."
The authors also stress that regardless of the causes of differences, people should be treated no differently.[1]
In Part III, the authors also repeat many of the analyses from Part II, but now compare whites to blacks and Hispanics in the NLSY dataset. They find that after controlling for IQ, many differences in social outcomes between races are diminished.[1]
The authors discuss the possibility that high birth rates among those with lower IQs may exert a downward pressure on the national distribution of cognitive ability. They argue that immigration may also have a similar effect.[1]
At the close of Part III, Herrnstein and Murray discuss the relation of IQ to social problems. Using the NLSY data, they show that social problems increase as a monotonic function of lower IQ.[1]
Living Together [ edit ]
In this final chapter, the authors discuss the relevance of cognitive ability for understanding major social issues in America.[1]
Evidence for experimental attempts to raise intelligence is reviewed. The authors conclude that currently there are no means to boost intelligence by more than a modest degree.[1]
The authors criticize the "levelling" of general and secondary education and defend gifted education. They offer a critical overview of affirmative action policies in colleges and workplaces, arguing that their goal should be equality of opportunity rather than equal outcomes.[1]
Herrnstein and Murray offer a pessimistic portrait of America's future. They predict that a cognitive elite will further isolate itself from the rest of society, while the quality of life deteriorates for those at the bottom of the cognitive scale. As an antidote to this prognosis, they offer a vision of society where differences in ability are recognized and everybody can have a valued place, stressing the role of local communities and clear moral rules that apply to everybody.[1]
Policy recommendations [ edit ]
Herrnstein and Murray argued the average genetic IQ of the United States is declining, owing to the tendency of the more intelligent having fewer children than the less intelligent, the generation length to be shorter for the less intelligent, and the large-scale immigration to the United States of those with low intelligence. Discussing a possible future political outcome of an intellectually stratified society, the authors stated that they "fear that a new kind of conservatism is becoming the dominant ideology of the affluent – not in the social tradition of an Edmund Burke or in the economic tradition of an Adam Smith but 'conservatism' along Latin American lines, where to be conservative has often meant doing whatever is necessary to preserve the mansions on the hills from the menace of the slums below."[5] Moreover, they fear that increasing welfare will create a "custodial state" in "a high-tech and more lavish version of the Indian reservation for some substantial minority of the nation's population." They also predict increasing totalitarianism: "It is difficult to imagine the United States preserving its heritage of individualism, equal rights before the law, free people running their own lives, once it is accepted that a significant part of the population must be made permanent wards of the states."[6]
The authors recommended the elimination of welfare policies that encourage poor women to have babies:
We can imagine no recommendation for using the government to manipulate fertility that does not have dangers. But this highlights the problem: The United States already has policies that inadvertently social-engineer who has babies, and it is encouraging the wrong women. "If the United States did as much to encourage high-IQ women to have babies as it now does to encourage low-IQ women, it would rightly be described as engaging in aggressive manipulation of fertility." The technically precise description of America's fertility policy is that it subsidizes births among poor women, who are also disproportionately at the low end of the intelligence distribution. We urge generally that these policies, represented by the extensive network of cash and services for low-income women who have babies, be ended. The government should stop subsidizing births to anyone rich or poor. The other generic recommendation, as close to harmless as any government program we can imagine, is to make it easy for women to make good on their prior decision not to get pregnant by making available birth control mechanisms that are increasingly flexible, foolproof, inexpensive, and safe.[7]
The book also argued for reducing immigration into the U.S. which was argued to lower the average national IQ. It also recommended against policies of affirmative action.
Media reception [ edit ]
The Bell Curve received a great deal of media attention. The book was not distributed in advance to the media, except for a few select reviewers picked by Murray and the publisher, which delayed more detailed critiques for months and years after the book's release.[8] Stephen Jay Gould, reviewing the book in The New Yorker, said that the book "contains no new arguments and presents no compelling data to support its anachronistic social Darwinism" and said that the "authors omit facts, misuse statistical methods, and seem unwilling to admit the consequence of their own words."[9]
A 1995 article by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting writer Jim Naureckas criticized the media response, saying that "While many of these discussions included sharp criticisms of the book, media accounts showed a disturbing tendency to accept Murray and Herrnstein's premises and evidence even while debating their conclusions".[10]
After reviewers had more time to review the book's research and conclusions more significant criticisms begin to appear.[8] Nicholas Lemann, writing in Slate, said that later reviews showed the book was "full of mistakes ranging from sloppy reasoning to mis-citations of sources to outright mathematical errors."[8] Lemann said that "Unsurprisingly, all the mistakes are in the direction of supporting the authors' thesis."[8]
Peer review [ edit ]
Herrnstein and Murray were criticized for not submitting their work to peer review before publication, an omission many have seen as incompatible with their presentation of it as a scholarly text.[8][11] A writer at the online publication Slate magazine complained that the book was not circulated in galley proofs, a common practice to allow potential reviewers and media professionals an opportunity to prepare for the book's arrival.[12] Many scholarly responses to the book arrived late. Richard Lynn (1999) wrote that "The book has been the subject of several hundred critical reviews, a number of which have been collected in edited volumes,"[13] suggesting that the book's lack of peer review had not prevented it from becoming the subject of subsequent academic commentary. Over two decades after its publication, one set of scholarly authors stated that The Bell Curve contained "... very little information that has since come into question by mainstream scholars.... The Bell Curve is not as controversial as its reputation would lead one to believe (and most of the book is not about race at all)."[14]
Mainstream Science on Intelligence [ edit ]
Fifty-two professors, most of them researchers in intelligence and related fields, signed "Mainstream Science on Intelligence",[15] an opinion statement endorsing a number of the views presented in The Bell Curve. The statement was written by psychologist Linda Gottfredson and published in The Wall Street Journal in 1994 and subsequently reprinted in Intelligence, an academic journal. Of the 131 who were invited by mail to sign the document, 100 responded, with 52 agreeing to sign and 48 declining. Eleven of the 48 who declined to sign claimed that the statement or some part thereof did not represent the mainstream view of intelligence.[15][16]
APA task force report [ edit ]
In response to the controversy surrounding The Bell Curve, the American Psychological Association's Board of Scientific Affairs established a special task force to publish an investigative report focusing solely on the research presented in the book, not necessarily the policy recommendations that were made.[17] In their final report, titled Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns,[18] some of the task force's findings supported or were consistent with statements from The Bell Curve. They agreed that:
Intelligence test scores have a correlation of 0.5 with GPA and 0.55 with the number of years in school. [19]
IQ scores have predictive validity for adult occupational status, even when variables such as education and family background have been statistically controlled.
There is little evidence to show that childhood diet influences intelligence except in cases of severe malnutrition.
Regarding explanations for racial differences, the APA task force stated:
The differential between the mean intelligence test scores of Blacks and Whites (about one standard deviation, although it may be diminishing) does not result from any obvious biases in test construction and administration, nor does it simply reflect differences in socio-economic status. Explanations based on factors of caste and culture may be appropriate, but so far have little direct empirical support. There is certainly no such support for a genetic interpretation. At present, no one knows what causes this differential.
The APA journal that published the statement, American Psychologist, subsequently published eleven critical responses in January 1997.
Criticisms [ edit ]
Many criticisms were collected in the book The Bell Curve Debate.
Criticism of alleged assumptions [ edit ]
Criticism by Stephen Jay Gould [ edit ]
Stephen Jay Gould wrote that the "entire argument" of the authors of The Bell Curve rests on four unsupported, and mostly false, assumptions about intelligence:[9][20]
Intelligence must be reducible to a single number. Intelligence must be capable of rank ordering people in a linear order. Intelligence must be primarily genetically based. Intelligence must be essentially immutable.
But in an interview with Frank Miele, co-author Charles Murray denied making any of these assumptions.
Interviewer: Let me go back to Gould's four points. Is there any one of those that you think is not a fair and accurate statement of what you said? Murray: All four of them.[21] Skeptic: So you are not saying intelligence is a single number? Murray: No. In The Bell Curve, we say of the I.Q. score, first, there have been a variety of ways to try to come up with independent mental factors. That has been a failure. On the other hand, there have been a variety of ways in which there are distinctions among different types of intelligence that are useful, such as the distinction between verbal, visual and spacial intelligence. And we talk about the different ways these different skills lead to success in occupations. And we talk, somewhat sympathetically, about the notion that there are, in Howard Gardner's words, multiple intelligences. We are a little dubious about applying the word "intelligence" to them, but we are very sympathetic that there are large domains of human talent that are not encompassed in the word "intelligence."... Interviewer: You are not a determinist. You are not saying everything is in the genes. You think free will is a meaningful concept. Murray: Yes, and so did Dick Herrnstein...[21]
Criticism by James Heckman [ edit ]
The Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economist James Heckman considers two assumptions made in the book to be questionable: that g accounts for correlation across test scores and performance in society, and that g cannot be manipulated. Heckman's reanalysis of the evidence used in The Bell Curve found contradictions:
The factors that explain wages receive different weights than the factors that explain test scores. More than g is required to explain either. Other factors besides g contribute to social performance, and they can be manipulated.[22]
In response, Murray argued that this was a straw man and that the book does not argue that g or IQ are totally immutable or the only factors affecting outcomes.[23]
In a 2005 interview, Heckman praised The Bell Curve for breaking "a taboo by showing that differences in ability existed and predicted a variety of socioeconomic outcomes" and for playing "a very important role in raising the issue of differences in ability and their importance" and stated that he was "a bigger fan of [The Bell Curve] than you might think." However, he also maintained that Herrnstein and Murray overestimated the role of heredity in determining intelligence differences.[24]
Criticism of statistical methods [ edit ]
Claude S. Fischer, Michael Hout, Martín Sánchez Jankowski, Samuel R. Lucas, Ann Swidler, and Kim Voss in the book Inequality by Design recalculated the effect of socioeconomic status, using the same variables as The Bell Curve, but weighting them differently. They found that if IQ scores are adjusted, as Herrnstein and Murray did, to eliminate the effect of education, the ability of IQ to predict poverty can become dramatically larger, by as much as 61 percent for whites and 74 percent for blacks. According to the authors, Herrnstein and Murray's finding that IQ predicts poverty much better than socioeconomic status is substantially a result of the way they handled the statistics.[25]
In August 1995, National Bureau of Economic Research economist Sanders Korenman and Harvard University sociologist Christopher Winship argued that measurement error was not properly handled by Herrnstein and Murray. Korenman and Winship concluded: "... there is evidence of substantial bias due to measurement error in their estimates of the effects of parents' socioeconomic status. In addition, Herrnstein and Murray's measure of parental socioeconomic status (SES) fails to capture the effects of important elements of family background (such as single-parent family structure at age 14). As a result, their analysis gives an exaggerated impression of the importance of IQ relative to parents' SES, and relative to family background more generally. Estimates based on a variety of methods, including analyses of siblings, suggest that parental family background is at least as important, and may be more important than IQ in determining socioeconomic success in adulthood."[26]
In the book Intelligence, Genes, and Success: Scientists Respond to The Bell Curve, a group of social scientists and statisticians analyzes the genetics-intelligence link, the concept of intelligence, the malleability of intelligence and the effects of education, the relationship between cognitive ability, wages and meritocracy, pathways to racial and ethnic inequalities in health, and the question of public policy. This work argues that much of the public response was polemic, and failed to analyze the details of the science and validity of the statistical arguments underlying the book's conclusions.[1]
Criticism of use of AFQT [ edit ]
William J. Matthews writes that part of The Bell Curve's analysis is based on the AFQT "which is not an IQ test but designed to predict performance of certain criterion variables".[27] The AFQT covers subjects such as trigonometry.[8]
Heckman observed that the AFQT was designed only to predict success in military training schools and that most of these tests appear to be achievement tests rather than ability tests, measuring factual knowledge and not pure ability. He continues:
Ironically, the authors delete from their composite AFQT score a timed test of numerical operations because it is not highly correlated with the other tests. Yet it is well known that in the data they use, this subtest is the single best predictor of earnings of all the AFQT test components. The fact that many of the subtests are only weakly correlated with each other, and that the best predictor of earnings is only weakly correlated with their "g-loaded" score, only heightens doubts that a single-ability model is a satisfactory description of human intelligence. It also drives home the point that the "g-loading" so strongly emphasized by Murray and Herrnstein measures only agreement among tests—not predictive power for socioeconomic outcomes. By the same token, one could also argue that the authors have biased their empirical analysis against the conclusions they obtain by disregarding the test with the greatest predictive power.[22][28]
Janet Currie and Duncan Thomas presented evidence suggesting AFQT scores are likely better markers for family background than "intelligence" in a 1999 study:
Herrnstein and Murray report that conditional on maternal "intelligence" (AFQT scores), child test scores are little affected by variations in socio-economic status. Using the same data, we demonstrate their finding is very fragile.[29]
Cognitive sorting [ edit ]
Charles R. Tittle and Thomas Rotolo found that the more the written, IQ-like, examinations are used as screening devices for occupational access, the stronger the relationship between IQ and income. Thus, rather than higher IQ leading to status attainment because it indicates skills needed in a modern society, IQ may reflect the same test-taking abilities used in artificial screening devices by which status groups protect their domains.[30]
Min-Hsiung Huang and Robert M. Hauser write that Herrnstein and Murray provide scant evidence of growth in cognitive sorting. Using data from the General Social Survey, they tested each of these hypotheses using a short verbal ability test which was administered to about 12,500 American adults between 1974 and 1994; the results provided no support for any of the trend hypotheses advanced by Herrnstein and Murray. One chart in The Bell Curve purports to show that people with IQs above 120 have become "rapidly more concentrated" in high-IQ occupations since 1940. But Robert Hauser and his colleague Min-Hsiung Huang retested the data and came up with estimates that fell "well below those of Herrnstein and Murray." They add that the data, properly used, "do not tell us anything except that selected, highly educated occupation groups have grown rapidly since 1940."[31]
In 1972, Noam Chomsky questioned Herrnstein's idea that society was developing towards a meritocracy. Chomsky criticized the assumptions that people only seek occupations based on material gain. He argued that Herrnstein would not want to become a baker or lumberjack even if he could earn more money that way. He also criticized the assumption that such a society would be fair with pay based on value of contributions. He argued that because there are already unjust great inequalities, people will often be paid, not for valuable contributions to society, but to preserve such inequalities.[32]
In 1995, Chomsky directly criticized the book and its assumptions on IQ. He takes issue with the idea that IQ is 60% heritable saying, the "statement is meaningless" since heritability doesn't have to be genetic. He gives the example of women wearing earrings:
To borrow an example from Ned Block, "some years ago when only women wore earrings, the heritability of having an earring was high because differences in whether a person had an earring was due to a chromosomal difference, XX vs. XY." No one has yet suggested that wearing earrings, or ties, is "in our genes," an inescapable fate that environment cannot influence, "dooming the liberal notion."[33]
He goes on to say there is almost no evidence of a genetic link, and greater evidence that environmental issues are what determine IQ differences.
Race and intelligence [ edit ]
One part of the controversy concerned the parts of the book which dealt with racial group differences on IQ and the consequences of this. The authors were reported throughout the popular press as arguing that these IQ differences are strictly genetic, when in fact they attributed IQ differences to both genes and the environment in chapter 13: "It seems highly likely to us that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences." The introduction to the chapter more cautiously states, "The debate about whether and how much genes and environment have to do with ethnic differences remains unresolved."
When several prominent critics turned this into an "assumption" that the authors had attributed most or all of the racial differences in IQ to genes, co-author Charles Murray responded by quoting two passages from the book:
If the reader is now convinced that either the genetic or environmental explanation has won out to the exclusion of the other, we have not done a sufficiently good job of presenting one side or the other. It seems highly likely to us that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences. What might the mix be? We are resolutely agnostic on that issue; as far as we can determine, the evidence does not justify an estimate. (p. 311) [34]
... If tomorrow you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that all the cognitive differences between races were 100 percent genetic in origin, nothing of any significance should change. The knowledge would give you no reason to treat individuals differently than if ethnic differences were 100 percent environmental...[34]
In an article praising the book, economist Thomas Sowell criticized some of its aspects, including some of its arguments about race and the malleability of IQ:
When European immigrant groups in the United States scored below the national average on mental tests, they scored lowest on the abstract parts of those tests. So did white mountaineer children in the United States tested back in the early 1930s... Strangely, Herrnstein and Murray refer to "folklore" that "Jews and other immigrant groups were thought to be below average in intelligence." It was neither folklore nor anything as subjective as thoughts. It was based on hard data, as hard as any data in The Bell Curve. These groups repeatedly tested below average on the mental tests of the World War I era, both in the army and in civilian life. For Jews, it is clear that later tests showed radically different results—during an era when there was very little intermarriage to change the genetic makeup of American Jews.[35]
Rushton (1997) as well as Cochran et al. (2005) have argued that the early testing does in fact support a high average Jewish IQ.[36][37]
Columnist Bob Herbert, writing for The New York Times, described the book as "a scabrous piece of racial pornography masquerading as serious scholarship." "Mr. Murray can protest all he wants," wrote Herbert; "his book is just a genteel way of calling somebody a nigger."[38]
In 1996, Stephen Jay Gould released a revised and expanded edition of his 1981 book The Mismeasure of Man, intended to more directly refute many of The Bell Curve's claims regarding race and intelligence, and arguing that the evidence for heritability of IQ did not indicate a genetic origin to group differences in intelligence. This book has in turn been criticized.[39][40]
Psychologist David Marks has suggested that the ASVAB test used in the analyses of The Bell Curve correlates highly with measures of literacy, and argues that the ASVAB test in fact is not a measure of general intelligence but of literacy.[41][42]
Melvin Konner, professor of anthropology and associate professor of psychiatry and neurology at Emory University, called Bell Curve a "deliberate assault on efforts to improve the school performance of African-Americans":
This book presented strong evidence that genes play a role in intelligence but linked it to the unsupported claim that genes explain the small but consistent black-white difference in IQ. The juxtaposition of good argument with a bad one seemed politically motivated, and persuasive refutations soon appeared. Actually, African-Americans have excelled in virtually every enriched environment they have been placed in, most of which they were previously barred from, and this in only the first decade or two of improved but still not equal opportunity. It is likely that the real curves for the two races will one day be superimposable on each other, but this may require decades of change and different environments for different people. Claims about genetic potential are meaningless except in light of this requirement.[43]
The 2014 textbook "Evolutionary Analysis" by Herron and Freeman[44] says that it is a mistake to think that heritability can tell us something about the causes of differences between population means. In reference to the comparison of African-American with European-American IQ scores, the text states that only a common garden experiment, in which the two groups are raised in an environment typically experienced by European-Americans, would allow one to see if the difference is genetic. This kind of experiment, routine with plants and animals, cannot be conducted with humans. Nor is it possible to approximate this design with adoptions into families of the different groups, because the children would be recognizable and possibly be treated differently. The text concludes: "There is no way to assess whether genetics has anything to do with the difference in IQ score between ethnic groups."
In 1995, Noam Chomsky criticized the book's conclusions about race and the notion that Blacks and people with lower IQs having more children is even a problem.[33]
Rutledge M. Dennis suggests that through soundbites of works like Jensen's famous study on the achievement gap, and Herrnstein and Murray's book The Bell Curve, the media "paints a picture of Blacks and other people of color as collective biological illiterates—as not only intellectually unfit but evil and criminal as well," thus providing, he says "the logic and justification for those who would further disenfranchise and exclude racial and ethnic minorities."[45]
Charles Lane pointed out that 17 of the researchers whose work is referenced by the book have also contributed to Mankind Quarterly, a journal of anthropology founded in 1960 in Edinburgh, which has been viewed as supporting the theory of the genetic superiority of white people.[46] David Bartholomew reports Murray's response as part of the controversy over the Bell Curve.[47] In his afterword to the 1996 Free Press edition of the Bell Curve, Murray responded that the book "draws its evidence from more than a thousand scholars" and among the researchers mentioned in Lane's list "are some of the most respected psychologists of our time and that almost all of the sources referred to as tainted are articles published in leading refereed journals."[48]
The Bell Curve Wars: Race, Intelligence, and the Future of America is a collection of articles published in reaction to the book. Edited by Steven Fraser, the writers of these essays do not have a specific viewpoint concerning the content of The Bell Curve, but express their own critiques of various aspects of the book, including the research methods used, the alleged hidden biases in the research and the policies suggested as a result of the conclusions drawn by the authors.[49] Fraser writes that "by scrutinizing the footnotes and bibliography in The Bell Curve, readers can more easily recognize the project for what it is: a chilly synthesis of the work of disreputable race theorists and eccentric eugenicists".[50]
Allegations of racism [ edit ]
Since the book provided statistical data supporting the assertion that blacks were, on average, less intelligent than whites, some people have feared that The Bell Curve could be used by extremists to justify genocide and hate crimes.[51][52] Much of the work referenced by The Bell Curve was funded by the Pioneer Fund, which aims to advance the scientific study of heredity and human differences, and has been accused of promoting scientific racism.[53][54][55] Murray criticized the characterization of the Pioneer Fund as a racist organization, arguing that it has as much relationship to its founder as "Henry Ford and today's Ford Foundation."[48]:564
Evolutionary biologist Joseph L. Graves described The Bell Curve as an example of racist science, containing all the types of errors in the application of scientific method that have characterized the history of scientific racism:
claims that are not supported by the data given errors in calculation that invariably support the hypothesis no mention of data that contradict the hypothesis no mention of theories and data that conflict with core assumptions bold policy recommendations that are consistent with those advocated by racists.[56]
Eric Siegel published on the Scientific American blog that the book "endorses prejudice by virtue of what it does not say. Nowhere does the book address why it investigates racial differences in IQ. By never spelling out a reason for reporting on these differences in the first place, the authors transmit an unspoken yet unequivocal conclusion: Race is a helpful indicator as to whether a person is likely to hold certain capabilities. Even if we assume the presented data trends are sound, the book leaves the reader on his or her own to deduce how to best put these insights to use. The net effect is to tacitly condone the prejudgment of individuals based on race."[57] Similarly, Howard Gardner accused the authors of engaging in "scholarly brinkmanship", arguing that "Whether concerning an issue of science, policy, or rhetoric, the authors come dangerously close to embracing the most extreme positions, yet in the end shy away from doing so...Scholarly brinkmanship encourages the reader to draw the strongest conclusions, while allowing the authors to disavow this intention."[58]
The Global Bell Curve [ edit ]
The Global Bell Curve: Race, IQ and Inequality Worldwide is a book by Richard Lynn, originally published by publisher Washington Summit Publishers in 2008. The book aims to determine whether the racial and socioeconomic differences in average IQ originally reported in the Bell Curve in the United States also exist in other countries. Lynn's book concludes that such differences do in fact exist in other countries, in addition to in the United States. It was reviewed favorably by researchers J. Philippe Rushton,[59] Donald Templer,[60] and Gerhard Meisenberg.[61] In contrast, a less favorable review of the book was written by Wendy Johnson of the University of Edinburgh. Writing in Intelligence, Johnson stated that "... despite many possible statistical and psychometric quibbles, the data Lynn presents in this book are essentially correct. At the same time, despite Lynn's protestations to the contrary, these data do little or nothing to address the questions of why this is the case or whether the situation is inevitable or permanent. Like the other theorists he criticizes, Lynn confuses correlation with causation."[62]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]House Republicans engineered a continuing resolution for fiscal 2011 that would trim $61 billion in “regular” discretionary budget authority versus fiscal 2010. The Obama administration and the Democratic majority in the Senate balked at the cuts, and a two-week continuing resolution will be passed in order to avoid a “government shutdown” and give the sides more time to reach an agreement.
Based on the Congressional Budget Office’s score of the continuing resolution containing $61 billion in funding cuts, and the CBO’s recent budget projections, both discretionary and total federal outlays (actual spending) would still be higher in fiscal 2011 versus fiscal 2010.
Keep these charts in mind the next time you hear or read that the Republicans’ supposedly “major spending cuts” will lead to reduced economic growth and hundreds of thousands of jobs lost.Sheriff's Office, protesters prepare for D.A.'s decision in Andy Lopez case
As prosecutors decide whether to file criminal charges against the Sonoma County sheriff's deputy who shot and killed 13-year-old Andy Lopez, government leaders, law enforcement officials and local activists are taking steps to defuse the potential for violent protests after the decision is announced.
A conciliation specialist from the U.S. Department of Justice has been dispatched to Santa Rosa to train dozens of "goodwill ambassadors" to act as peacemakers if tensions flare between police and protesters.
The Sheriff's Office is rescheduling work shifts to ensure a maximum number of deputies are available, if needed, to respond to any trouble when prosecutors announce their decision, Sheriff Steve Freitas said. Deputies are receiving ongoing crowd-control training, he said.
"We will absolutely do our best to defend people's right to protest and demonstrate," Freitas said. "But we will take action if people vandalize property or injure people. Hopefully, that won't happen."
Freitas said he didn't know when District Attorney Jill Ravitch will announce her decision on whether to file charges against veteran Deputy Erick Gelhaus. She has been reviewing a Santa Rosa police report on the killing since January.
Ravitch could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday. She has refused to commit to a timetable for her decision, saying she is not bound by a 90-day guideline set forth in a countywide protocol for ruling on officer-involved shootings.
Protesters are urging her to charge Gelhaus with murder for the Oct. 22 killing. Lopez was shot seven times as he walked along Moorland Avenue with what Gelhaus said he thought was an assault rifle. It turned out to be an airsoft BB gun designed to resemble an AK-47.
Jonathan Melrod, an organizer in the Justice Coalition for Andy Lopez, said he believes the decision could come this week.
Protesters will take to the streets regardless of the outcome. Organizers will gather at 4 p.m. outside the Dollar Store on Sebastopol Road the day of the decision and at 5:30 p.m. in Old Courthouse Square in downtown Santa Rosa the day after.
Melrod said he hoped to avoid any confrontation with police.
"We'd probably be the losers in that scenario," Melrod said.
The Board of Supervisors this week received a report on the progress of a community and law enforcement group that was formed in the wake of the killing.
Among its goals is to promote safe protests. Assistant County Administrator Chris Thomas said 35 volunteers were trained as goodwill ambassadors or "self marshals." A second training session was being scheduled, he said.
Melrod said the training came from Marquez Equilibria, a conciliation specialist sent to Santa Rosa by the federal government. Melrod said Equilibria made a presentation to ambassadors about strategies to reduce potential violence.
Equilibria declined to comment, saying his work in the community is confidential. His LinkedIn page says he intervenes in conflicts stemming from racial profiling and officer-involved shootings.
"It's like the city is on pins and needles at the moment," Melrod said.
Meanwhile, lawyers for the Lopez family are expected to be in federal court in Oakland on Thursday to discuss whether a stay on their civil lawsuit against Gelhaus and the county should be lifted.
Three months ago, Ravitch asked the judge to block any action, including deposing witnesses, until she completed her criminal review.
U.S. District Court Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton agreed, suspending proceedings to Thursday. She left open the possibility of an extension but warned she would not order a blanket stay until the case is finished.
Court documents filed by the county's lawyers this week seek a continued stay for up to 45 days or until the charging decision is reached. Attorney Steve Mitchell said that prosecutors appear to be working diligently on the case and "it seems likely that a decision will be forthcoming shortly."
You can reach Staff Writer Paul Payne at 568-5312 or paul.payne@pressdemocrat.com.© Binary Research Institute
1.) Angular Momentum
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2.) Sheer Edge
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3.) Comet Paths
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4.) Sidereal vs. Solar Time
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5.) Time
© NASA, Mysid
6.) Acceleration of Rate of Precession
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© Binary Research Institute
What Does This All Mean?
Just what is the real cause behind the precession of the equinoxes and why did the ancients believe this cycle was so important? Walter Cruttenden asks this question in his latest book Lost Star of Myth and Time and comes to some provocative conclusions.To the layman, the precession of the equinoxes is the observed motion of the night sky shifting backwards by a small amount every year. Of course, the night sky continuously shifts throughout the year as the Earth orbits around the Sun, but if one were to take a fixed point in time (like the Vernal Equinox, for instance) and take a snapshot of the sky on that day every year, one would notice the sky slowly shifting backwards with each progressing year. This is what is meant by the precession of the zodiac, or precessional movement. Astrologers would say we are in a different 'age' or zodiac sign depending on which constellations are visible in the sky on the Vernal Equinox of a particular year. This precessional movement of the sky amounts to about 50 arc seconds per year and takes |
a $250-million upgrade to the copper-domed structure. At that price, making sure the building does not fall over could well cost as much as it took to put it up in the first place.
It is why, better yet, the province could do what British Columbians have yearned to do for more than a century: Pull up the stakes of their geriatric, island capital and ship it across the water to Vancouver.
After all, of all Canada’s 14 capital cities, Victoria is easily the most isolated and dissimilar to the province it is tasked to govern.
Geographically, Victoria is literally as far away from the rest of the province as possible on a peninsula that is flanked on three sides by U.S. territory. In a province continually transformed by new waves of Asian immigration, Victoria’s ethnic mix has flatlined for decades. And while B.C. remains a province in which resource revenue pays the majority of the government’s bills, Victoria has not seen a logging truck or a coal train in several generations.
Nearly 150 years after it got the title from men whose names are now affixed to street signs, the City of Gardens has turned out to be a horrible place to put a capital.
Victoria was actually not the first choice of capital for the colonial founders of British Columbia. With an eye to the development on the province’s interior, administrators picked New Westminster, a mainland city now part of Metro Vancouver.
The selection did not sit well with the then-industrial and shipping centre Victoria, which quickly had the decision overturned through intensive lobbying — although Victorians appear to have been helped by New Westminster’s appallingly bad choice of spokesman.
According to local lore, at a capital-picking session of the colony’s legislative council, Captain William Hales Franklyn was pegged as New Westminster’s booster. He showed up drunk, fumbled his notes, and when the meeting wrapped up, the fate of the “miserable, one horse town,” as Victoria liked to call New Westminster, was sealed with a 14-5 vote.
Nowadays, nearly half of B.C.’s MLAs live within public transit distance of the capital that Captain Franklyn failed to protect.
On sitting days, a squadron of float planes and helicopters are needed to ferry MLAs from Vancouver across the few dozen kilometres of Pacific Ocean that separate the two cities. In cases of low-lying fog, entire rows of legislative seats can be left empty.
MLAs from the North and the interior must arrive at Vancouver International Airport and then transfer onto a Dash 8 making one of the shortest connector flights in North America.
British Columbia’s premiers (seven of the last eight of which came from Vancouver), habitually nurture some form of resentment for the city of 12,000 bureaucrats where they are forced to keep their office.
Seventies-era premier Bill Bennett gradually shifted his cabinet meetings and press conferences into Vancouver, Gordon Campbell was known to pack his Victoria business into day trips, and current premier Christy Clark proudly wears her Victoria hate on her sleeve.
Last year, she colourfully called the capital a petty, “sick city” filled with phonies — although her comments were specifically targeted at the legislature, rather than Victorians themselves. “I try never to go over there,” she said.
Still, the put-down could only have endeared her to British Columbia’s frigid northern regions.
“[Victoria] is aesthetically appealing, very well groomed and life is quite easy in a lot of ways,” said Jennifer Brandle-McCall, a former Victorian now serving as CEO of the Prince George Chamber of Commerce. “It is such a dichotomy between that and what northern towns have to struggle with.“
“There is a quintessential difference in culture, daily experience and, I believe, even values between Victoria and the northern half of the province.”
She remembered one particularly stark illustration of the divide between capital and frontier. While participating in a phone-in panel on Victoria news radio, she was asked why northerners couldn’t just run their mines “like a co-operative.”
“I just thought, ‘Oh my goodness, they’re so out of touch with how industry actually functions up here,’” said Ms. Brandle-McCall.
The Victoria model of an isolated capital may be rare in Canada, but it is much more common in the United States, where state legislatures are almost universally located in small towns positioned far from industrial or commercial centres.
Los Angeles sends its representatives to a capital where no governor has bothered to take up permanent residence since the 1960s. New York’s governor sits in a 100,000-person city with only a single token skyscraper.
When it comes to capital geography, though, nobody complains louder than Alaskans — and with good cause. Their capital, Juneau, like Victoria, is hundreds of kilometres from main population centres on a narrow strip of land running along the northern B.C. coast
To get there, representatives can either endure two border crossings, hundreds of kilometres along the Alaska Highway and a five-hour ferry ride. Or if the weather holds, they can take the trip by air — a riskier-than-average prospect in a state where, so far, air crashes have killed one House majority leader, one U.S. senator and comedian Will Rogers.
“I feel fortunate every time I make it down here,” one state representative told the Associated Press in 1994.
Transportation issues aside, a 2012 study by Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government even concluded that isolated capitals leave themselves much more open to corruption. One of the study’s main arguments is that media scrutiny of politicians is less robust in a smaller place.
Nevertheless, even Alaska has held the line on their maddeningly secluded capital. Although Juneau’s cause is continually supported by Alaska Committee, a pro-capital lobby group, for the most part, Alaskans have simply balked at the price tag. At last count in the early 1990s, it topped $3-billion.
The same forces are what keep Victoria alive. “Although not the ‘best’ location today, the sunk resources in Victoria probably still give it an edge over the other possibilities,” wrote Norman Ruff, a University of Victoria political scientist, in an email to the Post.
There is a quintessential difference in culture, daily experience and, I believe, even values between Victoria and the northern half of the province
Any relocation of the B.C. legislature onto high-priced Vancouver-area real estate would easily rank as one of the most expensive endeavours in provincial history. Besides, there may be perks to locating the seat of government in a sleepy town cut off from forest fires, cold weather, gang violence or civil insurrection.
“There’s something important about having a well-functioning political realm, and having it in a smaller place helps with that,” said Victoria city councillor Lisa Helps.
In the same vein, there might be benefits to having a capital where MLAs always seem eager to leave.
“I don’t necessarily think that the seat of government means that MLAs need to spend time here, they need to spend time in their constituencies,” said Ms. Helps.
“Victorians sometimes get accused of wanting too much to keep things the way they are,” wrote Ross Crockford, author of Victoria: The Unknown City. “But in this case, it’s probably a good idea.”
National PostLowell police work at the scene outside Pacific Liquors, 421 Central St., after an armed robbery at about 11 p.m. Saturday. Police said the owner fired two shots at a man who had just robbed the store at gunpoint, but that both shots missed as the suspect escaped. (SUN / ROBERT MILLS)
LOWELL -- Police say the owner of a Central Street liquor store fired two gunshots at a man who had just robbed his store at gunpoint late Saturday night, but that both shots missed as the suspect escaped.
Officers were called to Pacific Liquors, 421 Central St., shortly after closing time, about 11:05 p.m., initially by a holdup alarm, according to police radio broadcasts. As officers were en route, dispatchers called the store and confirmed there had been a robbery.
Officers were immediately updated via radio broadcasts that the store's owner chased the suspect out of the store and that both men were armed with guns.
Moments later, police got a 911 call reporting shots fired in the area of Linden Street, a block away behind the liquor store.
Officers found two spent shell casings near the intersection of Linden and Union streets, and soon confirmed that both shots had been fired by the owner of Pacific Liquors. Police did not immediately identify the owner, but said he was not charged.
A police supervisor at the scene said the owner was licensed to carry a gun and was in fear for his life when he fired since he and his wife had just been threatened at gunpoint.
The robbery suspect was described as a light-skinned black male in his late 30s or early 40s, about 5 feet 10 inches, with a heavyset build. He wore black pants and a black jacket.
The suspect was last seen fleeing the area in a dark-colored sedan believed to be either a BMW or a Honda.
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Anyone with information is asked to call Lowell police at 978-937-3200 or Crimestoppers at 978-459-TIPS (8477).
Tipsters can remain anonymous, but can receive up to $1,000 for information leading to an arrest.
Follow Robert Mills on Twitter and Tout @Robert_Mills.The American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) is a non-profit organization for companion animal veterinary hospitals. Established in 1933, the association is the only accrediting body for small animal hospitals in the U.S. and Canada. The association develops benchmarks of excellence, business practice standards, publications and educational programs. Any veterinary hospital can join AAHA as a member, but must then pass an evaluation in order to receive AAHA accreditation.
History [ edit ]
The American Animal Hospital Association was founded by seven leaders of the veterinary profession in 1933.[1] From its inception, AAHA focused on promoting high-quality standards for the rapidly evolving sector of small animal private practice through accreditation and other initiatives. The 1960s saw the establishment of an organization staff and normalization of many of the policies and processes AAHA adheres to today. The first paid practice consultants were hired, and AAHA grew into a more professionally managed organization.
Rapid growth in membership and member services occurred in the 1960s and early 1970s with the development of additional education programs and publications for veterinary professionals. Significant change occurred in the early- to mid-1980s, when AAHA added services in the area of veterinary practice management and relocated from Indiana to Denver, Colo.
Today AAHA claims to be known internationally for professional development, hospital accreditation standards, and educational programs. [2]
The purpose of the American Animal Hospital Association is to:
Enhance the abilities of veterinarians to provide quality medical care to companion animals
Enable veterinarians to successfully conduct their practices and maintain their facilities with high standards of excellence
Meet the public's needs as they relate to the delivery of small animal veterinary medicine
AAHA Accreditation [ edit ]
Unlike human hospitals, veterinary hospitals are not required to be accredited. Accredited hospitals are the only hospitals in the U.S. and Canada that choose to be evaluated on approximately 900 quality standards that go above and beyond basic state regulations,[3] ranging from patient care and pain management to staff training and advanced diagnostic services. A complete list of accredited hospitals in the U.S. and Canada can be found using the AAHA hospital locator tool.[4]
To become AAHA-accredited, practices undergo a rigorous evaluation process to ensure they meet the AAHA Standards of Accreditation, which include the areas of: Patient care, diagnostic imaging, laboratory, pain management, pharmacy, safety, surgery, client service, anesthesia, contagious disease, continuing education, dentistry, examination facilities, medical records, leadership and emergency/urgent care.[5] To maintain accredited status, hospitals undergo comprehensive on-site evaluations every three years, which ensures that hospitals are compliant with the Association's mandatory standards.
Because the accreditation process is so thorough and rigorous, some states are beginning to accept AAHA accreditation in lieu of state inspections. Alabama was the first state in the United States to accept AAHA accreditation in place of a state inspection by the State Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners.[6] The Alabama decision has shown that the 900-plus standards of accreditation set a high standard for how animal hospitals should be run.
Veterinary specialty hospitals can become accredited as a "Referral" practice. AAHA-accredited referral practices are required to have a board-certified veterinarian on staff for each specialty within the clinic. For example, a hospital accredited as a surgery referral and also an oncology referral, must have a board-certified surgeon and a board-certified oncologist on staff. Currently, approximately 225 veterinary referral practices are accredited by AAHA.[7]
Initiatives [ edit ]
AAHA Universal Pet Microchip Lookup Tool [ edit ]
The AAHA Universal Pet Microchip Lookup Tool[8] is an internet-based application that enables veterinarians, humane organizations and pet owners to serve various participating pet recovery service registries and identify those registries on which a particular microchip is registered. The tool was developed to help alleviate the guesswork for veterinary hospitals, animal control facilities and shelter staff members by searching the databases of companies that elect to participate in the program.
The tool works by checking the databases of the participating pet recovery service registries to determine which has registration available for a microchip. Once a microchip identification number is entered into the tool, a list of all the registries with microchip registration information available, along with the registries' contact information, appears in chronological order with the registry with the most recent update appearing first. While the tool will not return the pet owner information contained in the registries' databases, it will identify which registries should be contacted when a lost pet is scanned and a microchip is found.
Guidelines [ edit ]
AAHA produces guidelines developed by teams of veterinary experts that provide recommendations to improve the quality of pet health care in a veterinary practice. Guidelines are reviewed periodically to ensure that they are accurate and up-to-date with leading data and trends in the veterinary profession.
The AAHA Guidelines include:
AAHA Anesthesia Guidelines for Dogs and Cats [9]
AAHA Canine Life Stage Guidelines [10]
AAHA Canine Vaccination Guidelines [11]
AAHA Dental Care Guidelines for Dogs and Cats [12]
AAHA Diabetes Management Guidelines for Dogs and Cats [13]
AAFP/AAHA Feline Life Stage Guidelines [14]
AAHA Fluid Therapy Guidelines for Dogs and Cats [15]
AAHA Mentoring Guidelines [16]
AAHA Nutritional Assessment Guidelines for Dogs and Cats [17]
AAHA/AVMA Preventive Healthcare Guidelines [18]
AAHA/AAFP Pain Management Guidelines for Dogs and Cats [19]
AAHA Referral Guidelines [20]
AAHA Senior Care Guidelines for Dogs and Cats [21]
Basic Guidelines of Judicious Therapeutic Use of Antimicrobials [22]
Position statements [ edit ]
The AAHA Board of Directors have adopted position statements on many pet health and animal welfare issues. Position statements are reviewed periodically to ensure that they are current and up-to-date with the latest research.
Analgesics
Animal Abuse Reporting
Animal Identification
Animal Welfare
Animals Used in Spectator Events and for Exhibition
Canine Devocalization
Dangerous Animal Legislation
Declawing (Onychectomy)
Ear Cropping/Tail Docking
Euthanasia
Frequency of Veterinary Visits
Good Samaritan
Humane Restraint of Animals
Leghold Traps
Meeting the Cost of Pet Care
Non-Economic Damages
Pediatric Neutering (Gonadectomy/Ovariohysterectomy/Orchiectomy) of Companion Animals
Pet Food Handling
Pet Overpopulation
Raw Protein Diet
Radiofrequency Identification Devices (RFID; Microchip)
Use of Animals in Education and Research
Sentient Beings
Vaccine Issues
Wild Animals as Pets
Partners for Healthy Pets [ edit ]
Partners for Healthy Pets (PHP)[23] was founded by AAHA and the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) to address the widespread decline in preventive care visits to the veterinarian. The group is composed of more than 20 leading veterinary associations and animal health companies and is committed to combating the increasing prevalence of serious diseases and the declining health of pets. Research has shown that even though the pet population is increasing, visits to veterinary hospitals have declined every year for nearly a decade.[24] Partners for Healthy Pets works to ensure that pets receive the preventive healthcare they deserve through regular visits to a veterinarian.
Experts agree that the decrease in regular visits can lead to an increase in preventable and treatable illnesses in dogs and cats. This includes diabetes, ear infections, and dental disease.[24] A 2011 survey of veterinary professionals revealed that declining pet healthcare visits are recognized as a problem and identified communication issues and the education of the value of preventive healthcare to pet owners as factors that impact the downturn.
Pet Nutrition Alliance [ edit ]
The Pet Nutrition Alliance (PNA)[25] was created by veterinary organizations including the American Animal Hospital Association, the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), the World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA) and others to help raise awareness about the importance of proper pet nutrition, and the value of nutritional assessments for every pet, every time. The PNA is a response to the education gap in providing nutritional assessments and proper nutrition for pets. With 55% of U.S. dogs and cats overweight in the United States (according to a 2012 survey by the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention[26]), proper nutrition is more important now than ever before. With the rise of obesity, dogs and cats are at an increased risk for weight-related disorders such as diabetes, osteoarthritis, hypertension, and many cancers.
Veterinary Education [ edit ]
AAHA is recognized as a leading provider of staff training and continuing education for the veterinary industry. AAHA has educational programs for virtually every veterinary team member, including veterinarians, practice owners, practice managers, veterinary technicians, veterinary assistants and front-office staff members. The AAHA conference was the first veterinary conference to host live-streaming surgeries for veterinary professionals.[27]
The AAHA Yearly Conference[28] is the only conference that focuses exclusively on companion animal care. It has been one of the most respected forums for the sharing of both scientific and management knowledge in the veterinary profession since 1934.
Pet Owner Education [ edit ]
AAHA works to spread credible pet health information and raise awareness about accreditation of veterinary hospitals. AAHA's pet health library includes a variety of credible, reliable pet health care information for dogs,[29] cats[30] and other small animals.[31]
Publications [ edit ]
AAHA produces a variety of resources for veterinary professionals and pet owners:
AAHA Press: AAHA Press, the publishing arm of the American Animal Hospital Association, is an internally regarded publisher and distributor of titles for veterinary care providers and pet owners. [32]
AAHA Press, the publishing arm of the American Animal Hospital Association, is an internally regarded publisher and distributor of titles for veterinary care providers and pet owners. Trends magazine: Trends magazine is the premier business and practice management magazine for veterinary professionals. The magazine offers big-picture perspectives and proven strategies that veterinary professionals can use to enhance their patient care and operate their practice more effectively and profitably. [33]
Trends magazine is the premier business and practice management magazine for veterinary professionals. The magazine offers big-picture perspectives and proven strategies that veterinary professionals can use to enhance their patient care and operate their practice more effectively and profitably. Journal of the American Animal Hospital Association (JAAHA): JAAHA is the official scientific veterinary journal of the American Animal Hospital Association. The peer-reviewed journal is published online and in print bimonthly. [34]
JAAHA is the official scientific veterinary journal of the American Animal Hospital Association. The peer-reviewed journal is published online and in print bimonthly. NEWStat: NEWStat is a weekly veterinary e-newsletter and blog that covers veterinary breaking news, intriguing veterinary trends, innovative new research and technology, and legislation that could affect practices locally and nationwide.[35]
References [ edit ]In a tweet titled "A message from the office of me," Chicago radio veteran Ben Finfer shared a link to his Facebook page announcing the news that he is "officially done at ESPN."
"From what I understand this is the result of two things," Finfer wrote. "A) Apparently the company had decided not to renew my contract for 2018. B) Last week on Twitter I used not-so-subtle terms to criticize President Trump for being racist, which is a violation of ESPN's social media guidelines."
"It's possible A would have been true even without B, but B obviously didn't help my cause. And at the very least it made my dismissal effective immediately. Some troll running a Twitter account for a pro-Trump AM station in town reported me to ESPN bosses. But my tweet was a violation of guidelines and I posted it, so I can't really blame someone else. I have deleted it because my (now former) boss, who I respect significantly more than the president, asked me to. Regardless, I'm out."
Finfer spent nine years with ESPN 1000 at the beginning of his radio career before moving to 670 The Score in 2010. He later left The Score to join upstart 87.7 The Game, but three years ago found out on air that he would be losing his job at the end of 2014. ESPN 1000 scooped him back up shortly thereafter.
Lead image via Ben Finfer/FacebookYoung Disciples Missions
Mission
The Young Disciples is an apostolate of Catholic young adults who travel from town to town to evangelize and catechize in rural communities and reservations through summer vacation Bible schools and teen retreats. The Young Disciples Teams seek to challenge youth to love Jesus Christ and to embrace the life of His Church.
Summer Camps
For 10 weeks in the summer, the Young Disciples Teams conduct week-long day camps for grades K–6 and evening teen missions for rural parishes and reservations. Parishes may also ask teams to conduct family activities and participate in other community affairs. Daily Mass and Reconciliation are a part of every camp. The teams also proclaim the Gospel through small groups, prayer, music, drama, games, and crafts. Participants are given the opportunity to say "yes" to Jesus in their daily lives.
Applicants should desire to witness to elementary age students (although there will be some family, adult, and teen ministry). Similar to other Catholic internships, we need men and women who love Jesus and His Church, are between ages 18-30, and are available for 10 weeks, 6 p.m. on May 15-July 30, 2019. Team members will be on break from June 29 to 3 p.m. July 5.
Missionaries
Established in summer 2001, young adults have come from 31 different states and the countries of Portugal, England, Ireland, and Slovakia. They have conducted hundreds of day camps, teen missions and family nights, reaching thousands of people with the Good News of Jesus Christ. Team members often continue their apostolic work by being catechists, teachers in Catholic schools, campus ministers, youth ministers, DREs, and parents. Some also pursue religious vocations or the priesthood. Each team member will receive a $1,500 stipend upon completion of the apostolate. On top of that, team members can raise sponsorship funds.
Theme for 2019 Camps
The theme for summer 2019 camps is Time Travel Adventure. The students will learn about the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary.
Apply to serve as a Young Disciples Missionary
You may send us an email to request a packet of information about the Young Disciples Apostolate, and also for an application. Be sure to include your name, address, and telephone number in your email so that we can get back to you right away! The application is also available on-line. (See link below.) Application deadline: March 31 or until teams are filled. We will begin the interview process as soon as we receive your application, even if is prior to March 29, so please apply early.
Download the team member application (ZIP)
Online Referral Form. Applicants must have 2 referrals. Also, if the applicant is currently in college, he or she must have a parent or guardian fill out this form as well.
Common questions and answers
Applicants from outside of the United States will need to have valid employment authorization to participate in this apostolate.
Request a Young Disciples Camp at Your Parish
To learn more about hosting a Young Disciples Camp, please read the Young Disciples Parish Contact Manual.
To invite Young Disciples to your parish, send an email to youngdisciples(at)fargodiocese(dot)org, or call (701) 356-7908 and ask for Ashley Grunhovd. Be sure to include your name, the name of your parish, and your telephone number.
Support a Missionary
If you would like to make a donation to support a Young Disciples Missionary or the Young Disciples Apostolate in general, please do so here. We are a 501(c)(3) organization.
If you would like additional information or if you have questions about the Young Disciples Apostolate, please email Ashley or call her at (701) 356-7908.Like many determined San Francisco 49ers faithful, a Hayward couple spent last week scouring the Web looking for Super Bowl tickets.
They found on Craigslist what they thought was a fair price: $5,900 for four seats, about double face value — even if they’d have to send their money cross-country to a dreaded Baltimore Ravens’ season ticket holder.
So after emailing, texting and talking with the seller on the phone for a week, they wired the money to his credit union. On Monday, the highly anticipated package arrived — by FedEx.
Instead of Super Bowl tickets, inside was a picture of quarterbacks Colin Kaepernick and Joe Flacco with a message underneath that read: “Enjoy the game!!!! Go Ravens!!! LOL.”
“I’m just sick — like, physically sick,” said Sharon Osgood, a 49-year-old Hayward resident. “All over the envelope it says ‘go Ravens’ — even on the FedEx label.”
Of course, police and officials warn fans of ticket scams all the time, but typically scammers disappear once they make off with the money. What’s different here is that someone took the time to actually mail an overnight package, complete with a return address and phone number, and insert a special, anti-Niners note to rub it in.
It also highlights the desperation Niners fans have gone to in an attempt to score tickets to a game for which the average resale value is about $3,000 a ticket.
Osgood, a season-ticket holder at Candlestick Park for four years, and her boyfriend have bought seats in the new Santa Clara stadium and were planning to go to the Super Bowl in New Orleans with two other family members in their RV. They still plan on going — even if it means watching the game at a bar on Bourbon Street.
The scam artist told the couple he was a corporate tax attorney living in Boca Raton, Fla., and his wife was eight months pregnant, which was why they couldn’t go to the game themselves..
“For a week I was on the phone with this guy,” Osgood said. “That’s the only reason why we” trusted him.
No one answered the phone at the number listed on the all-CAPS, exclamation point-heavy Craiglist ad, which has since been taken down. Right underneath the ad, a Craigslist warning says: “Do NOT wire funds.”
Osgood, who said she reported the crime to the police on Monday night, is still excited for the game.
“Do we want to let this affect our celebration of our team going to the Super Bowl?” she said. “We need to get past that.”
Contact Mike Rosenberg at 408-920-5705. Follow him at twitter.com/RosenbergMerc.Last night after dinner, some people were having some drinks and I picked up the check for a guy and he paid me in Bitcoins. How is that possible? I downloaded an app for my smartphone that serves as my wallet. He scanned my square bar code and sent the money. It arrived an instant later.
Today I bumped into a Bitcoin ATM machine. I could have held up my wallet and withdrawn the cash. Instead, I put cash in and added to my wallet. But then later I found some candy I wanted so I paid in Bitcoin. Later I’m thinking of buying some silver currency from Shire Silver. All this money changing hands, and all in a currency that didn’t exist five years ago.
Pretty mind blowing, isn’t it? It is to me. Most people think of the dollar as money and nothing else. And yet in most times and places currencies have circulated in parallel with each other. So for dollars and Bitcoin to do so is nothing unusual. It is also instantly convertible into any other currency.
What makes Bitcoin different is that it is entirely digital, its quantity in circulation strictly limited and its creation in response to demand until that point determined by miners who have to solve difficult math problems. It is built on top of existing currencies same as the Euro but has a free-floating value relative to them. It is already possible to buy many of life’s daily needs with them, and the idea is spreading. It also happens to be anonymous and exist completely outside the nation state.
Truly, no amount of reading on this subject is as convincing as actually owning and using bitcoins. That’s when the lights come on. I’ve not even owned bitcoin for 24 hours and my mind can’t stop racing about the potential here. It is actually a way for the people to take money back from the state. Remarkable.
The Bitcoin ATM in the image to the right is on display at the Liberty Forum in New Hampshire where I spoke this morning. Of course it is far easier to live a Bitcoin life in this micro-world of radical young entrepreneurs who can easily grasp the dawning of this new world. But so it is with all economic goods. They start as crazy ideas. They are tried by the few. The many sneer and denounce the whole thing. Then one day, everyone is taking it for granted. How so will that be? Might not be long.by Jordan Rowe
Vanderburgh County Coroner Steve Lockyear is concerned about a spike in the number of heroin overdose deaths.
“In 2016, we had 29 heroin and heroin-fentanyl combination deaths in Evansville,” Lockyear said. “The year before, we had six. So that tells you the increase from one year to the next.”
Lockyear said he first noticed the problem about two years ago. Police began to find heroin at various crime scenes.
“The narcotics task force has been effective at working on this,” Lock year said. “As the problem increased, so did the focus. We’ve been working with them on gathering info and tracing information back.”
Lockyear said they’ve discovered that many people are turning to heroin to fill a void.
“That’s because of the latest restrictions on the prescribing of opioids by doctors,” Lockyear said. “People that have become addicted to prescription medication are turning to heroin."
The coroner believes it will take a multi-faced approach to solve the problem.
“It’s going to take law enforcement arresting the dealers to treatment centers to families and the medical community,” Lockyear said. “All have to get together and treat people that have inadvertently become addicted to opioid medications.”
Lockyear said the drug court has been effective in helping people obtain treatment.
“They should be commended,” he added.
If the number of heroin overdose deaths should spike in 2017, Lockyear said it won’t be from lack of effort by the community.
“The community is very focused on the problem…from law enforcement to the courts.”
There have been three confirmed heroin overdose deaths this year. But more cases are pending.(MEMO) — Several Israeli companies are in talks with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia about business opportunities in the Kingdom’s new “smart city”, according to documents obtained by the Jerusalem Post.
The Israeli daily claims to have seen correspondence confirming economic cooperation between Arab diplomats and businessmen in Tel Aviv; Israeli firms will reportedly be competing under the table for billion-dollar contracts from the Saudi government.
“The Saudis are not so willing to cooperate with the Israelis formally, but … it’s much easier to create all kinds of cooperation on water, energy, ag-tech, food tech. This is the stuff that the prince of Saudi Arabia [Mohammed Bin Salman] wants to promote in the smart city,” said a source in Israeli venture capital who is familiar with the project.
On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia officially launched the NEOM, a developmental project to create an economic zone spanning the country and parts of Egypt and Jordan. Designed to free the Kingdom of its dependency on oil, it will focus on industries including water, biotechnology, food, advanced manufacturing and entertainment; at an estimated cost of $500 billion.
The project is part of Bin Salman’s 2030 economic vision for the country, which he has also promised will come with modernisation.
The news comes amid increased rumours of a burgeoning relationship between Saudi Arabia and Israel; causing controversy in recent weeks. The normalising of relations between the two countries remains a proposal that has repeatedly been rejected by the Saudi public.
Yesterday Major General Anwar Bin Majed Bin Anwar Eshki, a former government advisor, was reported to have confirmed suspected relations when he said diplomatic and intelligence cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Israel were solely based on non-political matters.
Last week, Israeli officials also confirmed that Bin Salman had secretly visited Tel Aviv in September. The suggestion was vehemently denied by Saudi officials who insist that settling the Palestinian issue must take place before any normalisation of relations.
Last month, leaked documents by the Twitter account Mujtahidd spoke of the country’s plans to “accept Israel as a brotherly state”, causing widespread controversy. The rumours were again denied by state officials. But recent months have witnessed an informal economic rapprochement between Riyadh and Tel Aviv, with former Saudi businessmen and former senior officials visiting Israel.
Israel has also supported the current blockade imposed by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt on Qatar. Tel Aviv has repeatedly called on Doha not to host prominent Palestinian figures, a view now shared by Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.Smartphones are on the order of the day now: we can control the appliances with their help, we can stay on the Internet, order taxis or watch movies. But it was not always so. And a century ago, these seemed more SFs. But not for the famous inventor Nikola Tesla. In 1926, he said that a man could carry his phone in his pocket, communicate instantly with other people, see and hear the inauguration ceremonies of the presidents, watch the finals at baseball and live battles, as though they were there.
Only that reality was not so at that time. Tesla described a mobile phone capable of transmitting video and audio, only then was the hard phone barely invented.
We recall the fixed phone was invented in 1876 by Alexander Bell, and his invention would lead to the establishment of the AT & T giant.
It was not until 1973, when Tesla’s predictions, engineer Martin Cooper of Motorola was to present his first truly mobile phone.
The first mobile telephony service would only appear in 1983.
The first smartphone to be IBM Simon, released in 1994, but the real revolution was going to be Apple’s release in 2007.
Nikola Tesla Was a Great Visionary
More articles and interviews in the past confirm that Tesla drew attention to its future and implications. Such an article, in which Tesla expressed his opinion on the future of mankind, at least until the year 2100, appeared in 1935 in the American magazine Liberty.
This article is unique because the physicist has made many predictions about how people’s lives will be on Earth and what will happen to the journalist George Sylvester Viereck in one of his most appreciated articles.
Humanity would have known a brilliant future, sprinkled with certain problems that would be resolved in one way or another.
Nikola believed that the human race would be purified, and paedophiles, rapists, criminals, or those who do not have a proper level of intelligence will be eliminated.
This prediction must come true by 2100 and is very strange because it has been compared many times to Hitler’s philosophy of life.
Tesla also predicted that mankind will face the pollution problem and only by setting up specialized agencies and spending billions of dollars will this issue be resolved.
“In almost every step of progress in electrical engineering, as well as radio, we can trace the spark of thought back to Nikola Tesla” – Ernst F. W. Alexanderson
The greatest benefit comes from the technical development that leads to unification and harmony, and wireless transmission enters this line.
Through this system, the human voice can be reproduced anywhere, and factories will supply off-shore energy from hydropower plants; air cars will be propelled around the earth without stopping, and the Sun’s energy will be controlled to create lakes and rivers to fertilize the great desserts.
Another strange idea that Tesla believed was about the relationship between education and the military.
If at the beginning of the last century mankind spent twice on education than on weapons, the future does not sound good from the perspective of the visionary Tesla, because most money will go to build weapons.
This is how it is because education is left somewhere in the queue of the list of important things in almost every nation of the world. In comparison, the budget allocated to the army has increased considerably and war has become a priority for mankind.
Communication will be done instantly through a simple pocket equipment.
Aeroplanes will fly without pilots, guided from the ground by radio waves.
A huge amount of energy will be transmitted without wires.
Earthquakes will become more and more frequent.
Temperate zones will become very cold or hot.
And most of these are very close to happening.
The discoveries that Tesla sees in the future of mankind will help society to increase its living standards. Health will be put in the foreground, and obsessive hygienic measures will be taken.
For example, Tesla believed that only madmen would drink unpurified water or eat uncontrolled food. Women’s involvement in new areas of action, gradual usurpation by men’s leadership, the disappearance of feminine sensitivity, reducing the maternal instinct, all this will cause misery.
“My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists.”
― Nikola Tesla
References:File photo: Explosions in Syria seen from the Golan Heights border with Israel on September 14, 2017.
Israel struck three Syrian artilery cannons on Saturday in response to errant rocket fire that landed in the Israeli Golan Heights earlier in the day.
The Israeli military said that despite the fact that the rockets that landed in Israel were spillover from the country's internal civil war, the amount of rocket fire necessitated a sharp Israeli response.
According to the IDF, five projectiles were observed as having entered Israeli territory in the northern Golan region, however the location of only four rockets have thus |
stops troops from reciving supplies making them unable to move >Fixing the diplomacy system especially calling allies to war > infrastructure and factory building can be maxed as a small CT too fast >Spying always has a 100% chance for some countries This is likely a debug function for play testing. No idea if hard coded or not. >Buggy diplomacy >Problems with calling in Allies? >MP events arent sent to other players and more news at 9. MP is broken to hell but hsould be focussed on after fixing Singleplayer >Peace deals not working and deals overall >Cores are missing from certain countries who SHOULD have them.This can be modded >Decisions and offers not appearing to other players in MP >Unfortuantly many problems need to be fixed by getting the source code or reverse engineering - this - is, possible.But will be hard 4. THINGS THAT CAN BE HAMMERED DOWN AND FIXED WITH SIMPLE DIY - ADD ANYTHING THAT CAN AND IS ALREADY ACKNOWLEDGED AS BEING ABLE TO WORK HERE - The game uses lots of HOI3 crap so editing files for something that could easily be done in either Vicky2 or HOI3 is very possible and will work, go Wild >Spy card success can be changed in a.txt file in East vs West\common >Yes,Country flags can be changed depending on their political stance - Were getting thereContents show]
35 Million Download Campaign Part 2
35 Million Download Campaign Hatcher
Special Hatcher that players can roll once a day for 4 days. Each roll requires 0 Orbs.
Includes
Regular 5* Monsters (Beethoven, Margarite, etc.)
Legends Exclusives (Pandora, Lucifer, Gabriel, etc.)
Heroes Exclusives (Robin Hood, Uriel, Nightingale, etc.)
Elemental Exclusives (Raff, Kiskill Lyra, two for all, etc.)
4* Monsters
Does Not Include
Monster Sharl Exclusives (Kagutsuchi)
Collaboration Monsters (Oshio Shinobu, Ryu, Kurama, etc.)
Limited Time Monsters (Red-Hood Nonno α, Beethoven α, etc.)
Hatcher Time
#1: 9/4 12AM - 11:59PM
#2: 9/5 12AM - 11:59PM
#3: 9/6 12AM - 11:59PM
#4: 9/7 12AM - 11:59PM
Stamina Back for Hosts
Time: 9/4 12AM - 9/10 11:59PM
Hosts will be able to regain stamina used depending on the number of people they co-op with and the original stamina of the quest.
Stamina Regain: (Original Stamina) x 15% x (Number of Guests)
Stamina Regain will be rounded down
Stamina Regain will overflow Stamina
Number of Guests only includes people that made it to the end of the quest. They will not count if they disconnected during play.
Only for quests that require over 6 Stamina
Weekly Mission Revamp
Time: 9/4 4AM - 9/11 3:59AM
Missions
Used a total of 450 Stamina for Clears: 1 Divine Sharl
Used a total of 900 Stamina for Clears: 1 Dark Dragon Gem
Used a total of 1300 Stamina for Clears: 5 Orbs
Used a total of 2000 Stamina for Clears: 1 Ableberry Can
Other Events
Impossible / Colossal Festival
Time: 9/4 - 9/13
Mega Fuse-a-Thon
Time: 9/2 - 9/3
x3 Rate on Divine Sharls
Time: 9/2 - 9/3
1/2 Stamina on Daily Quests
Time: 9/2 - 9/3
New Series - Indian Gods II
Time: 9/2 12PM ~
Asc Sarasvatī (Hatcher Water 6★)
Type: Balanced
Sling: Bounce
Ability: Mine Sweeper M / Null Gravity Barrier
SS: Creates a healing wall on the first wall contacted.
Bump: Spread Pierce-struction XL5
Sub: Speed Up S
Asc Indra (Hatcher Wood 6★)
Type: Blast
Sling: Bounce
Ability: Mine Sweeper
Gauge: Vivolith Slayer L
SS: Attacks all enemies on contact with a lightning shower.
Bump: Homing Pierce-struction 12
Sub: Energy Blast
Evo Ganesha (Hatcher Light 6★)
Type: Blast
Sling: Bounce
Ability: Mine Sweeper
Gauge: Strike Shot Reducer
SS: Increases Speed and Strength and enables Counter Mode.
Bump: Lock-on Laser XL
Extreme Monsters - Yaksini (Fire) & Naga (Light)
Lethal Monster - Vritra (Wood)
Anime News
Last Episode of the Anime will be aired on 9/2. It will be longer than usual.
However, there will be a special episode continuing the series airing on 10/7.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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Louisville basketball player Kevin Ware speaks to the press, April 3, 2013. (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley) Ad Policy
There's been a river of ink already spilled over Louisville guard Kevin Ware's horrific leg injury during the Cardinals' Elite Eight victory over the Duke Blue Devils. Most, with some notable exceptions, have tested the bounds of hokey sentimentality: the classic story of an injured player inspiring his shaken team to victory. Now, however, we’ve reached the point where tragedy becomes farce. On Wednesday we learned that Adidas, in conjunction with the University of Louisville athletic department, will be selling a $24.99 t-shirt with Kevin Ware’s number 5 and the slogan “Rise to the Occasion” emblazoned across the back. His team will also be wearing warm-ups with Ware’s name, number and the slogan “All In." (This tragically is not a tribute to Chris Hayes.)
You almost have to tip your cap: no non-profit does buccaneer profiteering quite like the NCAA. What other institution would see a tibia snap through a 20-year-old's skin on national television and see dollar signs? In accordance with their rules aimed at preserving the sanctity of amateurism, not one dime from these shirts will go to Kevin Ware or his family. Not one dime will go toward Kevin Ware’s medical bills if his rehab ends up beneath the $90,000 deductible necessary to access the NCAA’s catastrophic injury medical coverage. Not one dime will go towards rehab he may need later in life. "Going forward, we don't know what's going to happen in terms of medical expenses," said Ramogi Huma, president of the National College Players Association, a group trying to organize NCAA athletes. "If Kevin has lifelong medical bills associated with his injury, he could be squarely responsible for this…These are things that are not guaranteed to players that are injured, and no matter how hard it might be for people to understand, that's the truth. And that should change."
Where will the t-shirt money go? Well, Coach Rick Pitino makes more than $4 million a year and will likely see his current five-year deal torn up and renegotiated following the season. The assistant coaches, trainers and support staff will also surely get a taste.*** The Final Four ratings boost spurred from the buzz surrounding Kevin Ware's story will also translate into quite the windfall for the NCAA. The multi-billion-dollar slop bucket of March Madness money, which makes up 96 percent of the NCAA’s operating budget, will pay organization president Mark Emmert's two million dollar salary as well as the paychecks for their 14 vice presidents, each of whom make at least $400,000 a year. They will also to be able to continue to pay off the mortgage on their new $50 million, 116,000-square-foot headquarters in Indianapolis.
The Kevin Ware story is why any person of conscience should support former UCLA player Ed O’Bannon’s lawsuit against the NCAA. The 1995 Final Four star's legal journey began when he came home from work and saw his likeness being used in EA Sports's college basketball video game. O'Bannon v. NCAA has morphed into a mass class action suit demanding that players be compensated if their name and image are being used in the pursuit of profit without permission. Others have joined O’Bannon including one of the great legends and gentlemen in the history of the sport, Oscar Robertson. He was provoked after he noticed that his alma mater, the University of Cincinnati, was producing playing cards with his likeness. As he said to Yahoo! Sports, “The arrogance of the NCAA to say, ‘we have the right to do this’… is what troubles me the most. The University of Cincinnati gets a fee each time my picture is used on a card. I don’t. When I played there, there was nothing like this ever agreed to.”
Athletic directors, like Pat Haden at USC, are already lamenting that if they lose this lawsuit, it could mean no more funding for non-revenue sports. But here’s an idea. Why not just make every coach’s salary no greater than the average wage of a tenured professor? Why not end the practice that has football and basketball coaches stand as the highest paid public employees in their states? That money alone should allow for the funding of non-revenue sports while also allowing players a piece of the four billion dollars in revenue earned off of their images in videogames, commercials and memorabilia.
As for Kevin Ware, he returned to Louisville this week, his coach by his side. Coach Pitino announced that he is healthy enough to be in Atlanta for the Final Four, cheering on his teammates. Ware is now a newly minted media star: a 21st century George Gipp with the benefit of having a story that’s actually true. Unfortunately the school won’t even say publicly, if rehab doesn’t go as planned, whether he’ll still have a scholarship waiting for him when he returns in the fall. The official word from Louisville is that the question is irrelevant because “doctors are expecting a full recovery.” One thing is certain. At least he’ll get a lousy t-shirt.
*** after this article went to print, the Louisville athletic department announced that they would not take any direct funds from these t-shirt sales. Instead profits will go to Adidas as well as Louisville's general scholarship fund. As Brian Frederick of the Sports Fan's Coalition put it, "We can say that shirt money is being laundered."
For the private prison industry—and Gang of Eight leader Chuck Schumer—immigrant-unfriendly legislation means profit. Read Aura Bogado's take.Today is the premier of Hulu's new original series Behind the Mask, a documentary series about sports mascots and their lives in and out of costume. The series follows mascots at the high school, college, development circuit, and professional "big league" sports levels. Traditionally, mascots don't show off their true identities, so seeing them at work and at home, preparing their skits and dealing with familial or professional woes, is especially personal and revealing. This kind of original online programing is becoming increasingly common, and is going to change the future of television and series production.
Behind the Mask is an example of online content that doesn’t just match the quality of regular television and cable programing, it surpasses it. There is an emotional connection with the people here that is beyond the silly, petty sentiment of shows such as Big Brother or typical reality programming that involves watching a bunch of people at their jobs in what are increasingly staged situations. While everyone on Behind the Mask is worth caring about and have interesting arcs, without a doubt the most compelling has to be Michael Hostetter, a student at Lebanon High School in Pennsylvania who puts up with so much frustrating behavior from his peers but who demonstrates a grace full of self-revelation and determination in the face of adversity, even for those people who might not appreciate his hope and faith in them, that will win our heart and have you “rooting” for him (that one was for you, Michael!). Likewise, Chad Spencer’s enthusiasm and conviction that he is destined to go from AHL mascot to NHL mascot is contagious, and his willingness to bend the rules of mascot tradition adds to the fun.
One of the most impressive elements of the show is that each episode manages to find a narrative thread that ties all of these people together, despite the geographic, professional, and age distances between them. Sometimes it reveals itself in unexpected but delightful ways, and director Josh Greenbaum deserves praise for how well constructed the show turned out to be in its examination of the unifying humanity of all of these people and their dreams. That ability to connect with "characters" and provide themes relevant to all of us in our own lives is what should help make the series another hit in Hulu's line of successful original programing, which in turn speaks to broad changes in production and content for audiences. Let’s take a look at some relevant numbers, and how it all relates to the future of television and online programing.
Hulu is looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 billion dollars in revenue this year, which is an increase of 44% over 2012 (a year that saw a 65% increase in revenue). The reason for this is pretty easy to see -- with 4 million subscribers and 30 million unique views for their free streaming content in the first quarter of the year, 1+ billion videos were streamed in that quarter on Hulu, and their viewers tend not to skip the ads when watching videos. Those are the sort of numbers that attract advertisers, of course, as well as partners for producing original content.
Consider that there are almost 400 million televisions, phones, and other devices capable of streaming content out there that connect viewers to Hulu’s content. The key figure in that for this discussion is, 40% of their viewership is in the living room. While streaming via mobile devices is important (and growing), when we talk about the evolution of television and programing, I think we need to consider the implications of the ways our traditional at-home viewing habits are evolving to include online content.
With so many programs and films from studios and networks and so on, Hulu already looks an awful lot like on-demand cable TV, doesn’t it? Netflix is similar but has the clear distinction of not getting current-season programing content, relying instead on providing entire seasons after all of the episodes have aired on TV. Hulu gets most recent episodes right after they air on television. Considering the costs of cable TV packages that include premium channels, the free content plus subscription advantages of Hulu suggest a market place where traditional forms of cable and broadcast television are becoming obsolete, fast.
Netflix has been demonstrating the advantages of on-demand viewing of television programing that we can consume by entire seasons at a time, and that concept has expanded with Netlflix’s own original programing -- like the highly successful House of Cards -- being released by the season instead of by the episode. Hulu and other providers of online original content likewise can produce entire seasons of their shows and release them in larger portions -- in the case of Behind the Mask for example, we got three full episodes today -- or the traditional one-per-week network format. This allows online content providers to adjust and play with expectations among their target audiences, so that some shows benefit from the long game of weekly episodes, while other programs might prefer to cash in with an entire season at once in order to generate more interest.
The format of a show also dictates some of these choices, of course. Behind the Mask is produced like a traditional TV program, with long full episodes that include commercial breaks, but unlike networks they didn't order a pilot -- after Josh Greenbaum's pitch, they ordered a full season. Other programing, such as Geek and Sundry’s Space Janitors (it’s hilarious, if you haven’t seen it yet, you’re missing out), are produced in multiple shorter webisodes, a more common format for online shows since production costs are lower and it’s easier for performers and creators to get an 8-minute segment in the can than an entire 30 minute or hour-long episode.
Geek and Sundry has enjoyed somewhere around 80+ million views of their content since they started, and many of their shows -- including Wil Wheaton’s ingeniously entertaining show TableTop -- developed strong followings. Their upcoming 2014 series Caper looks likely to capture fanboy and fangirl imaginations as well, appealing more directly to the fanbase that has increasingly become irrelevant to big mainstream studio superhero productions since the superhero genre has been embraced so much by the mainstream public at this point. So interestingly enough, as the larger mainstream media’s co-opting of geek culture has marginalized voices from the actual hardcore geek and fan communities to a large extent, this has opened up a great avenue for smaller, streamlined content providers like Geek and Sundry and Hulu to target those groups with programs tailored just for their nuanced tastes and preferences. That in turn will attract advertisers who can more narrowly and directly target different key demographics with a wider array of marketing, and as that kind of marketing revenue becomes more apparent for online programing, it will lead to more investment in that kind of programing.
Last month, Hulu renewed their original animated series The Awesomes for a second season of ten episodes, after the first season performed in the top-10 most watched shows on Hulu. In 2014, Hulu will begin streaming Deadbeat, a co-production with Lionsgate. And in a particularly noteworthy programing choice, this year Hulu aired the series East Los High, a teen dramatic program with an entirely Latino cast and creative team. With Latino audiences overrepresented on mobile devices and using mobile content as a major source of entertainment, the programing choice demonstrates a key element of online programing success -- content specifically designed for a more specific, narrow target audience that might be too small to support a mainstream broadcast television program (as noted above) but which becomes an important piece in a larger gathering of such target demographics for building a wide audience for programing. With lower production costs and unique marketing strategies that take full advantage of the content’s streaming online source, this becomes a model that cable and networks simply cannot match.
As online content is increasingly mixing into traditional living room viewing habits, and as more devices and televisions bring such online content to viewers anywhere and everywhere, online content will continue to enjoy increasing success that I think will inevitably rival and then surpass the old models of cable and network television production and distribution.
Especially as long as online original content is capable of the quality of programing like Behind the Mask. It’s a terrific show, better than any of the reality programming you’ll find on traditional television stations, and it adds to Hulu’s slate of popular original content that challenges outdated viewing habits.
Here's a trailer for Hulu's Behind the Mask, the first three episodes of which are now available to view online...
What do you think of the series, dear readers? And what of the future fate of online programing and television? Sound off in the comments below!
Follow me on Twitter, on Google+, and on Quora. Read my blog.Deliveries A lot of delivery services have options to give you updates by text when things are en route, or have been delivered at your house, but there are very few ways to easily track multiple items across several services. Worth checking out is Deliveries from Junecloud, a very simple and straightforward app that slurps up tracking numbers and itemizes everything that’s being delivered. You get push notifications, and a handy widget on the Today screen that takes some of the mystery out of each item’s transportation status.
Pixelmator Pixelmator’s long been a popular, and very affordable image editor for Macs, and this year its creators made a version just for the iPad. There’s a lot to love in this app, especially the way all the tools are intelligently tucked away. It doesn’t feel like a desktop app that’s been shoehorned onto a tablet, but something made with touch in mind. Did we mention it’s still got that neat content-aware repair tool? You can erase people or objects out of your photos with ease, right on a tablet. Crazytown.John McCain, like many Americans who should know better, extravagantly praises Theodore Roosevelt. He is a kindred spirit of the impulsive Rough Rider, but the visceral McCain is rescued from some of TR's excesses by not having TR's overflowing cupboard of ideas.
In "Theodore Roosevelt: Preacher of Righteousness," Joshua David Hawley, 28, a former clerk for Chief Justice John Roberts, demonstrates that TR, far from being, in Henry Adams's acerbic description, "pure act," was a man of many complex ideas. Some were admirable; many were repellent.
Roosevelt was an individualist who considered the individualism of others an impediment to the social unity required for national greatness. Having read Darwin's "The Origin of Species" at age 14 and having strenuously transformed himself from an asthmatic child into a robust adult, he advocated "warrior republicanism" (Hawley's phrase). TR saw virtue emerging from struggle, especially violent struggle, between nations and between the "Anglo-Saxon" race and lesser races. Blending "muscular Christianity," the "social gospel" -- which sanctified the state as an instrument of moral reclamation -- and Darwinian theory, TR believed that human nature evolved toward improvement through conflict.
This dark vision of progress through strife made him advocate concentrated national power to serve his agenda, which was radically more ambitious than the Founders' vision of limited government maintaining order, protecting property and otherwise staying out of the way of individual striving.
Like Winston Churchill, who said that mankind had entered "the region of mass effects," TR said that "this is an age of combination" -- of vast interlocking economic entities. Big was, he thought, beautiful and, anyway, inevitable. So government, and especially the presidency, must become commensurate to the task of breaking American individualism to the saddle of collective purposes. Here TR and "Country First" McCain converge.
TR, who a critic said "keeps a pulpit concealed on his person," almost wore the word "corruption" threadbare before pastor McCain came along to make it the centerpiece of his political lexicon. TR, like McCain, rejected James Madison's vision of politics driven -- and freedom preserved -- by peaceful conflict between competing factions.
McCain's signature legislation (McCain-Feingold) restricts what he calls "quote 'First Amendment rights' " in the name of taming "special interests." It expresses a TR-like rejection of Madisonian politics, a rejection McCain echoes when equating consensus -- about the public interest, as McCain understands it -- with patriotism. But another name for the "partisanship" McCain deplores is... politics.
Ted Kennedy, speaking to the Democratic convention, advocated an end to a politics of "group against group." TR would have heartily agreed. But what is politics for if not the adjustment of such conflicts? McCain was in a TR mood when he said the bailout of the financial system should be "above politics." Wrong. It involves fundamental political questions about freedom, justice and role of government.
TR invested the materialist doctrine of evolutionary struggle with moral significance for the most manly "races." He wanted the state to rescue America from the danger, as he saw it, that a commercial republic breeds effeminacy. Government as moral tutor would pull chaotic individualists up from private preoccupations and put them in harness for redemptive collective action.
Such as war. TR's response to William James's idea of a "moral equivalent of war" could have been: Accept no substitutes. TR wanted the body politic to be one body, whose head was the president. He disregarded civil society -- the institutions that mediate between individuals and the state, insulating them from dependence and coercion. He had a Rousseauan notion that the individual could become free only through immersion in the collective.
By the time TR tried to recapture the presidency in 1912, he was gripped by what Hawley calls "shocking personal hubris" that manifested itself in an anti-constitutional populism. For example, he thought that the Supreme Court should invalidate no law that enjoyed public support, and the people should be empowered to overturn court decisions by referendums.
McCain's identification with TR is, fortunately, superficial -- more about TR's exuberant personal style than his intellectual constructs. McCain's preference for public involvement over private preoccupations stops short -- so far -- of TR's vague but menacing agenda of building civic identity through compulsory national service.
TR's collectivist nationalism became unhinged, polluted by sinister advocacy of eugenics and by statist sentiments such as: "The woman must bear and rear the children, as her first duty to the state." McCain's Rooseveltian interest in our moral reclamation is at least better than that.
georgewill@washpost.comThe old tier list was prior to the rules changes, so I didn’t bother finishing up and decided to start over now that the meta has shaken out a bit more. Some decks have died, some decks are believed to have died, and a few busted out of the chains that held them back to rise to the top. You can think of this as a tier list or as a list for things you should have in your Gauntlet.
I have a firm belief that one deck in particular is in it’s own God Tier, but I talk too much about that and will omit it for today.
For anyone that is wondering, just rotate the “6” in the above picture 180 degrees and it should make sense. Points are had for anyone that understood the whole tier and deck inference just based on picture.
Tier 1 – Leading the Pack
These are the decks that I’d expect to see a lot of at events and they can wreak havoc when you aren’t prepared.
Poe / Maz – The Pilot + Grandma combo only lost fast hands, but between that and people learning how to play against it, it was pulled down from the heavens. The deck is still very strong and it will rear it’s ugly head at most events. The deck is relying on Wookie abuse (Planetary Uprising) to cover for it’s short comings and that still leaves a sour taste in the casual players mouth. You probably won’t stop hearing complaints about the opponent “claiming” two rounds in a row to kill them for 8 damage.
ePhasma / Trooper / X – There are a couple of different character combinations and when X is yellow, I think the deck is well suited for the meta. Playing this deck is similar to making each opponent a pseudo Palpatine. Huh??? What??? I’m referring to the deck splitting the damage between multiple characters and not letting you focus one down easily, which is what the damage always looks like when it’s Palp vs a multi-character deck. I believe that this is the best “fair” deck by a mile due to it not having any sort of cheat / free resource potential. It has some issues with Imperial Inspection, but someone will figure out how to best combat that match or just hope they don’t play against it / can squeak out a win.
Emo Kids – I’ve been playing it a lot this week for the Patreon subscriber videos and it has a great thing going for it. It operates similarly to the big guy / little guy 3 die decks, but it has 4 actual dice and since it is mono blue, if you miss Holocron, you can actually cast the upgrades on Kylo. Kylo special can be equivalent to a blank in some matchups, but with “Nines”, mono blue villain decks, and Poe Maz in the format he gets some decent big hits in, but just assume that the ability will net you 0 – 1 damage. Anakin has a lot of firepower and if he gets controlled multiple rounds in a row, it often gives you enough time to get a big upgrade on Kylo.
FuNKar – I’m separating this from the other Nines decks because it plays inherently different from the others due to the control supports being a major nuisance. I firmly believe this deck has the highest skill cap due to the decision tree being pretty insane. Once things get rolling, the decisions aren’t often that bad, but mulligans and Round 1 decisions will separate the “Pro’s” from the “Average Joe’s”. If Poe is the upsetting aggro deck that crushed casuals, then this is the table flip causing control deck that can seemingly lock people out of games. There will be a lot of meta hate being decked for fighting against this with “Sabotage” being solid vs this and Planetary decks. Slow the opponent down and get resources, then have Nine’s explode with damage.
Tier 1.5 – Nipping at the heels
These decks are missing just a little something from being Tier 1, but they can beat any deck and still have broken aspects to them.
Rey / X – This might seem like I’m taking the easy way out, but it seems like every Rey combination with a “Big Character” is made viable by 1.) Her action cheating doing harmful damage 2.) The “Big” being a strong character regardless of Rey. The combo’s include that of Luke, Obi, Han, Qui-gon, Poe, and the new addition Baze! Rey seems likely to be the premiere Cargo Hold battlefield user and I’ve seen it slow down Nines to great effect in testing. Each of those decks is inherently different from a core perspective, but the decks tend to be about protecting the big guy and cheat actions with Rey / Force speed. Expect broken plays to happen few and fair between.
Big Vader / X – This comes in the form of Royal or Tuskan Raider and is still a great deck, but losing fast hands made Vader damage very susceptible to removal and if that happens and you didn’t Holocron into a big upgrade, you can just lose the game. Force Strikes, Lightsaber Throws, Bait and Switch / No Mercy go a long way towards bursting a character out when you think you are safe. Royal plays a better protection roll, but Tuskan is one of the premiere Force Power ability holders and when he has a Mind Probe you just pray he misses.
FN-2199 – 2 Character Lists and/or 3 Dice Lists– Nines is amazing and does silly stuff, so he can pretty much “carry” any lineup as long as you have the appropriate Weapons. 3 character 4 dice versions tend to be better situated for the redeploy and resource gain aspects that the deck wants and has, so those would be tier 1 or better for me whilst a Round 2 dead Nine’s can be game over for these decks. 2 Character versions tend to have a partner who is high in damage (Aurra / Anakin / IG88), sustain (Dooku), or utility (Asaaj, Jango, Grievous) and all of them are considered dangerous.
Palpatine – I’m leaning towards him being Tier 2, but if you aren’t doing damage to him or mitigating his character dice, then he will win. He can beat any deck so it is why he is still in Tier 1.5 instead of being dropped down. You really have to resolve whatever sides you get with him or you can lose entire rounds of damage. The Best defense sets him back a lot and it can be seen from both Funkar and Phasma lists. At top levels, he seems very weak, but at locals, he tends to be a force to be reckoned with.
Tier 2 – On the next episode of ….
I don’t believe I missed anything else that belongs in the current Tier 1 or 1.5. Hero Mill pretty much died with the ammo belt chance, Villain Vader / Jabba (or Plutt) got hurt with the Fast Hands change since Vader can’t carry Blackmail + Fast hands any more, and I genuinely don’t like mill decks in the current meta so they won’t have a ranking. Rainbow Hero is omitted due to lack of testing. Feel free to beat me up in the comments for anything you don’t agree with. I don’t get to see most of the Facebook comments, so if you’d comment here, I’d love to hear from you and be able to respond!
GenCon prep continues for us here at TheHyperloops, and we release a lot of our testing for our Patreon subscribers. We’re posting bonus decklists, articles, and videos every single week for our $10 Tournament Prep subscribers, and we release a little bit of that to our $3 tier subscribers as well. The $10 tier also gets you our playmat after 2 months of support. You can click on the mat below to get taken straight to our Patreon page.
Thanks for reading and as always…
May the rolls be with you.
TheHyperloops Staff
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PatreonA North Korean boat fishes off the banks of the North Korean city Sinuiju, across the Yalu River from Dandong, China's largest border city with North Korea. North Korean fishing boats, 16 in total and carrying 27 dead bodies, have been discovered near Japan's coast since October. File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo
TOKYO, Dec. 21 (UPI) -- Japan's Coast Guard discovered a total of 16 boats of North Korean origin carrying 27 bodies since October, but the cause of death on board remains unknown.
The boats began appearing near Japan's coast on Oct. 27, when a boat with Korean-language inscription turned up near Aomori Prefecture in northern Japan, Jiji Press reported. The Coast Guard stated the articles on board appeared to be North Korean.
Analysts in Japan had said the ships could have suffered when the boats veered off course in the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea in the two Koreas. The people on board were ill prepared to cope with the crisis, South Korean outlet Newsis reported.
North Korean fishing boats continue to surface near Hokkaido, Akita and Niigata Prefectures, as well as in Ishikawa, Fukui and Hyogo Prefectures.
The boat that was discovered near Ishikawa Prefecture had Korean-language inscriptions that read, "Korean People's Army" and "Security Department." A torn North Korean flag was found among the bodies on the boat, along with equipment for squid fishing.
The boats were all similar in size, measuring 12 meters in length and 3 meters wide across the hull. Japan's Coast Guard said the vessels were not suitable for fishing in the high seas, possibly given their size.
Satoru Miyamoto, a professor of North Korean politics at Seigakuin University, said North Korea typically exported most of its fish to China, but is increasingly devoting more of its fisheries to domestic consumption to improve living standards.
Kim Jong Un is promoting North Korea's fisheries, Miyamoto said.An appeals court has tossed out a lawsuit from three Michigan pastors challenging the constitutionality of the Hate Crimes Act.
The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled that the Christian ministers had not established standing to challenge the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which offers harsher punishments for individuals who commit violent acts on individuals due to their sexual orientation.
The court upheld a previous ruling that found the law constitutional. Opponents of the law argued the legislation outlawed “thought crimes” and was meant to “eradicate religious beliefs opposing the homosexual agenda.” The suit was first filed in February 2010 by the conservative Thomas More Law Center, a few months after President Barack Obama signed the law in October 2009. It cited Bible passages and George Orwell’s Animal Farm, claiming the law treated certain individuals “more equal than others.”But the appeals court found that the plaintiffs had “not alleged any actual intent” to cause bodily injury to any gay individuals, pointing out that the pastors explicitly denounced “crimes of violence perpetrated against innocent individuals.”
The Hate Crimes Act, the appeals court ruled, “does not prohibit Plaintiffs’ proposed course of hateful speech” and said they “can’t quite pinpoint what it is they want to say that could subject them to prosecution under the Hate Crimes Act.” [Editor’s note: an updated version of the opinion removes the word “hateful” from the opinion, but a cached version makes clear that the original opinion included the word “hateful.”)
Even if they quoted Leviticus 20:13, which called for men who have sex with one another to be put to death, “they have not alleged any intention to do more than merely quote it,” which wouldn’t be unlawful under the Hate Crimes Act, the appeals court ruled.
“If the Hate Crimes Act prohibits only willfully causing bodily injury and Plaintiffs are not planning to willfully injure anybody, then what is their complaint? Plaintiffs answer that they fear wrongful prosecution and conviction under the Act. Not only is that fear misplaced, it’s inadequate to generate a case or controversy the federal courts can hear,” the appeals court ruled.
The full opinion is embedded below.
Hate CrimesAfghan President Ashraf Ghani is fighting a decisive war on multiple fronts. His success or failure will dramatically transform Afghanistan and the regional landscape. At home, Ghani is engaged in an ambitious yet risky campaign to reform and change Afghanistan’s lethargic, ineffective, and corruption-ridden public administration, which has consumed the bulk of foreign aid with little or no ability and willingness to deliver services to Afghan people. Abroad, the embattled leader has to work tirelessly and delicately with Afghanistan’s strategic partners to increase and maintain the flow of foreign aid and political-military support, on which the country relies for its subsistence and survival in |
at least half-a-dozen earlier sources say exactly the same thing. Take, for example, John of Worcester, an English monk who wrote in the period 1124x1140. The Conqueror’s abbey, he says, was ‘founded and
Similarly, William of Malmesbury, half-English, half-Norman, one of the most important of all medieval historians, writing in the 1120s: ‘It is called Battle Abbey because the principal church is to be seen on the very spot where, according to tradition, among the piled heaps of corpses Harold was found.’
But we don’t have to stop there. We also have the testimony of the E version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle – a supremely well-informed source, demonstrably written before 1100. Writing his obituary of William the Conqueror for 1087, its anonymous author says he will ‘write of him as we have known him, as we ourselves have seen him, and at one time dwelt at his court’. A few lines later he says:
‘On the very spot [ On ðam ilcan steode ] where God granted him the conquest of England he caused a great abbey to be built.’
To emphasize: that’s a contemporary witness – an English witness – from the time of William the Conqueror himself.
So the claim that Battle Abbey was built to mark the site of the battle is not ‘legend has it’, nor is it a claim that rests only on a late and unreliable source (i.e. the Chronicle of Battle Abbey). It’s a very strong, continuous historical tradition – one which stretches right back to the time of William the Conqueror himself.
There is also, of course, the evidence of the Abbey itself. As English Heritage’s Roy Porter pointed out in the programme, by looking at the dormitory building, ridiculously located on the side of a hill, it is a bonkers place to build an abbey. Unless William the Conqueror insisted that’s where he wanted it, exactly as the monks of Battle Abbey would later claim he did.
None of the historical evidence for the battle’s location, of course, was unpacked or even mentioned in the Time Team programme. According to Tony Robinson, ‘only archaeology can prove where it took place.’ [c. 18.00].
But, unsurprisingly – as with most medieval battles – archaeology fails to come up with anything. So the programme settles for a topographical survey, which shows where the high ground is, and where the low ground is. Time Team regulars Stewart Ainsworth and Alex Langlands look at the results and decide (one hesitates to use the word ‘speculate’) that the epicentre of the battle must have been some 600 feet to the east of the Abbey. Hilariously, especially for headline writers, the site is now occupied by a mini-roundabout! A former British Army commander is wheeled out to say that it looks like a good position to him. And, after all, an axe head, which may well have been a weapon, and certainly dates before 1600, was found near this site - according to local legend.
By this stage, I confess, I’m thinking (a bit unfairly) of that awesome David Mitchell line : ‘Let us enjoy the full majesty of your uninformed, ad hoc reckon’.
Perhaps one day they will build some new houses in Battle, or knock down some old ones, and discover a grave-pit with several hundred bodies, datable to the mid eleventh century. This happened at Lewes in the early nineteenth century, and is good grounds for locating – roughly – the site of the famous battle that took place there in 1264.
Until that happens, I’ll stick with testimony of the man who lived at the court of William the Conqueror.Michael Geist sez, "The Canadian government will introduce new Internet surveillance legislation that will mandate a massive new surveillance infrastructure at all Canadian ISPs and remove the need for court oversight of the disclosure of customer information. I've posted a detailed FAQ on the history of the bill, the likely contents, the lack of government evidence supporting the need for the invasive legislation, and what Canadians can do about it."
The first prong mandates the disclosure of Internet provider customer information without court oversight. Under current privacy laws, providers may voluntarily disclose customer information but are not required to do so. The new system would require the disclosure of customer name, address, phone number, email address, Internet protocol address, and a series of device identification numbers.
While some of that information may seem relatively harmless, the ability to link it with other data will often open the door to a detailed profile about an identifiable person. Given its potential sensitivity, the decision to require disclosure without any oversight should raise concerns within the Canadian privacy community.
The second prong requires Internet providers to dramatically re-work their networks to allow for real-time surveillance. The bill sets out detailed capability requirements that will eventually apply to all Canadian Internet providers. These include the power to intercept communications, to isolate the communications to a particular individual, and to engage in multiple simultaneous interceptions.Head coach Sheldon Keefe stopped by the Bryan Hayes Show
Bryan Hayes: When you look back on that game on Saturday, as a coach in a 9-8 game, how do you approach the team? Are you happy with the result? Do you look for some positives, some negatives? I mean, that must have been just crazy on Saturday night.
Sheldon Keefe: It certainly was crazy. It was a night full of rollercoasters of emotion. We were up 3-1 after the first, and then down 6-4 after the second, and then 8-4 in the first 30 seconds of the third period. It was pretty crazy. We didn’t feel like we were playing great even when we were winning 3-1. We were trying to keep guys focused to have a good second period. It didn’t go that way. We lost our structure and didn’t get a lot of saves, and the game really got away on us. Suddenly, the puck started going in for us and they couldn’t get saves and they couldn’t do much right. Before you know it, we started to build momentum and the guys started to feel like they had something going and had a chance. To see the emotion swing back the other way was pretty great to watch, but not great to go through it from a coaching point of view. I think, by the end of it on the way off the bench after overtime, we couldn’t do a whole lot more other than laugh. It was something else.
Hayes: When you look back at the game time – not even necessarily a game like that but just any of the games throughout the season – as a coach, what’s your natural reaction? Is your natural focus to look for the negatives, or is it to look for the positives?
Keefe: I think, as a coach, you’re always trying to catch them doing it right. I think that’s something that the Leafs staff, Mike Babcock and everybody, right from the start of training camp was something that we focused on. All that said, you’ve got to try to make progress and get better. With that, you’ve got to make sure you’re tracking things that need improving and in that particular game there was a lot of it. We more try to just stick with our process and pretty much throw the result out; try to stick to the process and the things we want to do to try to get better day to day. We didn’t focus a whole lot on the structure of it; it was a really strange game. We tried to focus a little more on the individual play of each player, and see what kind of progress we can make with each guy. From a structure standpoint, it would be a very frustrating game to watch; watching the chances against and the goals and whatnot. When we left the game, my comment was, “we might want to get together with the other coaches in the AHL and start a movement to get smaller nets and bigger goalie equipment.” It was a strange night, but it’s a funny game. We’ve got a game here in Rochester [on Wednesday] and we expect it to be a lot lower scoring. The way these games usually come back, you play a 1-0 battle all the way through, so we’ll see how it goes.
Hayes: There’s a lot of focus on William Nylander for obvious reasons. The stats – he’s top three or four in points. He’s obviously putting up very good numbers offensively, but there’s always been a focus throughout the organization to make sure his overall game continues to evolve and continues to improve. How has Nylander grown as an overall player over the course of the first two months?
Keefe: He’s taken strides. We’ve seen progress, and that’s been positive. Willy is a guy that spends a lot of time working on his game from a skill point of view. He continues to get better there. You see him trying new things before and after practice, and just working on the details of his game. Certainly our coaching staff and the development staff of the Leafs have worked on him with that. The finer details of the game in particular, stuff without the puck, there’s room for growth. He’s still adjusting to playing center for the first time in North America and the responsibilities that come with being away from the puck and being strong positionally, and managing the puck and managing your shift; things like that. We work with him closely on it and he watches a lot of video on his own. I certainly spend a lot of time with him as well. He sees it; he recognizes it. From my end of things, it’s been steady progress and you see him making good decisions in staying below the puck and being in good spots and being a little more competitive when we don’t have the puck so we can assure we get it quicker and get out of our zone and get him playing to his strengths on offence. The skillset is obvious. You see where he is at such a young age – among the scoring leaders, among much older, more experienced players. That speaks to the talent level. We’ll continue to make progress with him and make sure he’s continuing to get better and prepared for when he becomes an NHL player.
Hayes: There’s been a lot of turnover, top to bottom, in the organization — Mike Babcock, yourself, Lou Lamoriello in the last year and a half… Brendan Shanahan. Yet, you look at the roster with the Marlies, and there are a few players with the Marlies who have been with the organization for quite some time and were brought in by your predecessors — guys like Josh Leivo, even a guy like Frederik Gauthier. When you took over the gig, how important was it to let those older players, or the players who have been in the organization for more than a year and a half, know that they know they’re playing on an even playing field? That they’re looked upon the same way a guy like Nylander is looked upon?
Keefe: I think that’s all part of managing day to day. I’ve been very fortunate to have Gord Dineen here on staff with us. Obviously, he’s got a lot of experience and relationships with those players who have been here and also knows how things have gone in the past. That experience has been very valuable for me, especially coming in as a first year coach in the league; not just in the organization, but in the league and at the level of professional hockey. I lean on Gord a great deal. Those guys have also been good pros. Any of those guys you mentioned that have been around, they recognize that things are different, and there’s a lot of focus obviously on the Nylanders of the world and whatnot, but we try to keep everybody engaged and recognizing that there’s opportunities for everyone. The Leafs are looking for good players, and I think you look at a guy like Byron Froese – with the Marlies last year, coming in from off the radar if you will, and just worked hard every day and did things right and found his way into an NHL job and is doing great things with the Leafs here now. We’re certainly not expecting him to be back with us any time soon with his efforts. There’s lots of good examples like that, I think, that motivate our players every day, and they recognize that we’re trying to create that culture around here that’s going to mirror what’s happening with the Leafs and something that, if and when they get the call, they’re prepared to make the transition pretty well and be set up for success. We’re fortunate to see the success that Byron has had with the Leafs, and hopefully what we’re doing with the Marlies put him in a good spot to be able to do that.Mr. Trump, of course, is not Mr. Bannon’s creation, and the president-elect would not take kindly to any such implication. (Asked on Tuesday by New York Times journalists about Mr. Bannon, Mr. Trump praised him but said, pointedly, “I’m the one who makes the decisions.”)
But Mr. Bannon understood better than any other 2016 campaign strategist how many voters were seeking dramatic change, said Patrick Caddell, a veteran pollster, who all but predicted a Trump victory on election eve as most pundits were calling the race for Hillary Clinton. “He’s been the forerunner intellectually of this moment,” Mr. Caddell said. “His ideology is that of the outsider and the insurgent.”
To understand what to expect from the Trump administration means in part to fathom the driven, contradictory character of Mr. Bannon, whom the president-elect has named senior counselor and chief White House strategist. Rarely has there been so incendiary a figure at the side of a president-elect, thrilling Mr. Trump’s more extreme supporters while unnerving ethnic and religious minorities and many other Americans.
How did this son of Richmond, Va., who attended Harvard Business School, spent years at Goldman Sachs and became wealthy working at the intersection of entertainment and finance come to view the political and financial elites as his archenemy? Why does a man who calls himself a “hard-nosed capitalist” rail against “globalists” of “the party of Davos” and attack the Republican establishment with special glee?
As a filmmaker, Mr. Bannon, 63, has cited both the Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl and the left-wing documentarian Michael Moore as models. In top physical shape as a young Navy officer, and for years wearing the banker’s uniform of expensive suits, Mr. Bannon has in recent years sported flannel shirts and cargo pants. With a paunch and a sometimes scraggly beard, Mr. Bannon has a rugged look that Stephen Colbert described as “Robert Redford dredged from a river.”
He is an avid reader of history, fond of citing Plutarch and Plato, and his career reflects a restless, eclectic mind. He has conceived a rap musical based on Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus” (never completed); overseen the troubled Biosphere 2 project, an experiment in the Arizona desert meant to mimic the earth’s ecosystem; acquired partial rights to “Seinfeld” before it became a megahit; moved to Shanghai to run a company marshaling Chinese computer gamers to earn points for Western players; and produced films on Washington corruption, Occupy Wall Street and Phil Robertson of “Duck Dynasty.”
Vociferous critics of his appointment, a diverse group that includes the conservative talk-show host Glenn Beck and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who challenged Mrs. Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, have variously called Mr. Bannon a racist, a sexist, an anti-Semite and an Islamophobe. Interviews with two dozen people who know him well, however, portray a man not easily labeled, capable of surprising both friends and enemies, with unshakable self-confidence and striking intensity. (Mr. Bannon turned down a request for an interview, saying he was too busy with the presidential transition.)ANTRIM COUNTY, MI -- Two homeless brothers who were last seen in August are believed to be the men recently found dead in a tent in Antrim County woods. Foul play is not suspected, police say, although a cause of death has not yet been determined. An autopsy with fingerprint evidence showed that one of the men is Daniel Lloyd Nothstine, 56, of Mancelona. Antrim County sheriff's deputies said he was last seen with his brother, Robert Eric Nothstine, 51. Deputies said the two brothers were homeless and staying with various people on a night-to-night basis. A friend of the Nothstine's loaned them a tent in August and dropped then off in the
. That area is in Custer Township, next to the Cedar River in a heavily wooded and swampy area. Police said evidence at the scene indicates the person not yet identified is Robert Nothstine, but DNA tests are being done to confirm it. DNA samples have been collected from Daniel Nothstine, his mother and sister in hopes of identifying the second body.
E-mail John Tunison: jtunison@mlive.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/johntunisonBY:
President Donald Trump greeted the 11-year-old who volunteered to mow the White House lawn free of charge on Friday, giving him a high-five.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders read out a letter earlier this week from the young man from Virginia, named Frank, where he promoted his own neighborhood yard business and offered his services for Trump's residence.
"The president is committed to keeping the American Dream alive for kids like Frank and we're all looking forward to having him here," Sanders said.
Frank, wearing ear plugs, appeared so focused on his mowing technique that he didn't appear to notice Trump when the president first approached him. Eventually, he turned around and shook Trump's hand.
Trump gave him a high-five and patted him on the back, and he appeared to measure up how straight Frank's lines on the lawn were.
MSNBC host Ali Velshi, narrating the scene, said, "Lots of fun at the White House. It's nice to break away and do something a little lighter like that."
Frank appeared on CNN earlier Friday and said he wasn't sure if he would get to meet Trump, so it looks like it was a nice surprise for him.ROCKFORD — Thurgood Marshall School has the highest composite score on 2017 Illinois standardized tests.
Students at Marshall, who are in the district's Gifted Academy for grades five through eight, had the highest composite score of all public schools in Illinois compared with other schools’ fifth- through eighth-graders, Rockford Public Schools announced Monday.
Results are from the composite scores on the PARCC exam. PARCC stands for Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers.
Marshall students' scores rose year over year, as more students moved from the “met expectations” category to the “exceeded expectations” category, as defined by the PARCC. Six percent of the students at Marshall do not meet or exceed the state's standards as determined by PARCC scores.
The results are based on grade-level data from the Illinois Report Card.
Thurgood Marshall Elementary, which serves Gifted Academy students in first through fourth grades, is the sixth-highest-performing elementary school when comparing composite scores by grade level on the 2017 PARCC.
“We are incredibly proud of our students and staff for this monumental achievement,” Thurgood Marshall School Principal Jill Faber said in a news release. “Our students work hard every day with our dedicated teachers to continually show growth toward their academic goals. It's a great day to be a Mustang.”
“The credit here goes to the teachers and the work they do with students,” Jessica Powell, Thurgood Marshall Elementary principal, said in the release. “Teachers prioritize collaboration and goal setting with students. These practices are critical to provide students success beyond grade-level curriculum and with students’ own growth goals.”
Rockford Public Schools has 28,500 students. It is among the largest school districts in Illinois and is the second-largest employer in the Rockford region.
“Jill Faber and the staff at Marshall have worked hard to implement long-range goals for the program that include inquiry, perseverance, active learning and personalized student goals,” said Heather Psaltis, director of special programs. “The higher the starting point for students, the harder it is to demonstrate growth. The hard work shows — not only in these results, but through the daily work and progress of staff and students.”
The Gifted Academy is one of several specialized programs in RPS. The program is open to all RPS 205 students. Students test into the program.
Corina Curry: 815-987-1371; ccurry@rrstar.com; @corinacurryA week ago, John Calipari suggested Jarred Vanderbilt could be back sooner than anticipated from his foot injury. Today, he told ESPN that Vanderbilt may miss the entire year.
“If he’s not 100 percent, he won’t play,” Calipari told ESPN’s Jeff Borzello. “If he can’t get ready this year, then he won’t play this year.”
That update came after Calipari told reporters earlier today that Vanderbilt will be evaluated next week.
“If that evaluation says it, then yes [he could miss more time],” Calipari told Borzello. “My hope is, for him, that he’s able to try it, we watch it, we evaluate it and he’s good to go. A lot of this is putting to Jarred, what do you feel capable of doing?”
Welp. I hope that evaluation goes well.
[ESPN]Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Germany faces a shortage of trained practitioners to care for the elderly
Russian fraudsters are costing the German healthcare system at least €1bn ($1.1bn; £796m) a year, according to an investigation by German media.
Germany's Federal Criminal Police says it is aware of the "phenomenon" of invoice fraud by care providers from the former Soviet Union, reports say.
MP Stephan Mayer described it as "organised crime on a grand scale".
Experts and health insurers are demanding more checks and controls within the German care industry.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption "In good hands" according to this elderly care textbook - but are all providers using qualified care workers?
The claims emerged from an investigation by the Welt am Sonntag newspaper and Bavarian public broadcaster BR.
German care sector organisations often hire staff from the former Soviet Union because of labour shortages.
In many cases the fraud relates to people receiving care visits in their own home, paid for by health insurers.
The providers allegedly bill for a higher level of visits than is actually provided - and few checks are made.
Another type of fraud detailed by the investigators is when the care providers bill for visits by qualified care workers, but then actually employ unqualified assistants at a lower hourly rate, and pocket the difference.
The journalists report that in some cases the patient and their family are aware of the fraud, collude with it, and split the profits with the care provider.
"Investing in Russian home care services is a business division of Russian-Eurasian organised crime," said an internal federal police memo, seen by the reporters.
A spokesman for the body representing health insurers told the reporters that the only way to uncover such machinations was to allow unannounced inspections of care provision.2 soldiers die as Apache helicopter crashes into Galveston Bay
An Apache helicopter went down in the water near the Bayport Cruise Terminal on Wednesday. An Apache helicopter went down in the water near the Bayport Cruise Terminal on Wednesday. Photo: James Nielsen, Chronicle Photo: James Nielsen, Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close 2 soldiers die as Apache helicopter crashes into Galveston Bay 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
The Army has launched an investigation into what caused an AH-64 Apache helicopter to crash into a section of Galveston Bay near the Bayport terminal Wednesday, killing two Texas Army National Guard soldiers.
The helicopter, assigned to the 1-149 Attack Reconnaissance Battalion based at Ellington Field, went down shortly before 3 p.m., prompting an immediate search by state and local agencies, along with the U.S. Coast Guard.
Military officials later Wednesday did not identify the two soldiers who were aboard the helicopter, pending notification of their families.
The cause of the fatal crash will be the subject of the official inquiry by the U.S. Army Combat Readiness Center at Fort Rucker, Ala.
Army officials said the flight was a "normal" training mission so the Texas Guard soldiers could maintain their flight proficiency.
"Our pilots are very competent and they are very well-trained," said Chief Warrant Officer 5 Glen Webb.
Pasadena firefighters were among the first at the scene of the crash.
Late Wednesday, officials said they were still working to recover the bodies of the two soldiers along with the submerged wreckage.
Although the downed Apache was quickly identified as a military helicopter, there was some initial confusion about where it had come from.
"We haven't had anybody who has claimed it," Pasadena Fire Marshal David Brannon said soon after the fatal crash.
An Army spokesman at Fort Hood initially said they had no reports of missing helicopters and a soldier who answered the telephone at Texas Guard headquarters in Austin was initially unaware of any mishaps involving one of their Apache gunships.
"We're just trying to sort it out," Brannon said.
Uniformed military officials eventually showed up at the scene of the recovery effort and identified the helicopter as being from the unit based at Ellington Field.
The AH-64 Apache is the Army's primary attack helicopter with its principal mission being the destruction of what military officials call "high value targets" with missiles, rockets or a 30 millimeter chain gun.
It has a tandem-seated crew cockpit with the pilot in the rear seat and the co-pilot/gunner located in front.
The 1-149th, part of the Texas Army National Guard's 36th Combat Aviation Brigade, has experienced combat with deployments in recent years to both Iraq and Afghanistan.To the fans and loyal viewers of CinemaQuestria and its content,
As of Tuesday, May 19th, CinemaQuestria was issued a cease and desist order from Hasbro. We were asked to stop streaming MLP:FiM and Equestria Girls content. To avoid further issues, we will not be streaming any Hasbro content on our site, including the live stream of the new MLP:FiM episodes.
Saturday content which we have been streaming before and after new episodes, and invite everyone to stop by and chat with us before and during the new episode, however, any Hasbro content from our schedule has been removed. You can view our updated Saturday schedule here: At this time, we are determining our options and how we wish to proceed from here. We hope to continue providing a fantastic viewing and community experience in future, whatever that may hold. At this time, our other streams will remain unaffected. We will be continuing with our normalcontent which we have been streaming before and after new episodes, and invite everyone to stop by and chat with us before and during the new episode, however, any Hasbro content from our schedule has been removed. You can view our updatedschedule here: http://cinemaquestria.com/ saturday-schedule/. Stay tuned to CinemaQuestria as we will provide updates as they develop.
We'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who helped make CQ what it is today. Your support and kindness is what helped drive our passion for success.
Thank you for your understanding and support!
- The CinemaQuestria Staff
Unfortunately not all news today can be jolly. We have some bad news for you all that use the Cinema Questria stream on Saturdays for MLP. Hasbro has recently sent them a C&D and to comply with their wishes they will not be showing MLP or other Hasbro properties in the future.Check on after the break for their full press release and how the C&D will be effecting the whole channel.Drake’s new release "Views" set an all-time record for weekly album streams with an impressive 247 million in the US and 23 million in Canada. "Views" finished the week of 4.29.16 at #1 on the BuzzAngle charts with an impressive 1,040,842 album units in the U.S and 110,678 in Canada. The full Top 10 charts:
The majority of Drake's streams occurred on Apple Music, which retains the full album streaming exclusive for one more week. S"otify and other on demand services only have access to two singles. Beyonce's Lemonade was still very strong with 326K album project units in the U.S. and 21K in Canada. Prince dropped off a bit but remained strong, as well.
UNITED STATES: BuzzAngle Music Final Album Project Top 10 Chart- April 29, 2016 – May 5, 2016
Rank Title Artist Total Project Album Sales Song Sales Song Streams 1 Views Drake 1,040,842 851,670 239,031 247,902,921 2 Lemonade Beyoncé 325,937 203,852 599,266 93,236,973 3 Purple Rain Prince & The Revolution 69,025 54,096 143,685 840,438 4 The Very Best Of Prince Prince 51,780 51,780 0 * 0 * 5 Anti Rihanna 45,688 12,465 110,087 33,320,788 6 NOW 58 That’s What I Call Music Various Artists 36,420 36,420 0 * 0 * 7 Traveller Chris Stapleton 28,632 22,486 34,802 3,998,400 8 1999 Prince 28,535 22,442 58,514 362,428 9 The Electric Warlock Acid Witch Satanic Orgy Celebration Dispenser Rob Zombie 27,577 26,424 5,401 918,631 10 Purpose Justin Bieber 27,184 7,037 67,980 20,023,113
CANADA: BuzzAngle Music Final Album Project Top 10 Chart- April 29, 2016 – May 5, 2016
Rank Title Artist Total Project Album Sales Song Sales Song Streams 1 Views Drake 110,678 92,285 31,554 22,856,860 2 Lemonade Beyoncé 21,023 14,104 46,116 3,460,642 3 Purpose Justin Bieber 4,267 1,388 9,883 2,836,571 4 Anti Rihanna 4,076 1,275 8,692 2,898,228 5 Cleopatra The Lumineers 3,536 2,389 3,475 1,199,557 6 Lukas Graham Lukas Graham 3,046 815 13,325 1,347,320 7 The Electric Warlock Acid Witch Satanic Orgy Celebration Dispenser Rob Zombie 2,988 2,849 782 91,821 8 Blurryface twenty one pilots 2,816 893 8,754 1,571,064 9 Prayers for the Damned Sixx:A.M. 2,461 2,333 910 54,921 10 This Is Acting Sia 2,332 660 8,566 1,222,917
Album Project Units = Album Sales + (Song Sales/10) + (On-Demand Audio Streams/1,500)* Song sales and song streams can only contribute to one album on the chartAbout BuzzAngle Music
BuzzAngle Music’s new charts and analytics offer data at a much more granular level and in a much more timely manner than the most commonly used measurement of sales and streaming available up to this point, leading to an ability to produce over 250,000 unique charts daily, revolutionizing a slow, staid and stale aspect of the music industry. The week-to-date charts are updated each day to reflect the previous day’s sales and streaming activity in both the United States and Canada.Recently David Harvey, the well-known writer on Marxist economics, criticized Marxist economics blogger Michael Roberts’ views on crisis theory. According to Harvey, Roberts has a “monocausal” crisis theory. What Harvey objects to is Roberts’ emphasis on Marx’s theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (FRP for short) as the underlying cause of capitalist crises.
Harvey goes further than simply criticizing Roberts’ FRP-centered crisis theory. He says that he is skeptical that a tendency of the rate of profit to fall even exists. He indicates that he agrees with the views of the German Marxist economist Michael Heinrich on the invalidity of Marx’s theory of the falling rate of profit. Heinrich’s views are developed in “An Introduction of the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital” (Monthly Review Press, 2004). He elaborated them in this article.
In this work, Heinrich tries to demonstrate that Marx himself in the final years of his life moved away from his own theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Heinrich holds that an examination of Marx’s manuscripts that form the basis of Volume III of “Capital” show that Marx had moved toward a theory of crises centered on credit. Heinrich accuses Frederick Engels of editing the manuscripts in such a way as to hide Marx’s alleged movement away from an FRP-centered theory of crises to a credit-centered theory of crises.
In his defense of the falling rate of profit school from the criticism leveled by Harvey, Roberts makes an indirect reference to this blog: “… recently, one Marxist economist from the overproduction school called me a monomaniac in my attachment to Marx’s law of profitability as the main/underlying cause of capitalist crises (see Mike Treen, national director of the New Zealand Unite Union, at the annual conference of the socialist organization Fightback, held in Wellington, May 31-June 1, 2014, and a seminar hosted by Socialist Aotearoa in Auckland in November 10, 2014 http://links.org.au/node/4156).”
Mike Treen, a New Zealand Marxist, is indeed an organizer of the New Zealand trade union Unite (not to be confused with the U.S. trade union of a similar name, UNITE HERE, which also organizes fast food and other low-wage workers). The “overproduction school” Roberts refers to is actually the position of this blog, of which Mike is an editor. (1)
Mike as a leader of New Zealand low-wage workers has expressed concerns in our private conservations that the FRP school has a tendency to unwittingly echo the bosses’ propaganda. The bosses and their hired economists claim that the crisis of 2007-2009, as well as earlier capitalist economic and unemployment crises, were caused by wages that exceeded the “economic value” that workers produce with their labor. Unions, the (bourgeois) economists claim, prevent the poor from working and gaining experience and skills on the job that would eventually enable them to rise into the “middle class.”
Now, let’s make one thing clear. Michael Roberts, Andrew Kliman, and all other Marxists who support the modern FRP school of crisis theory want to see capitalism replaced by socialism. They are not in favor of lowering wages in order to achieve “full employment” under capitalism. On the contrary, all Marxist supporters of the FRP theory of crisis believe that what they see as capitalism’s need for lower wages—along with the massive destruction of surplus capital—proves, as Andrew Kliman puts it, the “failure of capitalist production.” (“The Failure of Capitalist Production: Underlying Causes of the Great Recession,” paperback, 2011)
Mike is not only a Marxist who wants to replace capitalism with socialism. He also has responsibilities to the membership of his union, which represents some of the most exploited workers in New Zealand. If you are a low-wage worker trying to support your family on completely inadequate wages and benefits, you can’t afford to wait for socialism to arrive and solve your and your family’s immediate problems. You need to defend and if at all possible improve your standard of living and working conditions in the here and now.
How can any trade union leader worthy of the name not be concerned with the daily struggles of the members of his or her union for decent wages and conditions? If the workers are unable or unwilling to struggle to improve their conditions in a situation that is not yet revolutionary, how will they ever be able to make the revolution that will enable them to build a new society? As Marx observed in “Wages, Prices, and Profits,” also known as “Value, Price and Profit” (2), in that case they would be little better than slaves.
With the “underconsumption school” and the “Monthly Review school,” these concerns do not arise. These radical economists even argue that the industrial capitalists—though not the money capitalists—and the workers have a common economic interest in higher wages, since higher wages will increase monetarily effective demand and counteract the stagnationist tendencies inherent in monopoly capitalism. These views can be criticized for exaggerating the possibilities of “reforming” capitalism as well as creating illusions about the possibility of forming alliances with sections of the capitalist class. But there is nothing here that discourages militant trade-union activity. On the contrary.
This blog agrees with the FRP school that surplus value must be produced before it can be realized, while also agreeing with the underconsumption/Monthly Review school that surplus value must also be realized in money form if the capitalists are to realize a profit. And it agrees with both schools that without profits capitalism cannot exist.
Unlike the underconsumption/Monthly Review school, this blog also believes that periodically there is a generalized overproduction of commodities relative to the market so that the combined purchasing power of the workers and the capitalists, as well as all possible “third persons,” including the state, is periodically insufficient to purchase the total commodity production at profitable prices.
If this blog is correct on this point, merely changing the rate of surplus value—whether upward as the bosses and their economists want in order to increase profits, or downward in hopes of increasing effective monetary demand by raising wages—cannot pull the economy out of a crisis of overproduction or prevent their future recurrence. As long as we insist on retaining capitalism, only a thoroughgoing liquidation of the overproduced commodities and means of production—surplus capital—can “clear” the market, making possible a recovery until the next inevitable crisis arrives.
If this blog is correct, it is therefore senseless for the workers to make sacrifices to avoid or get out of a crisis of overproduction once it has broken out. The position of this blog as well as the view of every informed and honest trade-union leader is that the workers must fight as hard as they can to defend and if at all possible improve their conditions. It is true that this task is much easier during the prosperity-boom phase of the industrial cycle than during the crisis/depression phase.
In economics, as is true in every other science, both social and natural, we must always search for the truth and only the truth. If the capitalist |
invites them to the group. In other words, this JS performs a bulk invite of a group to all of your Friends. Simple, right?
Here is an example of a more complex and malicious JS I found on FB:
The strings in the JS are all hex encoded, below is the unescaped version:
This JS generates an Facebook invite message to your friends with the message containing an IFrame to: bit.ly/9CxGhY?82
Visiting this shortened link, shows that Bit.Ly is aware of the abuse and warning users from following:
The shortened link was to the now down site:
hxxp://aagmphxa.facebook.joyent.us/goog/index1.php
There are many examples of past abuse from various "facebook.joyent.us" sites, here for example.
This technique is not a new technique - Zscaler has reported past abuse examples using this Self-Inflicted JS Injection method, for example:
Be careful of all actions you take while online, to include copying and pasting content into your URL bar.French poet Charles Baudelaire famously wrote that “the devil’s finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist,” which people most likely recall from Verbal Kint paraphrasing it in The Usual Suspects when referring to his employer Keyser Soze. What follows is a decades-old spoiler alert so be warned: It turns out that Verbal Kint is Keyser Soze, and if that is news then perhaps you aren’t that in touch with pop culture.
In order to hide in plain sight one must not simply adopt a look and name different than those which they seek to conceal, but to actively misdirect the observer like an expert magician. Hence Soze takes on the persona of Kint, with his limp and soft-spoken demeanor, subverting the attention of the law, just like how lizard people pretend to be our politicians in order to run the government.
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If then, someone like the late Bill Hicks, a famously acid-tongued stand-up comedian and social critic, wanted to disappear while remaining in the public eye, perhaps the easiest way to achieve this would be by becoming a conspiracy theory-touting right wing media host. Too crazy an idea to even consider?
Poor sheeple, how you have been deceived. According to a new video that you can watch on the Internet (or alternately listen to on the radio in your teeth), Hicks—who passed away in 1994 due to pancreatic cancer—was in fact actually conscripted by the CIA, brainwashed, and now operates as lachrymose agent of agitprop Alex Jones. Misdirection, see? It makes perfect sense.
Hicks and Jones admittedly do share a passing similarity in looks, and both are given to passionate oratory, but Hicks existed on a wildly different side of the political divide than Jones. It also bears repeating that Hicks died 20 years ago, while Jones is a person who is alive, but don’t let’s get bogged down with such “red herring” details. Have you studied their teeth?
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The video operates on several levels, acting as an unveiling of a Hicks-as-Jones conspiracy, taking aim at the purported one world government, all while smearing Jones, insinuating him as merely a puppet of the same government he claims to rail against. However if it should accomplish anything, it should be to remind us of the unfiltered brilliance of Hicks, whose comedy is still vibrant and important 20 years after his death. Oh, and also that the Internet is literally populated by insane people.
IRREFUTABLE PROOF that Alex Jones IS Bill Hicks from CastleJenniferBassett on Vimeo.The strange revival of Conservative Scotland? Another poll from north of the border, this time from the Times and YouGov, shows the Tories experiencing a revival in Scotland, up to 28 per cent of the vote, enough to net seven extra seats from the SNP.
Adding to the Nationalists’ misery, according to the same poll, they would lose East Dunbartonshire to the Liberal Democrats, reducing their strength in the Commons to a still-formidable 47 seats.
It could be worse than the polls suggest, however. In the elections to the Scottish Parliament last year, parties which backed a No vote in the referendum did better in the first-past-the-post seats than the polls would have suggested – thanks to tactical voting by No voters, who backed whichever party had the best chance of beating the SNP.
The strategic insight of Ruth Davidson, the Conservative leader in Scotland, was to to recast her party as the loudest defender of the Union between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. She has absorbed large chunks of that vote from the Liberal Democrats and Labour, but, paradoxically, at the Holyrood elections at least, the “Unionist coalition” she assembled helped those parties even though it cost the vote share.
The big thing to watch is not just where the parties of the Union make gains, but where they successfully form strong second-places against whoever the strongest pro-Union party is.
Davidson’s popularity and eye for a good photo opportunity – which came first is an interesting question – mean that the natural benefactor in most places will likely be the Tories.
But it could have been very different. The first politician to hit successfully upon the “last defender of the Union” routine was Ian Murray, the last Labour MP in Scotland, who squeezed both the Liberal Democrat and Conservative vote in his seat of Edinburgh South.
His then-leader in Scotland, Jim Murphy, had a different idea. He fought the election in 2015 to the SNP’s left, with the slogan of “Whether you’re Yes, or No, the Tories have got to go”. There were a couple of problems with that approach, as one former staffer put it: “Firstly, the SNP weren’t going to put the Tories in, and everyone knew it. Secondly, no-one but us wanted to move on [from the referendum]”.
Then again under different leadership, this time under Kezia Dugdale, Scottish Labour once again fought a campaign explicitly to the left of the SNP, promising to increase taxation to blunt cuts devolved from Westminster, and an agnostic position on the referendum. Dugdale said she’d be open to voting to leave the United Kingdom if Britain left the European Union. Senior Scottish Labour figures flirted with the idea that the party might be neutral in a forthcoming election. Once again, the party tried to move on – but no-one else wanted to move on.
How different things might be if instead of running away from their referendum campaign, Jim Murphy had run towards it in 2015.In preparation for my C++Now talk entitled The Future of Accelerator Programming in C++ I am currently reviewing numerous C++ libraries. I put together a catalogue of questions for these reviews. The questions are intended to gauge scope, use-cases, performance, quality and level of abstraction of each library.
Iqra: Read, image by Farrukh
Is concurrency supported?
Accelerators are massive parallel devices, but due to memory transfer overhead, concurrency is a central aspect for many efficient programs. How is memory managed?
This is a central question since simple and efficient management of distributed memory is not trivial. What parallel primitives are provided?
Parallel primitives are essential building blocks for many accelerator-enabled programs. How is numerical analysis supported?
Massive parallel accelerator architectures lend themselves well to numerical analysis. How can users specify custom accelerator functions?
A useful accelerator library should allow users to specify custom functions. What is the intended use-case for the library? Who is the target audience?
Is the library suitable for i.e. high performance computing, prototyping or signal processing? What are noteworthy features of the library?
This is a list of all libraries that I am reviewing:
Library CUDA OpenCL Other Type1 Thrust X OMP, TBB header Bolt X2 TBB, C++ AMP link VexCL X3 X header Boost.Compute X header C++ AMP X4 DX11 compiler SyCL X5 compiler ViennaCL X X OMP header SkePU X X OMP, seq header SkelCL X link HPL X link ArrayFire X X link CLOGS X link hemi X header MTL4 X header Kokkos X OMP, PTH, seq link Aura6 X X header
If I missed a library, please let me know. I will add it immediately. I’m going to publish selected library reviews here on my blog. I’m hoping to discuss specific reviews with the original library authors. The conclusions of these reviews will be part of my talk at C++Now."Obama Confronts a Choice on Copters" read this week's New York Times. The President soon "will have to decide whether to proceed with some of the priciest aircraft in the world -- a new fleet of 28 Marine One helicopters that will each cost more than the last Air Force One....The choice confronting Mr. Obama encapsulates the tension between two imperatives of his nascent presidency, the need to meet the continuing threats of an age of terrorism and the demand for austerity in a period of economic hardship."
This is a gross misrepresentation of the choice Obama faces. Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn) and others have alleged that the contract for 28 Marine One helicopters was awarded to the Italian firm Finmeccanica as a thank you for Italy's participation in the Iraq War. The evidence, however, indicates that the contract was more specifically a payoff to the Italian government for supplying the forged documents showing Saddam had obtained weapons grade uranium from Niger. President Bush famously used this fraudulent "yellowcake" intelligence to justify launching the war.
When reviewing the helicopter contract, President Obama can either be actively complicit by continuing with Finmeccanica; he can duck and cover by simply switching to the proper supplier, Sikorsky; or he can use the mandated review of this purchase decision to root out those in military, the aerospace industry and Congress who were willing to compromise the security of all subsequent American presidents so that Bush could cover up his core war crime.
Officials up and down the chain who awarded the contract knew that they were doing something extraordinarily wrong. The rigged bidding process bypassed, for example, Marine One pilots who repeatedly sought to give input. They had many safety concerns. At the time of the bid, the helicopter chosen was not certified to fly in the U.S. It was an old model made of heavy materials; this flew in the face of why the President supposedly needed a new fleet: i.e., so many extra security devices had been added to Marine One after 9/11, it was struggling to lift off. In its losing bid, the Connecticut-based Sikorsky, which had manufactured virtually all presidential helicopters since Eisenhower first ordered one, proposed a new model made of much lighter, composite materials.
But the Marine One pilots' prime objection, which was raised repeatedly by many other officials in private, was national security. Finmeccanica was doing business with Iran, China and Libya. Why outsource so sensitive a project? At the time of the bid, the security clearance necessary to manufacture and maintain Marine One required U.S. citizenship and prohibited Marine One team members from being married to citizens of another country.
After the bid was awarded, John Pike, head of GlobalSecurity.org, told us: "Analyzing the defense industry for nearly 30 years, I try to stay calm and nonpartisan. But the Finmeccanica deal raised every hair on my neck. Apparently no one else sees the irony in a foreign military contractor building Marine One and Ayatollah One."
Many others did see the irony but were intimidated or paid off. For example, right after Finmeccanica won the contract, Kim Weldon, the daughter of then-Congressman Curt Weldon (R - Pa), landed a full-time job with the company. Previously she'd been a social worker. Finmeccanica also paid consulting money to Weldon's real estate agent, who subsequently pled guilty for attempting to destroy bribery evidence sought by the FBI. Weldon's chief of staff, his wife and other Weldon aides were given free trips to Italy. The chief of staff subsequently pled guilty for failing to disclose income funneled to his wife. Like many other Congressmen, however, Weldon looks as if he will escape unscathed.
At Finmeccanica promotional events, Weldon was accompanied by Giovanni Castellaneta, the Italian ambassador to United States and simultaneously a Finmeccanica vice president. Today Castellaneta sits on Finmeccanica's Board of Directors on behalf of the Italian Government. Ambassador Castellaneta is the key figure in Italy's exchange of forged intelligence for U.S. defense dollars.
According to Italy's La Repubblica, Nicola Pollari, the head of the Italian spy agency SISMI, had failed to dispel the CIA's misgivings about the authenticity of the yellowcake papers. Giovanni Castellaneta then arranged for Pollari to bypass the CIA and meet directly with then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley, Rice's chief deputy at the time. The meeting took place on Sept. 9, 2002, in the White House, and was confirmed by White House officials.
"It is completely out of protocol for the head of a foreign intelligence service to circumvent the C.I.A.," former C.I.A. officer Philip Giraldi told Vanity Fair's Craig Ungar. "It is uniquely unusual. In spite of lots of people having seen these documents, and having said they were not right, they went around them."
"To me there is no benign interpretation of this," Melvin Goodman, a former C.I.A. and State Department analyst said to Ungar. "At the highest level it was known the documents were forgeries. Stephen Hadley knew it. Condi Rice knew it. Everyone at the highest level knew."
Nonetheless, after the White House meeting that Castellaneta arranged for Pollari, the story of the yellowcake shipments to Saddam was treated as hard proof despite multiple attempts by America's top spies to discredit it.
Especially when no WMDs were found, President Bush needed to find a way he could control to repay the Italians for their help. Bush pressed for a new fleet of Marine Ones. He demanded the contract be awarded through an expedited bidding process because of heightened security concerns. A senior Finmeccanica executive told us that long before the Navy announced the award in January 2005, he and other company executives were told that the fix was in.
Finmeccanica hid the payoff by cutting U.S. companies Bell Helicopter and Lockheed Martin into the deal. Although Lockheed doesn't make helicopters, it acted as the ostensible lead partner.Former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli II on Monday found himself trending on Twitter, and not in a good way, after telling CNN political commentator Symone Sanders to “shut up” on TV.
The remark came during a heated discussion about President Trump’s response to deadly violence that erupted over the weekend at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.
[White House confronts backlash over Trump’s remarks on Charlottesville]
Sanders was critical of Trump for not calling out rally participants as white supremacists, neo-Nazis and Klansmen, blaming the omission on the influence of “white supremacist sympathizers” in the White House, including chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon.
(The Washington Post)
Cuccinelli, a Republican though hardly a Trump cheerleader, took issue with efforts to “smear” the administration.
Each talked over the other at times. And at one point, CNN host Chris Cuomo asked Cuccinelli to lay out his argument. Cuccinelli began. Sanders soon interrupted. And Cuccinelli lashed out.
“Can I finish, Symone?” he said. “Will you just shut up for a minute and let me finish? God bless America!”
Cuccinelli tried to go on with his argument, “And so all these racists come in, all these neo-Nazis from all over the country.... ”
But Sanders and Cuomo did not let that pass.
“Pardon me, sir,” she said. “You don’t get to tell me to shut up on national television.... Under no circumstances do you get to speak to me in that manner. You should exhibit some decorum.”
Cuomo also scolded Cuccinelli. He then struggled to get both guests to pipe down long enough for him to give a longer lecture, sounding at times like a frazzled nursery schoolteacher threatening to put the kids in time out.
“Ken, stay civil,” Cuomo began. “Both of you, stop for a second. Symone? Ken? Symone? Ken and Symone, hold on a second. You need a reset. You need a reset. Ken, you don’t want to use language like that when you’re talking to Symone. You can disagree, but you don’t talk like that on this show. You know better than that, Ken.”
Cuccinelli insisted he was in the right. “I keep getting interrupted. I keep getting interrupted,” he said. “Eventually I’ve got to stand up for myself.”
Cuomo: “Ken, you can stand up for yourself and still be civil.”
Cuccinelli: “Then how do you make them stop talking when they keep interrupting you?”
That comment further enraged Sanders: “‘Them? They?’ I’m sitting right here.”
Cuomo apologized to Sanders and twice prodded Cuccinelli to do the same.
“Ken, I know you,” Cuomo said. “You don’t talk to people like that. I know you don’t mean to insult somebody like that on this show. Would you like to say that for yourself?”
Well, not exactly.
“Of course not,” Cuccinelli said, “but I just can’t be walked over — over and over and over.”
The discussion returned to the subject of Trump, with Cuomo asking Cuccinelli to “help me understand” why the president did not name the hate groups.
“Well, look, this president defies understanding on my part,” Cuccinelli said before going on to express confidence that as the week goes on, Trump will make “stronger statements like the vice president did... especially as they learn more facts from the ground.”
As the segment wound up, Cuomo once again invited Cuccinelli to apologize. And Cuccinelli kinda, sorta said he was sorry.
“I apologize for ‘shut up,’ and I’ll accept her apology for interrupting me repeatedly and talking over me,” Cuccinelli said.
Sanders shot back, “I don’t have an apology for you.”
“Let’s leave it there,” Cuomo concluded.
But Cuccinelli called Sanders after the show to apologize.
“I called Symone and apologized for telling her to shut up,” Cuccinelli later said in an interview with The Washington Post. “As someone who would like more civil discussion, I need to make sure that I try to contribute to that effort.”
He said Sanders seemed to welcome the call.
“She said she appreciated me calling to apologize,” he said. “And she sounded very sincere to me, as I hope I sounded to her, because I was.”
Cuccinelli said he had spoken out of frustration with both the substance and freewheeling style of the discussion.
“I was laying back from a discussion standpoint for a fair bit, but felt like I couldn’t get a word in edgewise,” he said. “Chris was just letting it fly. That just turns up the heat.”
Cuccinelli said he had also been upset by the “attempt that was going on there to take these awful people — the Nazi types, the Klansmen types — and to broad brush other people like the president and people who work for the president as if they all stand with them.
“I’m not a knee-jerk Trump defender,” said Cuccinelli, who supported Texas Sen. Ted Cruz over Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. “But that just goes too far. It is not constructive and is, I think, just taking advantage of a very tragic occurrence to try and accomplish political goals.”A group of Senate Republicans spearheading a rollback of the Affordable Care Act tried to persuade three skeptical but critical senators to support their efforts over the weekend — but were unable to extract any promises that would guarantee the embattled measure's success.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (La.), who introduced a revised version of his health-care bill earlier Monday, told The Washington Post in an interview that he mostly focused on tweaking the policy and left outreach up to two other Republican colleagues who helped craft the measure: Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) and former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.).
Cassidy said Graham and Santorum facilitated conversations with Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Susan Collins (Maine) and John McCain (Ariz.), whose states would receive more federal health-care funding under his revamped bill compared to a previous version.
[New GOP health-care bill in jeopardy as Sen. Rand Paul expresses opposition]
Murkowski and Collins, whose votes are crucial to the success of the Cassidy-Graham measure, have insisted that any attempt to replace parts of the ACA must not hurt their states. Asked whether he designed those changes with the two moderate Republicans in mind, Cassidy insisted that many states — not just Alaska and Maine — would benefit.
But he acknowledged that the new version would indeed provide more funding to those states compared to the first iteration of his bill, stressing that it would include $1 billion more in block grants for Maine. And he expressed hope that Collins would support the measure.
"If there's a billion more going to Maine... that's a heck of a lot," Cassidy said. "It's not for Susan, it's for the Mainers. But she cares so passionately about those Mainers, I'm hoping those extra dollars going to her state... would make a difference to her."
[Want the inside skinny on health care? Get The Health 202]
The Louisiana Republican also suggested that Collins, who is considering running for governor in 2018, could help implement the measure if it passes.
"Imagine what a smart governor who knew health insurance so well as Susan does could do with that money to benefit lower-income Mainers," he said.
Cassidy-Graham has been met with sharp resistance from several GOP senators, and seemed headed for a collapse before a vote that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he would hold this week.
Republicans can afford to lose the support of only two senators because of their slim 52-48 margin in the chamber, and time to deliver on a signature campaign promise is running short. On Saturday, special budget rules that allow them to pass health-care legislation without Democratic support will expire. President Trump has also urged Senate Republicans to pass the bill.
And Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Monday morning that the changes to Cassidy-Graham aren't enough to persuade him.
Nonetheless, the Louisiana senator appeared exuberant that his measure has gained as much traction as it has, after Republicans failed to pass several other Obamacare replacement measures in July.
"Two years ago people thought I was Don Quixote. A month ago people thought things were dead. Two weeks ago, people smiled - and now folks say, 'Wow, they may still pull it off,'" Cassidy said. "If you keep your head down and keep plugging, good things happen."
Cassidy contended that naysayers like Paul should recognize that the new measure would save the country from the single-payer system that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and some Democrats are pushing for.
"I'm hoping Senator Paul would kind of have that epiphany," Cassidy said.
The legislation would broadly convert federal Medicaid funding for expansion programs and subsidies for low-income Americans to purchase health insurance into block grants for states to design their own health-care systems. But the new state-by-state formula in the revised measure introduced Monday morning has some winners and losers, with Alaska gaining 3 percent more than it would have under the old bill; Maine securing 43 percent more; and Arizona receiving 15 percent in additional federal funding. The measure would redistribute federal health-care funding among all states, not just the ones that expanded Medicaid under the ACA.
Cassidy defended the new distribution of funding, saying conversations with the moderates were about "how do we hold your state harmless."
"All of this was designed to as much as possible hold states harmless while benefiting those non [Medicaid] expansion states where there are so many folks who would benefit if the state could afford to provide them better coverage," he said.
Cassidy said he's holding out hope that with the boosted funding — along with a Monday afternoon Senate Finance Committee hearing on the measure, where he will testify — Murkowski, Collins and McCain will ultimately vote for the bill.
"Our hope is that Maine gets a billion dollars more for four to five years, that we correct some problems that have been evident in Alaska.... We're having a hearing to vet these ideas that hopefully Senator McCain will say, 'Wait a second, we're having a hearing after all,' " Cassidy said.
McCain has complained about a lack of "regular order" — committee hearings, for instance — on major health-care legislation. He has said a single hearing isn't enough to satisfy his request.
Read more at PowerPost11-22-2016 (Photo: Russia Today’s 10th anniversary. Vladimir Putin with General Michael Flynn at his right, December, 2015 ) http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/contact http://JohnBatchelorShow.com/schedules http://johnbatchelorshow.com/blog Twitter: @BatchelorShow
Tales of the New Cold War: The National Security Adviser Who Lunched with Putin. Stephen F. Cohen, @NYU, @Princeton University. EastWestAccord.com.
“…Just last year, Flynn gave a paid speech in Moscow at the anniversary gala of Russia’s English-language state propaganda network, RT. After his speech, Flynn ate dinner seated at Putin’s table—at the right hand of the Russian President. Russian state-owned media blanketed airwaves with the image for days. Flynn has appeared often on RT, lending his credibility as a retired General and former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency to Putin’s destructive misinformation and propaganda efforts. Two well-respected military leaders, retired Army General Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan when Flynn was running intelligence operations there, and retired Admiral Mike Mullen, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have both reportedly asked Flynn to exercise greater caution. Even more worrisome than Flynn’s reckless public support for Putin is his commitment to a foreign policy agenda that directly benefits Russia. Flynn believes we can work with Russia to fight terrorist groups such as ISIS, despite evidence from the Pentagon that 90 percent of Putin’s military activity in Syria targets moderate rebel groups or worse, civilians. The Assad regime, which Flynn also envisions as a potential ally, uses chemical weapons and barrel bombs against its own civilian population. America cannot be partners with potential war criminals. On Ukraine, Flynn appears to be unconcerned about Putin’s invasion of a peaceful neighbor, and unmoved by the tens of thousands of dead or the millions of refugees Putin is responsible for. Indeed, Flynn’s paid dinner with Putin came after most Western politicians had agreed to shun Putin internationally as a result of his invasion of Ukraine….”
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/11/21/trumps-national-security-adviser-pick-raises-serious-questions-about-putins-influence-over-us-policy.htmlWhat does it mean to get married in a virtual world?
The creators of the Red Light Center (RLC) [NSFW] are trying to answer that question. On Valentine’s Day, the adult-themed 3D world hosted two mass weddings [NSFW]. Modeled after Amsterdam’s red light district, RLC is a place where players choose personal avatars and have virtual sex with other users.
Five couples tied the knot in ceremonies performed by one of the RLC’s Justice of the Peace officiates. Held in the RLC Zaby Lobby at 12:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. (PST), the events attracted large crowds of friends and observers.
Couples gathered 15 minutes beforehand in order to sign in to the event. After the ceremonies, they all received an official commemorative wedding certificate.
Speaking to Future of Sex about the mass weddings, RLC President Anna Lee described the allure behind the idea.
The appeal to celebrate publically your love for your partner is a big one, and I think people will love to be a part of this monumental occasion, as well as claiming the title of being one of the first people to get married in the new platform.
After launching in beta in September 2014, the new RLC 2.0 platform features extensive graphic overhauls, a new browser client, and is now Oculus Rift-enabled.
One lucky couple also has the opportunity to become the first to have a traditional two-person wedding in the RLC 2.0 virtual world.
The couple with the best love story will win a one-on-one dream ceremony to be held in summer 2015. The winning users will be announced on March 7, and will receive a luxurious wedding wardrobe as part of their prize. Their venue costs will be covered and the ceremony will be professionally filmed and photographed.
Digital Romance
Weddings are becoming an increasingly common aspect of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) and virtual communities. Yet they are exempt from both the pressures, and privileges, which typically drive such events.
There’s no political gain, or religious pressure, to virtually officiate your union. Virtual weddings also fail to provide an economic benefit for users, lacking the financial offsets and tax breaks often provided to married couples.
However, despite the lack of a tangible upside, virtual weddings are becoming more popular, with the RLC already hosting close to 100 per month.
According to Lee, this upward trend is part of what led to the RLC management team to host mass wedding ceremonies for users.
“Thousands of couples over the years have been married in our virtual world,” she said. “This is a fantastic way to celebrate and recognize that.”
The event also served as a publicity push for the RLC’s newly upgraded 3D world. Lee explained that the commitment ceremonies provided an illustrative showcase for RLC 2.0’s highly improved graphics and redesigned virtual environment.
Although weddings are still primarily a social ritual, participants in virtual marriages seem to be engaging in a fluid mix of escapist role-play and genuine emotion. And while it’s still unclear what draws people into such relationships, it’s worth remembering that studies have proven they’re no less satisfying than the real-life version.
Would you get married in a virtual wedding ceremony?
Images source: DoubleChokA Rasberry Encore: Fruit Beer is Still a Beautiful Thing (Especially When It’s Funky)
Last year I wrote an article about raspberry beer. One of it’s main goals was to try to debunk some of the stigma surrounding fruit beer. My main argument was centered around the fact that although mass produced fruit infused beer is generally awful and marketed towards people who don’t actually like beer, fruit (and other ingredients) has been used to “spice” beer for a very long time, and are quite fantastic when done well. It was one of my more successful articles; you can read it here.
As my beergeekdom expands, so does my experience, and my palate. When I wrote this last article, I wasn’t familiar with sours quite in the same way that I am now, especially Lambics and barrel aged blends. There were some I liked, and some I didn’t, but I was uncertain as to why. By now having sampled many funky sours, and by reading about how various bacteria and wild yeasts affect beer, I have a (somewhat) better understand of what I’m drinking. I think the more you understand what you are drinking, the more you can ascertain what you like verses what you dislike. I should also point out that the sour beer world is very, very complicated, with so much to learn and understand – I’m still only starting to scratch the surface at this point.
I like sour, but I LOVE funk. And no, I’m not talking about music, but rather I’m referring to the interesting yet bizarre aromatic flavour by-products that Lambic, barrel aged, and wild yeast spiked beers tend to produce. That’s not to say that I can’t dig a Berliner Weiss (German sour wheat Beer), or an overly sour Saison (Belgian Farmhouse ale), but when I comes to wild beers, it’s not always the sourness I pine after, but rather the funkyness that often comes with “infected” beer. The sourness for me, is kind of along for the ride a lot of the time. These funky flavours are often described as “dusty barnyard” or “horseblanket,” and although that sounds disgusting, I can assure you that these flavours are deliciously complex. “Funky” is also an extremely broad term, and depending on who’s talking about it, it can also describe the dank, woody oak complexities found in these beers as well. They can often be compared to wine, and not so much because they share flavour profiles (although some can), but rather because they are far more unpredictable and can vary a lot from batch to batch.
Again, I quite like “sour,” more and more each day actually, but I can still have a bit of trouble with sour beers when they are incredibly acidic (partially to do with my acid reflux problems). However, that will likely change with time and experience. Take an IPA for example; many people love the fruity, floral, aromatic flavours that come from hops, but they don’t particularly enjoy the bitterness. I for one, love ALL aspects of the mighty hop, including the intense palate destroying bitterness. Perhaps one day I’ll get there with over the top sourness – time will tell. So that’s that, let’s move on. For this year’s raspberry beer edition, I’m stepping it up a notch and (hopefully) getting more funky.
Although sharing one very important ingredient – raspberries – the following four beers differ a lot in style and will likely differ a lot in flavour profile as well. That being said, all of these beers have spent time in an oak barrel, and should land somewhere on the funky-sour spectrum; some far more than others (I’m looking at you, Cantillon!). There are two examples from Quebec, and two from Belgium. Let’s crack ’em open!
Boon Framboise – Brouwerij Boon
Boon Framboise is a raspberry Lambic from Brouwerij Boon, which is owned and run by Frank Boon, someone who is largely responsible for keeping the Lambic beer style alive during the “beer dark ages” of the later half of the 20th century. It pours out a deep burgandy red colour, with a bone-white head. It’s aromas consist mainly of acidic raspberry juice, freshly squeezed berries, bile, and some cherries. I don’t really get much in the area of oak, or any dusty funk attributes. It’s not overly complex in any way, but still inviting. It also smells like it could be a bit sweet (this scares me).
Phew! It’s far more dry than expected from what the nose let on. It is quite tart actually, sour even. It’s nice and raspberry forward, with some cherries in the background. Like the nose, there are not much, if any, barrel flavours or brett (wild yeast) characteristics. It actually reminds me a bit of Dieu du Ciel’s Solstice D’été (Raspberry Berliner Weisse). I’m getting little to no bitterness, which is to be expected, however the aftertaste has a nice lingering tart fruit presence. There actually isn’t all that much going on, but I’m still enjoying sipping it on a warm summer afternoon in the sun. It seems like this was great one to start with, as I presume it will be the most “tame” of the bunch.
Framboise Forte 2012 (Unblended) – Hopfenstark
Hopfenstark is a brewery located not too far outside of Montreal. They are one of the more mythical beer producers around here, as their bottles can be difficult to find a lot of the time. Even more so lately, since they have been concentrating their efforts on their recently opened brewpub in downtown Montreal called Station Ho.st. They make a standard and more regularly available beer called “Framboise,” which is a wheat beer brewed with Raspberries. I’ve heard rumors that the owner hand picks all the berries himself. The beer I’m going to talk about today is their Framboise Forte, a stronger, oak aged, and unblended version. All that distinguishes the bottle from the standard Framboise is someone’s black sharpy scribbles on the label. I got this one in a trade, so I have to just trust the fact that it’s not actually the original in there (but he was a nice guy, so I’m sure it’s fine).
It pours out a very deep orange colour with some copper highlights. There isn’t much carbonation – nothing but a thing ring around the glass. I can smell the acidity by just pouring it; my mouth salivates in anticipation. Wow, the nose on this is spectacular; vinegar, spices, oak, wet wood, cinnamon (?), barrel funk, and just so much fruitiness, with raspberries leading the way.
On the palate there are a lot of acetic acids (vinegar) alongside some flavors that remind me of kombucha. There are tons of great aromatic raspberry flavours, with a very tart and exceptionally sour finish. It kind of burns on the way down after every sip. The barrel really comes through, with all kinds of vanilla, woody funk, tannins, and spices. It’s also a bit meaty, with some umami compounds which remind me of balsamic, but not in a bad way.
Saison Framboise Zinfandel – Brasserie Dunham
Brasserie Dunham is one of my favorite breweries. They are located in the Eastern Townships of Montreal (about an hour outside of town). They make an array of beer styles, but mostly seem to concentrate on Belgian and American influenced creations. Last summer, they released “Saison Framboise,” a tart and fruity Saison which was perfect for the heat (I reviewed it here in my first post). A few months later at one of their many bottle release parties, they released a Zinfandel Barrel aged version containing Brettanomeces (wild yeast). I held onto the bottle for some time, looking for the right moment to crack it, and when I decided to do this follow up piece, it was the perfect occasion.
After cracking open the bottle, I was worried for a second that it was going to gush like crazy, bit it didn’t. Instead, it gently, slowly, and continuously foamed over. The top of the bottle looked like raspberry soft serve iced cream (pictured above). It pours out a pretty bright red with a handsome mammoth rocky head that never dissipates. The nose is |
the bailout of Bombardier be announced the following Friday, or the one after that?
Of these, easily the most entertaining has been the one between the prime minister’s Unnamed Advisers and the prime minister — or, on occasion, between the prime minister and himself. The subject: are the series of deficits the government has planned — originally capped at $10 billion in each of the first two years, now expected to average $30 billion annually for five — intended to provide a short-run jolt to the economy, on Keynesian lines, or are they justified by the need to invest in infrastructure projects that will raise national productivity and increase economic output in the long run? Both? Neither?
The Liberal election platform remains studiously ambiguous on the issue. The word “stimulus” itself does not appear. Nevertheless the document is filled with language to the effect that “our economy is stuck in neutral,” that it is time to “kick-start investment” in order to “turn our economy around and get it growing again.” If the plan was actually to increase the economy’s productive potential by a few tenths of a percentage point over many years, you’d never know it.
A campaigning Justin Trudeau left no doubt. His deficit plan, he said on numerous occasions, was needed to “kick-start the economy.” Conservative “austerity” was holding the economy back. Liberal spending would liberate it. “We’re in a recession and growth has stalled so now is the time to invest,” the future prime minister said.
It was all for show, of course. Trudeau now tells interviewers that the day he announced the deficit plan, in contrast to the NDP vow to run balanced budgets, was the day he “won the election.” But there is little substantive difference between a balanced budget and a $10-billion deficit: The federal government spends $10 billion every 12 days. Whatever significance it had was purely symbolic.
Indeed, the intervening months have been filled with much debate about whether this was enough — some Bay Street economists were demanding deficits of $50 billion or more — or whether, as most academic economists insisted, the whole idea was misbegotten. The limitations of fiscal policy, after all, are well-documented, and have not changed. Simply put, the money has to come from somewhere. Either the government borrows from Canadians — in which case it leaves that much less for private investment — or it borrows from foreigners. And since foreigners can only lend us the dollars they earn from us on trade, whatever stimulative impact the increase in public spending may have is offset by a deterioration in the balance of trade.
At the very least, to justify such interventions there should be some evidence the economy is actually in recession. But of course there was no recession then, nor are we in one now. Neither is output falling short, as in Keynesian analysis, of its potential. Rather, potential output itself has been depressed by the collapse in oil prices. Alberta and Newfoundland are contracting. British Columbia and Ontario are expanding. Exports, in particular, are surging, as one would expect, with a 70-something dollar.
So it was not entirely surprising, though nevertheless startling, to see the Unnamed Adviser telling a Toronto Star reporter earlier this month that, in fact, the decision to go into deficit was never about stimulus. “Stimulus was never our objective,” he/she said. “Revitalization of the economy for the middle class is our objective.”
“It’s never been, ‘Let’s prop up this economy that’s not working for people,’ ” he/she went on. “It’s always been, ‘Let’s diversify it, revitalize it, clean up our growth trajectory and make sure that growth is more equitably and fairly shared.’ ”
Fair enough. Only someone forgot to tell the prime minister. In an interview with Bloomberg television this week, he delivered himself of the opinion that “we should be using fiscal levers a little more and not just expecting monetary policy” to support growth. Pure Keynesianism.
And yet at other points he disavowed the same levers: “What we’re looking at is not so much trying to jolt the economy into life as trying to lay the groundwork, the foundation, for better growth, better productivity, over the long term.” He added, “One of the things that’s really important to me is fiscal responsibility.”
If there is some confusion between the two concepts — short-run stimulus versus long-run productivity growth — it may be because the Liberal approach is in both cases the same: spend lots of money, now. With interest rates at historic lows, runs the argument, now is the time to invest in improvements to infrastructure — what used to be called roads and bridges — that can help raise productivity across the economy, and ultimately return more revenues to the government.
It’s not an unreasonable argument, in principle. Except comparatively little — less than a third — of the $15-billion increase in annual spending the Liberals pledged in their platform is actually for infrastructure. Moreover, two-thirds of the money the Liberals have pencilled in for “infrastructure” is for social and environmental spending, which may or may not offer the sort of productivity payoffs associated with the term as it is traditionally defined. And even where the remainder is concerned, there’s no guarantee it will have any such effect.
It might, if there were some sort of market test attached: if the roads and bridges were to be financed by tolls, for example, as David Dodge, the former governor of the Bank of Canada, has recommended. It would then be possible to state with some confidence whether the return on the investment exceeded the cost. But then, the minute you do attach such a measurable return, the case for borrowing on the public tab disappears. Private investors could be enticed to supply the necessary funds, in return for the same flow of revenues.
And of course, there is the ever-present risk, when decisions about investment are vested in politicians, of politicization — the more so when, as now, there is a political imperative to spend the money quickly. It is something of a relief, then, to hear the prime minister announce that the focus in the first two years will be on “unsexy” things like maintaining and upgrading existing infrastructure, rather than building new projects.
Is there an alternative to the Liberals’ big-spending, top-down, government-driven approach to productivity, with its obsession with broad aggregates — with how much is spent, rather than how it is spent? Yes there is. It is one that focuses more on sharpening incentives for everyone across the economy — investors, managers, workers, consumers — to make more efficient use of scarce resources.
Of course, there is the ever-present risk, when decisions about investment are vested in politicians, of politicization.
Such an approach might start by lowering marginal tax rates on investment: a key part of raising productivity is adding capital to labour. Yet the Liberals have already raised taxes on incomes above $200,000; combined with provincial taxes, our top marginal rates are now among the highest in the developed world. And while they have cut taxes on the middle bracket (offering a windfall gain to those same upper-income taxpayers), the proposed new Canada Child Benefit, while in many ways a useful reform, will have the unfortunate side-effect of raising the implicit marginal tax rate facing families with children (since the benefit is reduced as income rises).
A bottom-up productivity program would also aim to end subsidies that distort investment decisions and divert capital from more efficient to less efficient uses. The Bombardier bailout, though it will probably not be in the budget, goes in precisely the opposite direction.
Likewise, the promise to expand the Canada Pension Plan portends still more centralized control of investment decisions: if not in political hands, then in wasteful, empire-building ones. A bottom-up approach would focus on competition as a means of forcing business to cut costs — opening protected industries to foreign investment, for example — not on concentrating capital further in a country already suffering from too much of it.
Last, the aging of the population, and consequent shrinking of the population of working-age, will place a premium on mobilizing every spare person-hour of labour. It is incomprehensible, in this light, to see the Liberals promising to roll back the age of OAS eligibility from 67 to 65, at a cost of several billion dollars annually: as if a retirement age of 65 were set in stone, notwithstanding the change in lifespans and the nature of work in the decades since it was first fixed in law.
These, at any rate, are the sorts of things the Liberals have been signalling will be part of their economic program. Lacking any visible benchmark of the “fiscal responsibility” to which the prime minister claims to be devoted — the $10-billion cap long since discarded, along with the pledge to balance the books by 2020, with the promise to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio soon to follow — we seem headed for an extraordinary burst of spending, in answer to the demands of every conceivable interest.
It isn’t going to bankrupt us, on its own. Still, it’s worrying. The first budget is supposed to be when a government does the difficult but necessary things, leaving it more room to spread the goodies about closer to the next election. But the Trudeau government, wildly popular as it is, seems more intent on keeping the feel-good vibe going as long as possible. When, if at all, it intends to bring the party to an end is at this point very much a mystery.As the NDP government turns its eye toward the payday loan industry in Alberta, cabinet ministers say they’re concerned about some of the lenders’ practices.
The government is expected to soon launch a new round of consultations for an industry review, which began under the previous Tory government and is needed because the current payday loan regulations expire at the end of June 2016.
Service Alberta Minister Deron Bilous, whose department oversees the file, said an announcement is coming in the next few weeks.
While reluctant to provide details, Bilous acknowledged there are issues such as the rate of interest charged by the payday loan industry.
“It is a cause for concern and we want to make sure we’re protecting Albertans,” said Bilous, who is also the municipal affairs minister, in an interview at the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association convention last week. “I’m quite excited to look at different options.”
Payday loans are a short-term form of credit where people can borrow sums of money typically smaller than what traditional financial institutions would offer, with a limit of $1,500.
In Alberta, payday lenders are allowed to charge $23 per $100 borrowed, with the rate accrued over a short time. That amounts to a 600 per cent interest rate on a two-week $300 payday loan at the maximum rate of borrowing.
Before being elected in Calgary-Fort in the spring election, NDP Finance Minister Joe Ceci worked for Momentum Community Economic Development, an organization that has called for tighter rules on payday lenders.
In response to a question from an AUMA delegate, Ceci said government consultations around the industry would be a “face-to-face kind of thing, where people can tell the province how better to protect consumers so that we don’t wind up with the situations where people get stuck into the payday lenders and can’t get out.”
“There’s a lot of support in our caucus for doing something substantive,” he said, noting the government will also look at encouraging other lending options for low-income earners who are the primary clients of payday loan institutions.
Mike Brown, public policy co-ordinator with Momentum, said the organization wants to see the $23 charge in Alberta lowered to $16 or $17 to make it the lowest rate in the country.
Momentum is also calling on the government to institute new rules that would allow clients to repay loans in instalments rather than as a lump sum.
Brown noted the review of the payday loan industry is coinciding with tough economic times battering Alberta, triggered by a precipitous drop in oil prices.
“It is the working poor that get targeted by the businesses, so in the downturn you would expect more people to access payday loans, especially if they have lost their jobs or come into some economic insecurity,” he said Friday.
“So the downturn is really a boon for these types of businesses. They certainly cluster in low-income neighbourhoods in Calgary. So for a lot of people, that might be all they see for a lender.”
Officials with payday loan companies contacted by the Herald on Friday were not available for comment. The Canadian Payday Loan Association, which represents 20 licensed payday loan companies across the country, said it had no one available to speak on the provincial review.
But Stan Keyes, who until recently was president of the association, told the Herald in March that the changes advocated by Momentum would damage an industry that provides a service that banks and credit unions don’t.
“It certainly would make it even more difficult for the industry to provide the small-sum, short-term credit that’s in demand in Alberta,” maintained Keyes, who said payday lenders operate on slim margins.
The province isn’t the only level of government looking at the payday loan industry.
A bylaw that would require a minimum 400 metre separation between payday loan operations to avoid “clustering” is working its way toward Calgary city council.
Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot, one of the bylaw’s proponents, said that while the city would be able to impose rules on new operations, it needs more autonomy from the province to be able to easily change land use rules when an existing payday lender shuts down.
“It would certainly be beneficial for us that if one closes down we had the ability to say, ‘At this location, we won’t allow another one to go back in,’ ” he said. “There are some that have shut down and been replaced by another, a different company, just overnight.”
With files from Trevor Howell, Calgary Herald
jwood@calgaryherald.comThis is a story about a star running back at Georgia, which means that it is also, on some intrinsic level, a story about Herschel Walker. It’s impossible to avoid: In his three years, Walker so thoroughly embodied the ideal college workhorse that in the three-plus decades since his last carry in a red-and-black uniform, his shadow over the position has only grown. At some point, possibly before he even left campus, that shadow became a permanent feature of the landscape, looming over aspiring recruits and proven commodities alike: The best of the post-Walker tailbacks in Athens include two consensus All-Americans, six first-round draft picks, and a future NFL MVP, all of whom register in the imagination as mere footnotes by comparison. No broad-shouldered, blue-chip prospect has ever been touted as The Next Rodney Hampton. No fan in the cheap seats has ever been moved by a great run to exclaim, “That kid looks like Tim Worley out there!” No TV producer has ever booked Garrison Hearst or Knowshon Moreno to grant his blessing to the latest heir apparent.
So the bar for what qualifies as a star running back at Georgia is relative, to put it mildly. And before we get around to parsing the bona fides of the current headliner, sophomore Nick Chubb, it has to be said that exultant expectations for UGA rushers over the past few years have tended to produce a lot of false prophets.
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All of our CFB preview coverage! Consider the Bulldogs’ leading rushers since 2009, all of whom initially exhibited great promise, but none of whom enjoyed a satisfying ending. Washaun Ealey, the team’s leading rusher in 2009 and 2010, was suspended in early 2011 and subsequently transferred. Caleb King, perhaps the first “Next Herschel?” candidate of the YouTube era, was ruled academically ineligible after two years of splitting carries with Ealey. Isaiah Crowell, the most coveted back in the 2011 recruiting class, was voted SEC Freshman of the Year that fall, then booted from the team the following summer. Even Todd Gurley, a legitimately Walker-esque specimen who might have been the most unstoppable player in the nation in 2014, was railroaded by a midseason NCAA suspension, then saw his college career cut short by a torn ACL in his first game back; for all the (well-deserved) awe his talent inspired, Gurley ultimately logged too few carries to top the 1,000-yard rushing mark in either of his final two seasons. Meanwhile, his one-time running mate, Keith Marshall, who supplied the only slightly less heralded half of the “Gurshall” tandem when both were feted as freshman phenoms in 2012, has been a nonentity the past two years because of a succession of injuries.
Call it a coincidence, call it a curse: Either way, that’s an astonishing amount of potential at one position that, even when it burned brightly for a while, ultimately failed to come to its full fruition. Given the prevailing attitude toward Georgia lately as a perennial underachiever among SEC heavies — this year marks a decade since the Bulldogs’ last conference title, a span that has seen SEC rivals Alabama, Auburn, LSU, and Florida claim seven national championships between them — it might also serve as a microcosm for the trajectory of Mark Richt’s program as a whole.
Which brings us to Chubb, who is (bless his heart) not just the newest model off the assembly line of hyped UGA backs, but arguably better positioned than any of his ill-fated predecessors to make good on that promise over the course of a full three- or four-year college career. He has the pedigree, having arrived last summer with five-star billing in one of the most loaded running back classes in recent memory. He has the production, having already matched Hearst for the most rushing yards in a single season (1,547) by any Georgia player who isn’t Walker, and he did it despite playing sparsely in the first five games while still serving as Gurley’s backup; extrapolated over a 13-game schedule, Chubb’s output in the final eight games (163 yards per game on 7.0 per carry) would amount to well over 2,100 yards over a full season, enough to surpass Walker’s SEC record of 1,891 yards in 1981 with room to spare. Chubb’s biggest games (202 yards against Arkansas, 266 against Louisville) both came at the expense of a top-20 run defense according to Football Outsiders’ S&P+ rating. He has the respect of opposing coaches, who made him a first-team All-SEC pick as a true freshman. He has prototypical size (5-foot-10, 220 pounds), breakaway speed (12 runs covering at least 30 yards, most in the SEC), and a hard-charging running style that allows him to barrel through and bounce off would-be tacklers like a ram running downhill. This year, he’ll also have the benefit of running behind four returning starters on the offensive line who have combined for 78 career starts.
Forgive Georgia fans if, at this point, they instinctively find themselves bracing for the other shoe to drop. But so far with Chubb, there’s nothing not to like: He was durable as a freshman, produced in every game after cracking the starting rotation, and has shown no inclination toward the kind of extracurricular habits that sunk Ealey and Crowell. “The thing about Nick that I like is he’s a very humble kid,” Richt says. “Even going through the recruiting process, it wasn’t a big dog-and-pony show. He committed, he was solid, he didn’t take any visits anywhere else. He didn’t have any drama added to it. That’s just how he likes to go about his business.”
In fact, assuming he stays healthy, the most obvious barrier to Chubb’s ascension into the VIP section of great Georgia backs will have nothing to do with his own limitations — he exhibited virtually none last year aside from a pair of lost fumbles in losses to Florida and Georgia Tech, the latter coming as he was attempting to punch the ball across the goal line — and everything to do with (a) How large of a role he’ll continue to play in the Bulldogs’ ground game, and (b) How far the ground game as a whole is able to carry the offense in lieu of a dynamic passing attack.
On the first front, although Chubb is obviously the most proven back on hand, the workload he carried over the second half of 2014 may be difficult to sustain with the presence of a healthy Marshall and Sony Michel in the same rotation. Marshall, who took a medical redshirt last year, is reportedly as healthy entering preseason camp as he’s been since he arrived on campus three years ago, when he briefly looked like the next big thing; Michel, who actually boasted slightly higher marks from recruitniks than Chubb, expects to be full speed after being slowed by shoulder and ankle injuries as a true freshman. And it’s no secret that, given the option, Richt has always preferred to spread the wealth:
There are some impressive names on that list, but none of them earned enough touches to mount the kind of serious Heisman campaign many are projecting for Chubb; the only one to shoulder as many as 20 carries per game in a season was Gurley, in 2014, and that was only over roughly half of that season. Even when their workhorse was available, the UGA coaches’ reluctance to put too much of the offense on Gurley’s shoulders was at times maddening to fans, and Chubb’s heavy workload after Gurley left the lineup was often a matter of sheer necessity.
“I don’t think it’s wise to give anybody the ball 35 times a game, especially in our league,” Richt said, nodding to a barrier Chubb exceeded only once last year (38 carries against Missouri) but with which he also flirted in those 200-yard efforts against Arkansas (30 carries) and Louisville (33). “There were times when we did that with Chubb last year, but a lot of that had to do with injuries and the suspension [to Gurley]. I think it’s important to spread it out a little bit and not wear one guy down into a nub. That’s one reason great backs tend to want to be around other great backs.”
That may be the case, but even if Chubb and his high-ceiling cohorts are all they’re cracked up to be, the broader question still remains: In an era of efficient, up-tempo offenses and rapidly accelerating scoreboards, is it still possible for a great back, or a group of great backs, to serve as the centerpiece for a championship? On the one hand, college football is not yet “a passing league” in the sense that the NFL is: Although college offenses throw more often than in the past, they still tend to run more than they throw, and ground games in general are as productive as ever. Unlike in the pros, where individual backs have been steadily devalued as short-lived, situational cogs, the every-down workhorse remains a prized commodity in the college game. Still, it’s also been clear for a while that the days of college offenses hitching their wagons to a transcendent talent like Walker or Gurley or Chubb and riding him to a title are long gone unless that type of back is accompanied by a quarterback who can generate some semblance of balance.
Last year, armed with arguably the two best running backs in the SEC, Georgia was one of the most run-oriented offenses in the league and the most productive in terms of both rushing yards per game (257.9) and per carry (6.0). But opposing defenses never had much reason to fear senior quarterback Hutson Mason, a first-year starter, or any of his receivers, and the final result was an invitation to the Belk Bowl. This year, with a new, yet-to-be determined starter behind center and no proven targets behind the oft-injured Malcolm Mitchell, the inclination to lean more heavily on the loaded backfield and keep the quarterback out of trouble is likely to be even greater. Regardless of the final numbers, if under those circumstances Chubb is able to uphold his end of the bargain as the engine of a sustained title run, his place in the most exalted tier of Bulldog greats will be secure.The surge of illegal immigrant children continued unabated in November, pushing the Obama administration to announce emergency measures to try to handle a problem it thought it had solved earlier this year.
Two months into the new fiscal year, the number of unaccompanied minors jumping the border and getting caught is at an all-time high. So far, the U.S. Border Patrol has picked up over 10,500 — more than twice the number at the same point last year.
The number of families trying to cross also has surged, with more than 12,500 people caught — a 173 percent increase over last year. The family surge underscored the changing nature of the flow of migrants, with parents increasingly risking the journey with young children in tow, hoping to take advantage of what they believe are lenient deportation policies under President Obama.
Migration usually surges in the spring then drops in the summer and remains low through the winter. This year has defied that trend, leaving the Obama administration scrambling to rejuvenate its capacity to handle a problem that Homeland Security officials hoped was behind them.
“We continue to aggressively work to secure our borders, address underlying causes and deter future increases in unauthorized migration, while ensuring that those with legitimate humanitarian claims are afforded the opportunity to seek protection,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement.
The surge of Central American women and children began several years ago and peaked in May and June last year, when more than 20,000 were caught at the U.S.-Mexico border every month. By the end of last year, the numbers had dropped precipitously and Homeland Security officials were optimistic that they had solved the problem.
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Numbers have climbed steadily this year, however, and November’s 5,615 illegal immigrant children caught at the border is the highest monthly total since June 2014, when some 10,508 were apprehended.
Among families, the 6,476 people apprehended in November — mostly women with young children — was the most since July 2014, when 7,436 were caught.
The vast majority of unaccompanied children and families come from three Central American countries: El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.
Under Obama administration policy, illegal immigrant children from countries other than Mexico or Canada cannot be sent home quickly. Instead, they must be processed and sent to live in juvenile homes or with sponsors, awaiting court dates that often don’t come for years.
Meanwhile, a federal judge ordered this summer that the women and children be processed quickly and released into the U.S. to await their court dates.
Both policies serve to entice those in Central America to make the journey, believing they can earn a place in the shadows.
“What the new arrivals are telling the Border Patrol is that they came because they knew they would be allowed to stay,” Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies, told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. “If we want to change that incentive, the policy has to change.”
Sen. Thomas R. Carper, Delaware Democrat, released a report Tuesday saying the U.S. government needs to do more to help Central American countries.
“Shamefully, we’ve focused more on ways to keep migrants out of our country rather than helping them address the misery in their homelands, misery we’ve unfortunately helped create through our appetite for illegal drugs,” he said in the report.
He said the U.S. does need to figure out the “pull” factors that draw in illegal immigrants but that cannot succeed without addressing the “push” factors.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.It’s not often that a cable series gets renewed for a Season 2 before it even premieres, but such was the case last fall for Legends of Chamberlain Heights, a half-hour animated series on Comedy Central that chronicles the entirely inappropriate exploits of Grover, Milk, and Jamal, three benchwarmers on Chamberlain Heights High’s basketball team. The show was created and is voiced by former UCLA hoopers Josiah Johnson and Quinn Hawking, both 35, who lunched with SI a few days before their season premiere (Sun. June 18, 11:30 ET) to discuss Legends’ rise, and the decline in their own playing time as collegians.
Sports Illustrated: Where did these three characters come from?
Josiah Johnson: There’s a little of all of us in these guys. We sat the bench at UCLA, me and Quinn and our other buddy, Ike Williams. Every game we’d just be hanging out, talking s---, looking at cheerleaders, trying to occupy ourselves for those two or three hours.
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SI: Why does Legends connect with people?
Quinn Hawking: All of us, at some point, have been in the background. People know what it feels like to be an intern a P.A., a backup … Very few people live life as the star player. Our characters don’t even play, but in their own minds they think they’re legends.
SI: Does that describe your playing careers? [Johnson and Hawking played at UCLA from 2001 to ‘05.]
QH: I think I had 7 points in my career. I hit a three against [Cal State] Long Beach my freshman year.
JJ: I think I dimed you [recorded an assist] that play.
QH: At that point I still had – I don’t wanna say dreams, but I felt like in another year or two I’d be ready to play. That was when [Steve] Lavin was the coach.
SI: Did you end up playing any important minutes?
QH: No. There was more hope when Lavin was there, but when Coach [Ben] Howland came in – it wasn’t like you were wasting your time, but you knew you weren’t going to see any minutes. So you had to ask yourself: How are we going to spend this next year? We just decided to live it up as much as possible. That meant that if we went on a road trip, we weren’t just gonna stay in our hotel room all night.
SI: What can viewers expect in Season 2?
JJ: Being funny is the priority, but we also deal with social issues like gentrification, racial appropriation … We have an episode where the guys get thrown in jail. They have to survive jail, so they get a mentor. O.J. Simpson.
SI: Naturally. You two just missed playing with Russell Westbrook, is that right?
QH: He came in two years after we finished.
JJ: He lived at Quinn’s house in the summertime, stayed on their couch.
QH: I shared an apartment with [UCLA center] Lorenzo Mata. [Mata] was a freshman our senior year… He and Westbrook became friends. Russell used to crash at our place, and he went to the gym every day. That guy is a true gym rat. Everything that he’s doing now is a result of his work ethic. He had this old car – I don’t even know what kind it was. He had to pour water in the radiator every time he started it.
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SI: Was there any hint back then that he was going to become the player he is today?
QH: No, I just remember Mata came home from their first practice, freshman year, he was like, Dude, we’ve got this new guy, Russell, he’s unbelievable. But Russell didn’t even start. He didn’t start his sophomore year either.
JJ: They had Darren Collison at point guard.
QH: Then Russ becomes the fourth overall pick [in the ’08 NBA draft].
JJ: We were living in a house in Westwood at that time. Russell and [Kevin] Love would come through and hang out and play foosball. A couple months later they’re the fourth and fifth picks in the draft. We were like, ‘You guys are about to be $100 million, bruh, and you don’t even realize it.’
SI: When did you realize your show was going to make it?
JJ: In November ‘09, at our first meeting. We went and pitched Comedy Central and you could just tell there was an energy in the room. We looked at each other like, ‘Yo, we’re gonna do this s---.’
SI: Not bad for a couple of scrubs.
QH: The crowd loves it when the guys at the end of the bench get in the game. But as a player, when you’ve been sitting there for two hours, you’re not really in a position to succeed. (laughs) And there’s added pressure because everyone wants you to score so you can make their day.
JJ: It’s not fun, bro. (laughs)
QH: And it felt weird after games, signing autographs for kids—
JJ: (laughs) Yeah, like, ‘Are you sure?’
QH: ‘Do you really want this?’
SI: Who were your favorite teammates?
JJ: People can say what they want about Matt Barnes, but I remember when he was playing for the Long Beach Jam in the ABA. He carved a place for himself in the NBA and he has worked for every minute, every dollar he’s earned.
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SI: Just don’t mess with his ex-wife.
JJ: (laughs) We actually have an episode about that this season. The coach at the high school gets fired so Derek Fisher takes over. But Fisher is just there to [meet] chicks, so the guys call Matt Barnes during the middle of the game and he drops the phone and comes to the rescue.
QH: That might be our first episode of the new season. We submitted that to the network as our premiere episode.
SI: Naturally. Was there a point last fall when you realized the show was blowing up?
QH: I still feel like it’s a new show. This is a strange time right now, with people disconnecting from cable and everything. I still feel like we’re under the radar.
JJ: It was big when Shaq tweeted about the show in November … We got love from Adoree Jackson. Talib Kweli is a fan. Rick Ross followed us on Twitter. I was like, ‘Damn, Rick Ross!’
SI: Do your former coaches watch?
QH: We’re still close with Coach Lavin. He came to our premiere party. I remember we were hanging out afterward and I said, ‘Thank God I wasn’t good at basketball.’Sammarinese euro coins feature separate designs for every coin. All the coins are inscribed with the words "San Marino" and the twelve stars of the EU. The Sammarinese euro coins are minted by Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato (IPZS), in Rome, Italy.
First Sammarinese euro design (2002-2016) [ edit ]
For images of the common side and a detailed description of the coins, see euro coins.
Second Sanmarinese euro design (2017-) [ edit ]
Depiction of Sammarinese euro coinage | Obverse side € 0.01 € 0.02 € 0.05 The Coat of arms of the Republic of San Marino. San Marino's city gate. Church of Saint Quirinus. € 0.10 € 0.20 € 0.50 Chiesa di San Francesco (Church of Saint Francis). Mount Titano (Monte Titano) and the three towers. Detail from the portrait of San Marino by late 19th century artist Emilio Retrosi. € 1.00 € 2.00 € 2 Coin Edge for a total of 12 stars La Cesta, the second tower from a group of towers located on the three peaks of Mount Titano (Monte Titano) in the city of San Marino, the capital of the Republic. Detail from the painting The Portrait of San Marino by Giovanni Battista Urbinelli.
Circulating mintage quantities [ edit ]
The following table shows the mintage quantity for all San Marino euro coins, per denomination, per year.[1]
Face Value €0,01 €0,02 €0,05 €0,10 €0,20 €0,50 €1,00 €2,00 2002 115 000 115 000 115 000 115 000 302 400 230 400 360 800 255 760 2003 70 000 70 000 70 000 70 000 430 000 415 800 70 000 70 000 2004 1 570 000 1 465 000 1 070 000 250 000 70 000 70 000 250 000 70 000 2005 70 000 210 000 70 000 70 000 370 000 249 712 70 000 210 000 2006 2 800 000 2 800 000 2 950 000 70 000 70 000 413 880 220 000 190 000 2007 70 000 70 000 70 000 220 000 220 000 390 000 70 000 220 000 2008 63 000 63 000 63 000 63 000 1 231 360 1 413 000 63 000 63 000 2009 63 000 63 000 63 000 63 000 63 000 63 000 1 159 672 63 000 2010 56 600 56 600 56 600 186 600 56 600 56 600 1 052 734 186 600 2011 55 500 55 500 55 500 55 500 55 500 55 500 55 500 717 431 2012 85 000 85 000 85 000 85 000 85 000 125 000 95 000 712 249 2013 50 000 50 000 50 000 90 000 170 000 182 000 506 205 642 624 2014 39 000 39 000 39 000 39 000 39 000 762 275 1 556 500 39 000 2015 34 400 34 400 |
prospectus.
Alibaba declined comment on when DingTalk will be fully launched or how it will generate revenue. — ReutersTracy Richard Irving Ulrich (born January 20, 1966), known professionally as Tracii Guns,[1] is an American musician best known as the founder of glam metal group L.A. Guns,[1] as well as the supergroups Brides of Destruction and Contraband. He was also a founding member of Guns N' Roses, but left shortly afterwards and was replaced by guitarist Slash.[1]
Early life [ edit ]
Ulrich was born to non-observant Jewish parents. Ulrich's uncle Ron taught him how to play guitar at a young age.
Ulrich attended Fairfax High in Los Angeles. While there, he met future L.A. Guns members Robert Gardner and Michael Jagosz. The three formed a band called Pyrrhus with bassist Dani Tull.[2][3] Ulrich (now going by Tracii Guns), Gardner, and Jagosz recruited Danish bassist Ole Beich for their new band in 1983, officially forming L.A. Guns.[4]
Ulrich cites Johnny Thunders, Randy Rhoads, Eddie Van Halen, Mick Jagger, Michael Schenker, Tony Iommi, and Jimmy Page as his influences.
Biography [ edit ]
First stint with L.A. Guns and Guns N' Roses (1983-1985) [ edit ]
L.A. Guns was formed by Guns in 1983, initially with singer Mike Jagosz, bassist Ole Beich, and drummer Rob Gardner. This lineup recorded the EP Collector's Edition No. 1 which would be the only release from the band with its original lineup.[5][6] After Jagosz was arrested in a bar fight, Bill Bailey (later known as Axl Rose) joined the band as singer.[7][8][9] Bailey had previously fronted Hollywood Rose, backed by Izzy Stradlin and Chris Weber. Rose's stint in the band was short-lived, as Jagosz returned weeks later. Guns joined a newly reunited Hollywood Rose (alongside Rose, Stradlin, Gardner, and Steve Darrow) for a 1985 New Years show. Shortly afterwards, L.A. Guns and Hollywood Rose merged bands to become Guns N' Roses, with the lineup consisting of Guns, Rose, Stradlin, Gardner, and Beich. Guns, Beich, and Gardner would exit Guns N' Roses just two months into the new band, with Guns leaving after an argument with Rose, claiming "It just wasn't fun anymore."[10] Guns was replaced by Slash, while Gardner and Beich were replaced by Steven Adler and Duff McKagan respectively, forming the "classic lineup" of Guns N' Roses.
Reformation of L.A. Guns (1985-2002) [ edit ]
Later in 1985, Guns and singer Paul Black reformed L.A. Guns, recruiting former Dogs D'Amour singer Robert Stoddard to be the new guitarist with the group, which was rounded out by Nickey "Beat" Alexander on drums and Mick Cripps on bass.[11] The group's lineup would change with Black being replaced by Girl frontman Phil Lewis, bassist Cripps switching to guitar, replacing Stoddard, and former Faster Pussycat bassist Kelly Nickels joining the group. L.A. Guns recorded their eponymous first album that was released in 1988 on Vertigo Records, charting at number 50 on the Billboard 200. On the first album's supporting tour, Alexander was replaced by former W.A.S.P. drummer Steve Riley with the lineup being regarded as the Classic lineup of L.A. Guns. This lineup remained until 1992. In 1989, they released their second album Cocked & Loaded, which charted higher on the Billboard 200 at number 38.[12] During 1991, the band released their third album Hollywood Vampires on Polydor Records. In 1995 they released their fourth album Vicious Circle, drummer Michael "Bones" Gershima played on parts of this recording as this was around the time Phil Lewis fired drummer Steve Riley in January 1992 after touring with Skid Row in support of Hollywood Vampires. Riley later returned to the band for the successful Vicious Circle club tour. After this, L.A. Guns were dropped from Polygram (Vertigo/Polydor) Records. Phil Lewis and Mick Cripps then left the band.[13]
July 1995 saw Guns and Steve Riley recruit vocalist Chris Van Dahl and guitarist Johnny Crypt (ex-Ripper, aka Johnny Crystal) after seeing them perform with their band Boneyard. Six months into recording sessions, Kelly Nickels left the band and Johnny switched to the bass. In 1996, the new L.A. Guns released their fifth record, titled American Hardcore. They toured throughout 1996 and into 1997 where Tracii let Chris go and was replaced by singer Ralph Saenz. Tracii, Steve, Johnny, and Ralph toured for the remainder of '97 and in early '98 released the six song EP Wasted. Halfway through the band's 1998 Rock Never Stops tour, Ralph quit to form his own band, forcing the band to find a new singer. Joe Lesté from Bang Tango and Jizzy Pearl from Love/Hate were considered as candidates, with Pearl getting the job. They toured in late 1998 and early 1999 and released Shrinking Violet, produced by former Guns N' Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke. This release was followed shortly by Crypt's departure.
In September 1999, the classic lineup of Tracii Guns, Steve Riley, Phil Lewis, Kelly Nickels, and Mick Cripps prepared to reunite. L.A. Guns set out on the reunion tour in October 1999 and recorded a live album in their hometown of Hollywood, enlisting Gilby Clarke as producer. The album, named Live: A Night on the Strip, was released the following year. After the reunion, Mick and Kelly couldn't commit to the summer 2000 tour, so they were replaced by guitarist Brent Muscat and bassist Muddy Stardust, respectively. Ratt and L.A. Guns teamed up with Warrant for a remainder-of-the-summer tour, which L.A. Guns dropped off in August due to booking problems. Mick Cripps again rejoined the band briefly in late 2000 to record an album with the band, entitled Man in the Moon, which was released on Spitfire Records in April 2001. L.A. Guns released the album Waking the Dead, the last album to feature Tracii Guns, in August, 2002, produced by Andy Johns, to mainly positive reviews from critics and fans.[14] The future of L.A. Guns was in doubt until both Steve Riley and Phil Lewis told the Hairball John Radio Show that the band would continue despite Tracii Guns' involvement in Brides of Destruction.
Guns left the band in October 2002.[15]
Third Stint with L.A. Guns (2005-2013) [ edit ]
In 2006, Guns announced he was to perform a 'Best Of" tour with former L.A. Guns members Paul Black on vocals, Nickey Alexander on drums and former Brides live member Jeremy Guns rounding up the lineup on bass following a brief stint with Quiet Riot.[16][17] With The Tracii Guns Band touring, this put Brides of Destruction on indefinite hiatus in 2006. Eventually The Tracii Guns Bands would become the second L.A. Guns. Drummer Chad Stewart eventually joined the group replacing Nickey Alexander. On March 4, 2008, Tracii Guns' L.A. Guns was announced as one of the acts of the second Rocklahoma festival.
In 2008, Tracii Guns' L.A. Guns signed a deal with Alexis Records and began working on material for a new album with producer Steve Thompson. Singer Marty Casey, of Lovehammers, was asked to co-write some songs with the band by bassist Jeremy Guns. Eventually Paul Black left the group and Marty was asked to replace him. They finished recording the album and set a release date for March 2009.[18] The group toured through 2008 and early 2009 and also recorded a pilot for VH1. While waiting for a release date to be set for the new album, as well as deciding on a new name for the band, Marty Casey returned to Lovehammers releasing new album Heavy Crown. Jizzy Pearl returned to front L.A. Guns for a summer tour while guitarist Alec Bauer departed the band.[19]
After a long-running dispute with Phil Lewis (Lewis had been touring as "Phil Lewis's L.A. Guns") over the name to the group disbanded his version of L.A. Guns in July 2012.[20]
Fourth Stint with L.A. Guns (2016-present) [ edit ]
In the summer of 2016, Guns teamed up with Phil Lewis for the first time in 14 years for a handful of shows under the name "L.A. Guns' Phil Lewis + Tracii Guns".[21] Under the "L.A. Guns" name, Guns and Lewis released a new album The Missing Peace on October 13, 2017.[22]
Brides of Destruction (2002–2005) [ edit ]
Despite signing a deal Spitfire Records, Tracii Guns left L.A. Guns during the recording of a new album,[23] to form Brides of Destruction with Nikki Sixx, initially with the name Cockstar, after Mötley Crüe went on hiatus. After a number of changes, the lineup was rounded off with singer London LeGrand and drummer Scot Coogan. They released Here Come The Brides, which charted at number 92 on the Billboard 200, in 2004[24] and was the first album featuring Guns to chart since Hollywood Vampires in 1991. Nikki Sixx would leave the group in October 2004. Initially Guns was to form a new band with the remaining Brides members and also offered his services to Axl Rose in a bid to join Guns N' Roses.[25] Eventually he continued with the Brides and Scott Sorry formerly of Amen was chosen as Sixx's replacement. Ginger of The Wildhearts was added as the band's second guitarist. The band then started writing for what would become Runaway Brides but soon after, Ginger departed the Brides.[26] The follow-up to Here Come the Brides, Runaway Brides, was produced by Andy Johns who had previously worked with Guns on the L.A. Guns album Waking the Dead. Three of the songs of the album were co-written by Nikki Sixx, written during the "Here Come the Bride" sessions with former guitarist Ginger also contributing writing on 3 tracks prior to leaving. The album saw a change in a style with it leaning towards a heavy metal sound in contrast with the hard rock/post-grunge sound of the first album. "Dimes in Heaven" was written as a tribute to recently deceased Pantera and Damageplan guitarist Dimebag Darrell.[27] After signing a new deal with Shrapnel Records, the album was released in Europe on September 13 and on September 27 in the US.[28][29] A video was shot for "White Trash" but both the album and the single failed to chart. With the formation of The Tracii Guns Band, later the second L.A. Guns, the Brides were put on indefinite hiatus.
Tracii Guns' League of Gentlemen (2012–present) [ edit ]
Guns live in 2007
In 2012, Guns formed a blues-rock band called "Tracii Guns' League of Gentlemen" with frontman Scott Foster Harris, a one-time member of the L.A. Guns.[30] Harris, a native Texan, provides vocals for the League.[31] Other musicians in the band bass player Craig "Patches" McCloskey, drummer Doni Gray (L.A. Guns, Burning Tree), and keyboardist John Bird.[32] The band's music is inspired by British and American psychedelic blues and rock music from the 1960s and 1970s.
In June 2013, the band released their debut album, The First Record through Shrapnel Records. In August 2014, The Second Record was released, again with Shrapnel Records.[32]
Other work [ edit ]
Contraband was a short-lived supergroup/side project that included vocalist Richard Black, of Shark Island, guitarist Michael Schenker, of Scorpions, UFO and Michael Schenker Group, bassist Share Pedersen, of Vixen, drummer Bobby Blotzer, of Ratt, and Guns taking up the second guitar role. They released one self-titled album in 1991 which received lukewarm reviews. The album was a commercial failure and the band disbanded shortly after, while touring with Ratt.[33]
In 1999, Guns played a show in Hollywood, California with former Guns N' Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke, who produced the L.A. Guns album Shrinking Violet in the same year, as part of his solo band with the performance being released the same year as 99 Live. In 2002, Tracii contributed guitars on the Clarke's solo album Swag,[34] with some of these tracks appearing on the 2007 compilation album Gilby Clarke.[35] Also in 1999, Tracii released his debut album Killing Machine, which was later re-released in 2004 with the new title of All Eyes are Watchin'.
Guns was also in Poison for a short time in early 2000, when C.C. DeVille departed the band for a month over a dispute.[1] Guns joined Quiet Riot in December 2005, a move that was to be short lived after he parted ways less than a month later.[16][17]
In 2004, Guns featured on the album The Roots of Guns N' Roses, the album featuring the original demos by Hollywood Rose, on tracks remixed by Gilby Clarke.[36]
In 2007, Guns guested on the debut album Dopesnake by Hollywood Roses along with Mick Taylor formerly of The Rolling Stones, Phil Lewis and Paul Black both also of L.A. Guns, Gilby Clarke formerly of Guns N' Roses and Rock Star Supernova, Fred Coury of Cinderella and formerly of London, Teddy Andreadis, Pat Travers and Hollywood Rose founder Chris Weber.[37]
In October 2008, Steven Adler had formed a new supergroup with Guns called Guns of Destruction. The band's lineup rounded up by Adler's Appetite and Enuff Z'Nuff bassist Chip Z'nuff and singer Eric Dover of Sextus and formerly of Jellyfish and Slash's Snakepit. They were to make their live debut at the Key Club in Hollywood on November, 19 with "very special guests" in attendance.[38] However the group was to be short lived and Dover soon announced that he was not involved in the project.[39]
After performing together at the "Giving 2010" benefit event on May 3, 2010, Guns formed the cover band "Carnival of Dogs" with Matt Sorum (Velvet Revolver, Camp Freddy, formerly of Guns N' Roses and The Cult), Franky Perez (Solo, Scars on Broadway, DKFXP, Apocalyptica) and Phil Soussan (formerly of Ozzy Osbourne, Billy Idol and Vince Neil).[40] G[41]
In 2012, Guns worked with Italian producer Pietro Foresti on the song "America Dreaming" with Italian band J27.[42]
In 2013, Guns joined the band of the production Raiding the Rock Vault at the Las Vegas Hotel and Casino.[43]
In 2014 Guns formed the Devil City Angels, featuring Brandon Gibbs (Cheap Thrills) vocals, Ricki Rocket (Poison) drums & Eric Brittingham (Cinderella) Bass. The self-titled debut album was officially released September 11, 2015.[44]
Discography [ edit ]
Guns in 2008.
Solo [ edit ]
Killing Machine (1998) re-released in 2004 as All Eyes are Watchin '
With L.A. Guns [ edit ]
With Contraband [ edit ]
Contraband (1991)
With Gilby Clarke [ edit ]
99 Live (1999)
(1999) Swag (2002)
(2002) Welcome to the Jungle: A Rock Tribute to Guns N' Roses (2002)
With Brides of Destruction [ edit ]
With Devil City Angels [ edit ]
Guest credits [ edit ]
Year Album title Band Record label Credits 2004 The Roots of Guns N' Roses Hollywood Rose Cleopatra Records Guitar overdubs on Gilby Clarke remixes 2007 Dopesnake Hollywood Roses Not to be confused with Hollywood Rose Abstract Guitars on "Turbosheen" & "Come Down"Nike Roshe Run FB “Yeezy” – Nikestore Restock
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No longer do you have to hunt around on the secondary market for the Nike Roshe Run FB “Yeezy” pair and be satisfied with paying almost triple their retail price as a “decent deal”. That’s because the sneakers are coming back to Nikestore-this time with an official release date and all. This coveted Nike Roshe Run will be there on the morning of 12/28, so make sure you’re prepared if your collection is lacking this seminal NSW style. Continue reading for extra images and then remind yourself how much they’re currently fetching on auctions like this one from mystiktbrady12 on eBay.
Nike Roshe Run FB
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Price: $70A loyalist shot and critically wounded in Carrickfergus on Monday afternoon has been named locally as Geordie Gilmore Snr.
The attack took place in Pinewood Avenue around 2.15pm when up to five shots are reported to have been fired at the victim.
Heavily armed specialist police officers raided the house of a suspect not far from the scene later in the afternoon.
The murder attempt is being linked to a long-running paramilitary feud in the area.
Police have voiced concern that firearms have been discharged in a residential area during daylight hours when children were in the vicinity.
A serious assault on a doorman at the Royal Oak bar in the town on Saturday night has also been linked to the feud involving members of the local UDA and a rival group.
Writing on his Facebook page the day after the bar attack, Geordie Gilmore posted a message mocking claims he was involved.
The 44-year-old wrote: “Haha just heard I’m getting the blame for the oak last night and I’m arrested and in police custody..well I wasn’t there and I’m not arrested.”
His final post a short time later said: “The days of the UDA putting people out of Carrick are over.”
Several homes have been attacked in the Carrick and south east Antrim areas in recent years and a number of other violent incidents have been linked to the feud – including a 100-strong UDA-linked gang surrounding the shooting victim’s home in the Glenfield estate last July.
On Monday, PSNI Superintendent Darrin Jones said: “While the investigation is still at an early stage police are following significant lines of inquiry and I would appeal to anyone who has information about today’s attack to contact us.
“Firearms being discharged in a residential area, particularly during daylight hours when children are in the vicinity, is concerning. We need the community to give us the information needed so we can remove the dangerous individuals who carried out this attack from our streets and put them before a court of law.”
Supt Jones appealed for anyone with information to contact police on 101, or the Crimestoppers charity anonymously on 0800 555 111.
East Antrim DUP MP Sammy Wilson condemned the shooting, and the attack on the pub doorman, and said he feared the incidents signified “a serious escalation in an intra paramilitary dispute”.
He said: “As a result fear has been brought back into communities and there is a real danger of people with no association with this long-running dispute being caught up in the crossfire and the violence.
“In the meantime considerable police resources are again being absorbed to deal with this violence and the communities in which this is happening are experiencing all the disruption of heavy security presence.”
Mr Wilson added: “There is little point in appealing to those involved to cease their activities. They have shown no regard for the impact of their activities in the past but I would hope that the law would be enforced vigorously in order to bring those involved to justice.”
On Monday night a spokeswoman for the Belfast Health Trust said the victim was “critically ill” in the RVH.Conservative and moderate economists agree with Paul Krugman that an economic slump is likely to continue. | REUTERS Economics vs. politics on deficit
There was an astonishing harmonic convergence Tuesday at a Washington conference on the nation’s economic and fiscal future.
Martin Feldstein, Ronald Reagan’s former chief economist, Paul Krugman of The New York Times and Princeton University and Jan Hatzius, chief economist of Goldman Sachs, all called for far more aggressive economic intervention.
Story Continued Below
All three, representing the left, right and center of their profession, agreed that a deep economic slump is likely to continue indefinitely, in the absence of a much larger stimulus program and more short-run deficit spending than any mainstream politician is currently proposing.
In my 40 years covering economics and finance, I’ve never seen a more alarming disconnect between the economic and the political — or higher stakes.
These unlikely viewpoints on the economy were brought together by four think tanks — Demos, the Economic Policy Institute, The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Century Foundation — seeking to counter what has become Washington conventional wisdom on the need for deficit reduction.
Krugman, asked when the economy would return to full employment, replied, “Basically never” — unless we get a huge stimulus comparable to the most recent “recovery to full employment” from a global financial crisis “known as World War II.”
No surprise there. But Feldstein quickly agreed. According to the former Reagan adviser, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 spending tried to fill a “GDP gap” of about $1 trillion a year with about $800 billion spread over at least three years. “So we never got liftoff. We never got a recovery,” Feldstein said.
“The various temporary measures that we had,” Feldstein added, “the Cash for Clunkers, the first-time homebuyers [credit] — they’re finished.”
Feldstein joined Krugman in calling for more stimulus, including a far more aggressive program of mortgage relief to offset the drag of nearly one in three homeowners having a mortgage worth more than the value of the house. That, warned Feldstein, deepens the slump.
On the other hand, he said, “if housing prices are beginning to go up, consumers are going to have more confidence. They’re going to spend more.”GOODYEAR, Ariz. -- Homer Bailey's first spring training start helped his bid for a spot in Cincinnati's rotation.
The former first-round draft pick allowed only an infield single over two innings during the Reds' 7-6 victory against the Chicago White Sox on Wednesday. Bailey is one of at least three pitchers competing for the last two slots in the rotation behind Edinson Volquez, Bronson Arroyo and Johnny Cueto.
"He's shown flashes of brilliance," manager Dusty Baker said. "I think he's going to be a big winner."
Shoulder inflammation cost Bailey a couple of months last season. He's eager to show that he's healthy and worthy of keeping a job with the NL Central champions.
"You're always trying to improve," Bailey said. "I think we're all excited about starting the season. We know what it takes to make the playoffs. We feel like we have unfinished business."
Chicago also got a solid performance from its starter, Edwin Jackson, who yielded two walks in two scoreless innings. Jackson threw a no-hitter for Arizona on June 25, but later struggled and was traded to the White Sox after putting up a 5.16 ERA and 6-10 record.
Jackson filled Jake Peavy's spot in the rotation after the former ace underwent season-ending surgery. Jackson allowed only three runs in his first four starts for Chicago and went 4-2 with a 3.24 ERA.
"I'm in a different role now," he said. "In previous years, I had to fight for a position. Now I can throw strikes and get back into the groove of things."
White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen was happy with the performance.
"He threw strikes and that's the main thing," Guillen said.
Fred Lewis singled home the first run of the game and Jeremy Hermida hit a two-run homer off Kyle Cofield in the Reds' five-run fifth. They're competing for a share of the job in left field.
Devin Mesoraco's solo homer in the eighth put the Reds ahead. Mesoraco, a 22-year-old catcher who was the club's top draft pick in June 2007, hit his first homer off Freddy Dolsi.
Game notes
Reds catcher Ramon Hernandez passed his test for U.S. citizenship. The Venezuelan will take the oath soon to make it official.... The White Sox and Arizona Diamondbacks will play a charity game in Tucson on March 7. The game will benefit the Christina Taylor Green Memorial Fund. Green, the 9-year-old granddaughter of former major league manager Dallas Green, was killed by the gunman who targeted U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in January.SPANISH FORK — Police say parents of a 14-year-old son who allowed the boy to smoke marijuana have been arrested at their home.
Edwin Lee Steward and Valerie Steward, both 37, were booked into Utah County jail Tuesday for investigation of felony child endangerment and misdemeanor charges of contributing to delinquency of a minor, marijuana possession and drug paraphernalia possession.
The couple told police they allow their son to smoke a joint or two at night if he goes to class and makes good grades, said Utah County Sheriff's Sgt. Spencer Cannon. The parents also said they left marijuana around the home, Cannon said, explaining they used the drug to alleviate medical issues and believed it helped their son focus in school.
Valerie Steward was convicted in 2015 of drug possession and knowingly producing, dispensing or manufacturing a controlled substance.
Spanish Fork police and the Utah County sheriff's deputies served a search warrant at the home on Tuesday after months of investigating drug activity there, the agencies said in a Thursday prepared statement.
"You could smell the immediate strong odor of marijuana" that night, Cannon said.
Fifteen officers conducting the raid found about two ounces of marijuana, pipes and herb grinders, as well as a handgun and three rifles, Cannon said.
Another man in the home at the time of the raid, Wesley Morse Vivian, 35, was the owner of the firearms, officers said, and was booked into jail on suspicion of felony firearm possession by a restricted person, and misdemeanor drug possession. He is believed to be a friend of the couple.
It was not immediately clear if the suspects had attorneys as of Thursday. Cannon said they bonded out of jail and the county attorney was weighing charges.
×
PhotosAfter officially becoming the Clippers’ new owner Tuesday, Steve Ballmer sent a letter to Clipper fans.
Here it is:
August 12, 2014
To the Clippers Family –
You may now have heard that this morning I officially became the owner of your Los Angeles Clippers. So as my first official communication, let me say thank you for continuing to support the Clipper organization. We are now looking forward to an exciting new season and I can’t wait to experience the opening tip off with you.
Today marks the beginning of a new era in the life of our franchise. It also is the culmination of a dream that I have harbored for many years. To Coach Rivers, to our fantastic players, and most importantly to you, the dedicated fans that make this all possible, I pledge this: I will be hard core in my commitment to give the team the support it needs to be its best on and off the court. And I will do whatever is necessary to provide you, your family and friends with the best game-night experience in the NBA.
The Clippers franchise is a true public trust, and my goal is that the Clippers will play an ever-increasing role in the life of our community. We will achieve this goal the same way we will succeed on the court: By waking up every day and figuring out how we can be better – how we can do more – how we can ensure that the Clippers organization is not only winning on the court but also making a real difference in the community.
That is the challenge I set not only for myself but the entire Clippers organization.
Please join me for our Fan Festival, on Monday, August 18th at the STAPLES Center at 12:30 p.m. to celebrate what promises to be a bright future!
Sincerely,
Steve A. BallmerWinding down the days until release of the Rancorsoft Contact Scraper application. It’s been many months since the first iteration of the app, which was originally birthed as a Sikuli browser automation app, and then re-engineered in to a full fledged Python/Kivy UI. We thought it was a good time to compile and share some lessons learned from developing the app, aimed primarily at fellow Python programmers.
Without further ado, I present to you a short list of some of the things we have learned:
1. Know which library functions are asynchronous
Asynchronous program flows can be hard to debug (especially if you don’t know they are asynchronous, or if you’re new to python, and not yet comfortable a debugger).
2. Learn to use a debugger
I personally like “pdb”, which is included with most (or maybe all?) python distributions. PDB has saved me a ton of time analyzing bugs. The ability to stop on a line and get the value of any variable is incredibly useful. Alternatively, you could use an IDE with a debugger like PyCharm.
3. Get some code completion in your editor/IDE
I use Notepad++ with NPP-Python http://sourceforge.net/projects/npp-python/ added on top. Good code completion will save you a lot of typing/googling over time.
4. Design your classes well This can be a hard one to follow, since python lets you get really sloppy – if you want to – and still get away with it. I have seen fully functional python code that rivals the most terse Perl scripts in lack of readability. Don’t use this as an excuse for getting lazy. Each class should do one thing, and modularity should be well planned for. Be prudent in your use of comments, and never assume another coder – or even yourself, in a few months time – will be able to read and immediately understand your clever uses of fancy Python syntactic sugar. At a certain level of complexity I like to use visual analysis tools like UML Class Diagrams.
5. Think through your app deployment ahead of time, if possible
Usually this will mean using PyInstaller, although sometimes it doesn’t – and you opt for an alternative deployment scheme. Get an expert to help, if possible. An expert with experience installing on multiple systems will be especially useful, considering some of the difficulties and differences in processes and protocols required for deployment on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, etc.
6. Matching phone numbers is HARD
This one is relevant mostly to what our app specifically does. First pass of the implementations was using a Regular Expression. This worked well for US numbers only, and took a lot of work to get right. My personal recommendation would be to use https://github.com/daviddrysdale/python-phonenumbers – which is a Python port of Google’s phone number matching library, or something similar, if your use case allows it.
Finally / In conclusion…
Python is a wonderful language to work in, and we are incredibly fortunate to have the cross platform Kivy UI library, and multitudes of other free libraries to read, admire, and use available on the internet. The capabilities of every Python coder expands every day through the bettering of these tools and techniques. We would like to thank the Kivy team for their support throughout all of our development, as well as all the people who contribute, discuss, support and admire all of the Python and platform specific libraries available on github and the general internet.Headline News
Deftones Bassist Chi Cheng Emerging From Coma And Now Partially Conscious
Band Photo: Deftones (?)
After over three years in a coma, Chi Cheng is now beginning to emerge from an unconscious to partially conscious state. Cheng is now able to move his leg when commanded but is still otherwise unable to move or speak aside from being able to make grunting noises since October. Those looking to see Cheng's Progress can check out the official website for his recovery fund.
Cheng was injured in a car accident in late 2008 which left him comatose and requiring surgery to remove part of his brain. Seven months after the accident, he was no longer on life support. Two years later, Cheng Began to briefly emerge from his coma in short intervals. More than a year later, Cheng is able to respond to commands more often and now has the use of his legs.
Even after a benefit concert and single, Cheng's family is running out of money. The family only has $17,495 our of the $250,000 that they need to hopefully give Chi Cheng a full recovery.
Cheng recently underwent surgery earlier this month, after which he showed signs of improvement. His recovery has been incredibly slow but he has shown steady improvement over the course of the past two years.Whether this year’s Bum Steers cover makes you laugh out loud or prompts you to fire off an outraged email, you should know one thing: I had at least three flavors of Blue Bell in my freezer at the time of the recall. You should also know that selecting the Bum Steers cover is one of the hardest decisions we make each year. I always hear from readers about how much they treasure some of the past images—a “classic Texas Monthly cover” goes the compliment that carries with it the sharp edge of expectation. Certainly the Bum Steer Awards remain one of our most anticipated stories of the year, but knowing just how far to push it—without going too far, of course—is a tricky proposition.
The so-called “group of funny” who works on the story—David Courtney, Rich Malley, Jeff Salamon, Andrea Valdez, and myself—spend the year poring over clips from all over the state, which are submitted by staff members and readers alike. We meet in a secret location (a hotel bar down the street) to maintain the integrity of the list (over beers and Bloody Marys and free nuts). But for all the kooky criminals and posturing politicians, the big question is always who will be called the Bum Steer of the Year, and despite a few worthy candidates—familiar names including the Dallas Cowboys and unfamiliar ones like the Jade Helm 15 conspiracy theorists—in the end we couldn’t escape the fact that Blue Bell’s troubles overshadowed everyone and everything else. We were also struck by how willing many Texans were to cheer the company on even before all the facts were known about its safety record.
As for the cover image itself, the letters of the headline were created with real ice cream, which made quite a mess in artist Sean Freeman’s studio in London (the melt around the bottom of the carton is real too). Each individual letter was nearly a foot high, which helped bring out the texture of the various flavors. I hope you’ll think of this edition of the Bum Steers as the newest classic Texas Monthly cover.These are screencasts from the this year's Scotland JS conferences. It happened on 9th and 10th of May. If you are a JavaScript developer you will probably want to see the talks.
Jo Liss: No more grunt watch : Modern build workflows with Broccoli
Broccoli is an asset pipeline (build tool) featuring a concise declarative syntax, and blazing fast rebuilds. In this talk you will learn how to use how to use Broccoli to define a modern build workflow for ambitious JavaScript MVC applications, harnessing preprocessors such as Sass and CoffeeScript, without foregoing sub-second rebuilds.
Jo Liss: No more grunt watch : Modern build workflows with Broccoli from Neo (UK) on Vimeo.
Jonathan Martin: The Realtime Web: We're Doing it Wrong.
Even with WebSockets, Server Sent Events, and WebRTC at our disposal, we continue to treat realtime interactions as a selective enhancement we can hack on to a subset of features after product launch. Our antiquated MVP design assumption has been to forgo realtime interactivity. As web apps become the next generation of desktop apps, this assumption is no longer acceptable: we need to take a realtime-from-the-onset approach. However, this mindset brings with it new architectural challenges that remain largely unaddressed. - What type(s) of software components should be realtime? - Could the realtime paradigm be reduced to a simple protocol? - Can we keep authorization code DRY while presenting both HTTP and WebSocket based APIs? - How can we stick with a fat client, but expose an extensive querying API without compromising on DRY or security? We’ll examine these problems from the client and server-side, consider potential solutions, then code a solution in JS for a concrete app. We've got the tools. We just need to stop monkey patching together one-off solutions.
Jonathan Martin: The Realtime Web: We're Doing it Wrong. from Neo (UK) on Vimeo.
Zeno Rocha Bueno Netto: A future called Web Components
Discover how this new concept formed by five new specifications (Templates, Decorators, Shadow DOM, Custom Elements, HTML Imports) will revolutionize the way we develop and interact on the web.
Zeno Rocha Bueno Netto: A future called Web Components from Neo (UK) on Vimeo.
Jaume Sanchez Elias: Getting started with three.js and WebGL
An introduction to real-time graphics in the browser using WebGL with three.js. An overview of the structure of a three.js web app, the main elements of the API and some useful examples to get started on the exciting world of 3D graphics, now on desktop and mobile. It's not required to have previous knowledge of 3D graphics, linear algebra or linear transforms.
Jaume Sanchez Elias: Getting started with three.js and WebGL from Neo (UK) |
Washington office is 202.225.2777.
Bruce Alpert can be reached at balpert@timespicayune.com or 202.857.5131. Jonathan Tilove can be reached at jtilove@timespicayune.com or 202.857.5125.I suppose I don’t really have to give you or anyone else a refresher on how government ruins everything for the free market. Whether it be through blatant government greed, or simple red-tape bureaucratic ineptness.
My attention was brought to this due to the non-stop outcry around the world on the horrors of tobacco use. But as this particular case unfolds, we are pressed with a very real question: does the government really care about our health?
I have been following a fairly new product around for a bit and believe it (and it’s fight with the FDA) to be worthy of mention.
There is a new product on the market that is starting to gain some serious momentum. Well more accurately, as much momentum as the FDA will allow it to get I guess. It’s moved from pennys and nickels to a $100 million dollar industry in roughly 12-months.
This is actually not too “new” of a product, it’s just recently that it has hit the US shores and managed to anchor itself fairly well.
I’m speaking of the fairly new “smoking alternative” called the E-Cigarette.
The E-cigarette was invented in China, and as a result of this, China is the leader across the boards in the manufacturing of the batteries and other components. Another result would also be the fact that China (of all places) seems to be a lot more accepting of these ingenious devices than our own “democratic” government.
The E-cigarette comes in many different sizes, shapes, and manufacturers. Like any product, all of them naturally have their own pro’s and con’s. Some of them have great vapor production but have a horrible battery-life. Others have an excellent battery life, but they don’t produce enough cigarette-mimicking vapor.
Yes that’s right folks: vapor. The E-cigarette is more or less a personal nicotine vaporizer.
There is no actual “smoke," nor is there any actual tobacco, tar, or harmful chemicals. What you actually inhale and exhale is a mixture of Propylene Glycol (or Vegetable Glycol), Nicotine, some natural flavor or another, and water. Now that we mentioned Nicotine, this is the part where the FDA comes rolling in.
The initial argument that the FDA produced after a brief study, was that Diethylene Glycol was a health risk, as it is commonly found in substances such as anti-freeze. What the FDA did here was consciously derail and sabotage the E-Cigarette through their tried and true fearmongering technique of big-worded misinformation.
Here is a part of the original FDA quote:
“The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today announced that a laboratory analysis of electronic cigarette samples has found that they contain carcinogens and toxic chemicals such as diethylene glycol, an ingredient used in antifreeze.”
Is DG (Diethylene Glycol) considered toxic? The answer is yes. But what the FDA failed to mention is that the tested E-Cigarette cartridges had about 1/10 the DG that can be found in aspirin, and about 1/40 the amount found in your typical tobacco cigarette. It can also be found in a variety of consumable products on the market that we use daily. It’s actually not an ingredient in anti-freeze. It’s an ingredient in coolants. They mixed that up with PG (Propylene Glycol) which is actually put into anti-freeze in order to make the anti-freeze child-safe and/or pet-safe.
Not that it really matters much. But DG is actually not a typical ingredient you find in E-Cigarettes. It is typically used as a humectant for tobacco products; which would explain its presence in one out of the 18 E-cig cartridges tested. The presence of Nicotine typically means you will also find DG. If you were to test real cigarettes for this chemical, you would find it in %100 of the tested cigarettes.
But, strangely, the FDA doesn’t set an embargo on big tobacco.
DG and PG are actually considered “Safe for human consumption” in certain quantities by the FDA in several consumable products. To put it into perspective: You would have to consume around 12,000 E-cigarette cartridges loaded up with DG and PG within 24-hours in order to get yourself anywhere near toxic levels of DG/PG. Sounds pretty freaky until you find out that your average E-cigarette user will puff down 1.5 cartridges per day. The heavier puffers will inhale as many as 3.
So why the scary lingo?
I guess it is possible that the FDA made a mistake and used the “toxic/carcinogen” description for the wrong glycol. Plain Ethylene Glycol is indeed pretty toxic. But they didn’t find any of that in the E-cigs, maybe they just liked the contents of EG’s toxic properties description. So I suppose we could toss lying and/or being utterly incompetent into the equation. Do they actually have “scientists” under the FDA’s employ, or is it just another team of monkeys throwing turds and screeching?
An anonymous commenter writes:
“So why is the FDA focusing on diethylene glycol? Because if they told you that e-cigarettes contain trace amounts of aspirin and nicotine you’d stare blankly and shrug your shoulders. But when someone starts throwing around a term like diethylene glycol people pay attention because nobody knows what the hell it means and it doesn’t sound like something you necessarily want a tall frosty mug of.”
Where can you find Diethylene Glycol and Propylene Glycol?
You can find it in toothpaste, wine, dog food, mouthwash, cough syrup etc etc etc. You can find it in the fog-machines that pump the air full of the annoying stuff at concerts. You can find it in many of the pharmaceuticals that you ingest orally, get injected with, or apply to your skin.
One would have to be incredibly stupid to think that the FDA doesn’t know all these facts. They do. They approved all that other stuff; so why derail this?
The magic word here is Nicotine.
I’m not going to sit here and tell you that Nicotine is the greatest thing to put into your body, it’s not. It’s essentially a poison and a very effective insecticide. Long-term tests on lab rats never showed any adverse effects of nicotine, but regardless, it is still a foreign chemical that you shouldn’t put in your body.
But let’s be real here. We’ve all played around and dissolved metal objects in Coca Cola, it’s pretty potent as well. Not to mention that it also contains caffeine, which also has addictive qualities. But you don’t see Coca Cola facing any scrutiny unless you count the American Dental Association.
My point being, we’ll just leave the unhealthiness of Nicotine at the door and continue.
So we all know where to find Nicotine. Tobacco products are an easy one as well as the various stop-smoking aids on the market in the forms of gum, patches, and those weird little inhalers. Then of course we now have our E-cigs to add to this list. The only difference between these accepted products vs. the unaccepted isn’t really the product so much as it is the supplier.
We get tobacco from our lovely tobacco giants, and we get the rest from our lovely pharmaceutical giants. Many of the pharmaceutical giants get their nicotine from the big tobacco giants. So now we have a love-circle between big tobacco, big pharma, and big FDA. Yes, they all sit around and rub each others shoulders while people die.
I would like to quote the great Dr. Ron Paul:
“The FDA, like all federal agencies, ultimately uses its regulatory powers in political ways. Certain industries and companies are rewarded, and others are punished. No regulatory agency is immune from politics, which is why the FDA should not be trusted with power over our intimate health care decisions.”
So it would seem that our beloved Dr. Paul doesn’t trust them either. They are a roadblock in the free market, and they continually overstep their bounds with the 1st and 4th amendment.
First Amendment you ask? Just ask General Mills. The FDA threatened to label Cheerios as a “drug” due to Cheerios’ claim that it can lower your cholesterol.
Seriously people. The FDA actually pulls these stunts with a straight face.
Fourth Amendment you ask? I’ll get to that in a moment.
Now back to the E-cig embargo.
As soon as their initial findings were disproved, there was no offer of an apology from the FDA. Instead they immediately shot back with their only fail-safe (seeing as they cannot toss Big Pharma and Big Tobacco under the bus quite yet).
They argued, “The children." Yes, we must think about the children.
The fact that children can feasibly get ahold of these devices via the internet, smoke shop, or mall kiosk is apparently UNACCEPTABLE to the FDA. Yet it’s fine that children can get ahold of numerous other things on the internet. Knives, porn, alcohol, energy drinks, and pills to name a few. Any enterprising youngster with his parent’s debit card and a copy of the USPS delivery-schedule can make this happen. But even then, what is a kid really going to go for? The $100 E-cigarette kit that they need to purchase online and get shipped to them, or the real-deal in a convenience store down the road for $5 a pack? The fact that not only the FDA, but also the American Lung Assoc, and Cancer Society would spew this at the general populace and actually expect it to be believed, is not just irritating, it’s actually insulting.
I believe that upon realizing what a pathetic argument that really was, the FDA and it’s parrots were compelled to shoot back that the flavors for E-cigs (E-juice) are appealing to children and adults, hence, unethical.
Such flavors will draw our citizens (against their own free will) into the clutches and jaws of the nicotine beast. They will then be devoured by said beast, smoke millions of tobacco cigarettes, and die. Of course it will be the cheesecake-flavored E-juice’s fault and/or everyone else’s fault but the free-thinking child/adult that took the first drag.
Ignore all those people who feed themselves and their children bacon dipped in boat lard. We had better go after the despicable “stop-smoking” pushers.
Nobody really bought that one either. Would you?
The next shovel-full argument from the FDA came in the form of an attack on the actual marketing techniques being used by E-cigarette suppliers. This is actually the only real semi-valid argument that the FDA ever produced.
In the early days, most E-cigarette suppliers DID claim that the new devices were (more or less) smoking-cessation devices. The FDA quickly seized upon these claims saying that the E-cig did not actually wean people off of nicotine so much as simply replace their smoking habit with a different habit. Doesn’t sound a whole lot different than the Big Pharma FDA-approved patches, gum, and inhalers. But I’ll give it to the FDA that they were at least partially correct here, albeit incredibly hypocritical.
Upon this accusation, most of the suppliers of these devices made the simple language correction and moved on towards business-as-usual.
“NOT SO FAST!” The FDA spaketh thusly.
And so began the embargo.
Now the FDA has decided that it (under the banner of public health interests) would fly in the face of the 4th amendment and begin seizing these devices from the USPS and other shipping agents without a lawful ban in place.
Mind you, they are not merely confiscating the overseas shipments that arrive in bulk. They are also seizing the small private orders from regular consumers. Regular people who want or need to quit smoking for one reason or another.
When confronted, they use the argument that the devices need further testing. Hogwash I say. They are merely figuring out a way to regulate it, make money off it, and pass it off to their “approved” pushers.
It’s money people. The US Government likes money, and big Tobacco and big Pharma make A LOT of money. The FDA knows exactly what side their toast is buttered on, and they dare not bite the hand that is feeding it to them.
Money is at stake for them. And the new E-cigarette industry is sporting $100 million (and growing) that they would like to get their hands on. But they can’t steal that money from the market unless they are given the power to regulate it. As soon as they have the power to regulate it, they will have the say-so in who gets to manufacture and distribute it.
Wanna bet who will get the honors of said manufacture and distribution?
Health risks and/or benefits be damned. If you don’t bribe off the regulators, they simply bury you. Such is the sad case of the E-cigarette.
Well, such was the case until the land of the frivolous lawsuits woke up and realized that they just might be getting taken for a ride by the FDA and other unseen trolls. Maybe there wasn’t a dollar to sue for. But there was a principled point to be made, fun to be had, and government agencies to humiliate.
Somebody sued.
Not necessarily for money, but for the FDA to lift it’s injunction on shipments. They won. The FDA got a lovely cease and desist order from the Honorable Judge Richard Leon.
Judge Richard Leon:
"This case appears to be yet another example of F.D.A.'s aggressive efforts to regulate recreational tobacco products as drugs or devices,"
*Gasp!*
Imagine that, a government regulatory branch overstepping its bounds!
Of course the FDA sent in an appeal. They had to do it. Big Pharma and Big Tobacco cannot allow their market competition to survive and hamper their bottom lines.
I believe the FDA has more than likely been pretty reluctant to re-enter the fray. It ends up painting them as more of a monster than a savior. One almost feels badly for them until one reminds themselves that more people have died as a result of FDA-approved products than non-approved. I won’t even talk about cigarette deaths. It tells you where their loyalties come to rest at night. Rest assured though, their loyalties aren’t to the consumers or the public health.
4000+ chemicals in tobacco cigarettes vs. the 3 found in E-cigarettes. The FDA is trying to kick people back to the former by means of eradicating the latter.
This is a serious lesson to everyone. Who and what do they really care about?
The FDA appeal is where our story ends, as it is still in the gears of our system at the moment. Send up your prayers at night and ask to whomever you pray, to let our dear FDA be the ones to get their sleeve caught in those gears.
So far, it does not look good for them. But they did enough damage already by those who would now continue with regular tobacco because the FDA barfed some nonsense at a press conference.
That so many will continue dumping thousands of truly dangerous cigarette chemicals into their bodies as a result of the FDA lies and/or gross incompetence is sad. And indeed, it is the only real crime here.
For those who decided to go with actual science as opposed to the FDA’s campaign of misinformation, you can find many of their moving success stories here.
Years from now, how many will owe their lives to this new technology?
I’m sure the FDA will figure out a way to not let you find out.
July 30, 2010A video posted on the internet Tuesday showing what appeared to be supporters of ousted Egyptian president Mohammad Mursi beating child at Cairo’s Ramses Square has gone viral.
Thousands of Islamists poured into the square after breaking their Ramadan fast on Monday seeking to organize a sit-in there, threatening to paralyze traffic in one of the busiest parts of Cairo.
Their move prompted police intervention and violent clashes throughout the night. During the clashes a boy showed up to the scene and the angry Islamists grabbed him with one of them asking him: “Who sent you here?;” “Who are you?;” “Are you with Mursi?;” and “Who are you with?.”
The horrified-looking boy was then beaten on the back of his head and then he was slapped.
When a man attempted to stop the assault, they shouted at him saying that the boy was hired by Mursi’s opponents.
“I know he is, but he’s just a child,” the young man responds. The crying boy pleads for help as several men continue to beat him.
“This isn’t merciful,” says a man approaching them.
He and others take the boy away, but it is unclear what happened to him afterwards.
At the end of the video, a protester notices that the incident is being filmed, so he tells the cameraman to film photos of Mursi instead.
Activists and social networking users condemned the attack, accusing the Muslim Brotherhood of not respecting childhood, and of attacking anyone who disagrees with them.
Last Update: Tuesday, 16 July 2013 KSA 20:18 - GMT 17:18Pin 10 Shares
The Massachusetts senator added that Democrats must “recognize the process was rigged” and “build a new process, a process that really works, and works for everyone.”
(COMMONDREAMS) — When asked by CNN‘s Jake Tapper in an interview on Thursday if she believes the 2016 Democratic primary was “rigged” in favor of Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) gave a definitive one-word answer: “Yes.”
Tapper’s question came in response to the bombshell piece by former interim Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair Donna Brazile, which detailed the party organization’s “unethical” fundraising agreement with former Secretary of State Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Elizabeth Warren says she agrees with the notion that the 2016 Democratic nomination was rigged in Clinton's favor https://t.co/Z6KpCGJj4Q — CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) November 2, 2017
Warren emphasized that DNC chair Tom Perez now faces a crucial “test”: whether he can succeed in “bringing Bernie Sanders and Bernie Sanders representatives into this process” and convincing progressives that the party is committed to a “fair” process that people can believe in.
“This is a real problem,” Warren said. “But what we’ve got to do as Democrats now, is we’ve got to hold this party accountable.”
In a separate interview on PBS Newshour on Thursday, Warren said that in order to restore public trust and win elections, Democrats must “recognize the process was rigged and…build a new process, a process that really works, and works for everyone.”
Brazile’s Politico Magazine piece on Thursday—excerpted from her forthcoming book, Hacked—highlighted the so-called “Joint Fundraising Agreement” between the Clinton campaign and the DNC.
The deal effectively handed the Clinton team full control over the DNC’s finances and staffing decisions in exchange for its help in paying off the organization’s $24 million debt.
Brazile’s account immediately sparked a firestorm of outrage on social media, and Sanders backers viewed the piece as vindication of their belief that the Vermont senator was denied a fair shot at the Democratic nomination.
“We all knew that the primary was rigged,” Saikat Chakrabarti, executive director of Justice Democrats, said in a statement responding to Brazile’s article. “But the corruption that plagues the Democratic party is bigger than one primary—it’s become a rot set at the very root of a party claims to be for working people…The American people could prosper if Democrats did more to build unity with the grassroots wing of their party that has a winning message.”
By Jake Johnson / Creative Commons / Common Dreams / Report a typo
This article was chosen for republication based on the interest of our readers. Anti-Media republishes stories from a number of other independent news sources. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect Anti-Media editorial policy.
Pin 10 SharesThe Telegraph reports that MI6 successfully hacked into computers distributing the latest version of al-Qaeda's magazine. The result? Instead of getting recipes for bombs, lucky terrorists subscribing to the publication instead received delicious cupcake recipes.
The cyber-warfare operation was launched by MI6 and GCHQ in an attempt to disrupt efforts by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular to recruit “lone-wolf” terrorists with a new English-language magazine, the Daily Telegraph understands.
When followers tried to download the 67-page colour magazine, instead of instructions about how to “Make a bomb in the Kitchen of your Mom” by “The AQ Chef” they were greeted with garbled computer code. The code, which had been inserted into the original magazine by the British intelligence hackers, was actually a web page of recipes for “The Best Cupcakes in America” published by the Ellen DeGeneres chat show. Written by Dulcy Israel and produced by Main Street Cupcakes in Hudson, Ohio, it said “the little cupcake is big again” adding: “Self-contained and satisfying, it summons memories of childhood even as it's updated for today’s sweet-toothed hipsters.”
It included a recipe for the Mojito Cupcake – “made of white rum cake and draped in vanilla buttercream”- and the Rocky Road Cupcake – “warning: sugar rush ahead!”
This is a pretty amusing story. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear as though the results were long-lasting. According to the Telegraph, the magazine's producers were able to put out the correct edition - with bomb instructions included - a few days later.
This sounds like a cute propaganda coup at first, but I'm in agreement with BoingBoing commenter Symbiote, who noted
Why not replace the bomb recipes with harmless things that look like they could be bombs, but have no chance of working? Or perhaps require large quantities of strange ingredients, to help trace where the people using the recipe are.
This is absolutely right. There was a golden opportunity here to make subtle changes that may have gone unnoticed by the magazine's producers, but would have made it easier to catch terrorists. Now that al-Qaeda knows it can be hacked, this type of gambit probably wouldn't work again. They're on their guard now. And that's too bad.On the eve of Jewish New Year 5775, what was once the second biggest Jewish community in the world is on the verge of disappearing.
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Until the 1950s, there were around 100,000 Jews living in Egypt. Now, only 12 remain.
"We are dying, we are drowning, we are finished," the elected head of the Jewish community, Magda Haroun, told the BBC.
Community's Legacy Film on Egypt's Jews restores faded memories AFP Jews born in Egypt but forced to leave decade after 1948 war tell Egyptian director about peremptory expulsions, rise of anti-Semitism coinciding with Arab-Israeli conflict Film on Egypt's Jews restores faded memories
According to the report, nothing remains of the once large and glorious Jewish community but a couple of synagogues. The ancient scriptures are just one example of the cultural and religious heritage Haroun feels will be lost forever.
Haroun, who considers herself the guardian of the Jewish legacy in Egypt, says her first duty is to take care of the remaining Jews, "the old ladies which have no family, are alone.
Most of Egypt's Jews were forced to leave in the 1950s and 1960s when the country was at war with Israel and the government suspected that many of them were spies.
For the remaining Jews, a 1,000-year-old Jewish cemetery, now surrounded by slums, is their last resting place.The UESPWiki – Your source for The Elder Scrolls since 1995
This page documents the blessings that you can receive, typically by activating altars in temples. These are short-term blessings which act separately from long-term Standing Stone effects, and do not overwrite or interact with them. Typically, you will want any blessings you come across, unless you are specifically trying to bolster one effect.
Shrine Blessings [ edit ]
Blessings are bestowed by praying at (activating) a shrine to the specified deity.
Locations of the shrines of the Eight (or Nine) Divines, including those for Auriel added by Dawnguard, are listed at Shrines.
The Shrine of Nocturnal is located inside the Ragged Flagon Cistern, once you are midway through the Thieves Guild quest line.
You can only have one shrine blessing at a time. If you choose to pray at a second shrine, it will overwrite the previous blessing. Shrine blessings are active for a period of time measured in real time, not in-game time. So a blessing lasting 12 hours will be active during 12 playing hours.
In addition, the Dragonborn expansion adds three new blessings, all available from the temple in Raven Rock.
^1 The description of this blessing is misleading; the actual effect is that Restoration spells cost 10% less magicka to cast.
^2 This bug is fixed by version 1.0 of the Unofficial Skyrim Patch. The details of the Blessing of Talos are bugged when viewed in-game. The magnitude is displayed as "0%" (truncated from 0.2). Nevertheless, the blessing does still have an effect.
Other Blessings [ edit ]
These blessings will stack with each other and shrine blessings.
^3? The in-game description of the 'Blood of the Ancients' spell is not directly linked to its duration. The duration of the spell is calculated based on scripts and affixed to a specific day, while the description shows the effectively meaningless magnitude of the spell. This means that the Necromage perk, which increases the magnitude and duration of spells cast on undead (such as your vampiric self), causes the description in your'spells - active effects' menu to display that its duration is increased by 25% (which in turn is caused by the perk's effect on magnitude, not duration), but the spell actually lasts only as long as calculated by the Chalice's Level.
Bugs [ edit ]The apricot blessing ceremony took place at St. Zoravar church on the opening day. The honorary stars of cinematographer Albert Yavuryan, directors Edmond Keosayan and Dmitry Kesayants were unveiled at Charles Aznavour square among other prolific masters of the Armenian Cinema.
Welcoming speeches were offered by Harutyun Khachatryan, Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film festival General Director, and Ralph Yirikian, General Director of VivaCell- MTS, General Sponsor of GAIFF for ten years.
During the opening ceremony it was announced that the European Film Academy is honoring Yerevan’s Parajanov Museum by awarding it “Treasure of European Film Culture.”
Earlier the Academy had decided to establish a list of Treasures of European Film Culture, much like the UNESCO World Heritage list, summing up places of historical cinematic value that need to be maintained and preserved not just for now but for generations to come.
At the end of the ceremony the opening film by celebrated Armenian filmmaker Hamo Beknazaryan “Zareh” was screened.Here's what you need to know...
You're never going to grow a stubborn muscle hitting it once a week. Three to six times per week will do the trick, if programmed correctly. Instead of using the same stagnant set and rep scheme, do several, such as 5 sets of 4-6, 3 sets of 8-12, and 3 sets of 15-25. It's not just about sets and reps, but also rep speed. Use a variety, including fast concentrics and slow eccentrics. Consume more carbs around the time you train a stubborn body part. Insulin is your friend if you're training hard. Use both pre-exhaust and post-exhaust supersets to bring up a lagging muscle.
1. Train a Stubborn Muscle Group More Often
A surefire way to bring up a stubborn body part is to train it more often. Two to three times per week works well time and time again.
For example, having a hard time getting your arms to grow? Try hitting them on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for about 6 weeks or so.
You can get great, borderline incredible, results by hitting a weak body part five, even six times per week. However, if you're going to try this strategy, there are a couple of things you'll need to keep in mind to make it work.
For starters, keep your volume in check. If you're going to train a particular body part more frequently, you'll need to dial back on the number of sets each time you train it. So, if you're hitting a body part three times per week, three sets of two different exercises would be plenty in each workout.
The same goes for intensity – you'll need to dial it back a notch. I often recommend training to concentric failure, but you should refrain from doing that when you're training a body part more often. Instead, leave a rep or two in the hole.
Likewise, save forced reps, negatives, and other intensity-boosting techniques for another time. Your nervous system will thank you.
It's not just the training for that body part that you need to keep in check. If you're trying to bring up your back, for example, plan to do more of a maintenance program for your other body parts.
Similarly, it's not just recuperation of each muscle that needs to be taken into account. Rather, it's the recuperation of your entire body that's important. So if you're gonna blast a particular muscle group, it's important that your body has the recuperative resources to recover from that blasting.
If you want to learn three new foreign languages, you wouldn't try to learn them all at the same time. Instead, you'd focus on one at a time. Same for bringing up body parts. Pick one at a time to focus on.
2. Isolate Lagging Muscles
Body part isolation often gets slapped with the "non-functional" label, but if you're trying to grow a particular body part, then properly isolating that muscle serves an important function.
Let's say your primary exercise for quads is squats, yet your quads are lagging behind. Try doing hack squats instead of barbell squats for a change. Or you could implement leg extensions to make sure your quads are receiving a more direct and targeted stimulus.
When it comes to isolating a muscle, select an exercise that really allows you to feel that muscle working. This may be different for different people.
For example, I can really isolate my chest with dumbbell flyes, yet some people don't feel these in such a targeted manner. Perhaps cable crossovers or a machine flye variation would enable you to get a more isolated contraction in your pecs. Whatever works.
On the other hand, don't necessarily give up on an exercise because it doesn't isolate like you think it should. Perhaps your form needs a little tweaking.
Sticking with the dumbbell flyes example for chest, perhaps you need to lift your ribcage up a bit to put more tension on your pecs and less on your anterior delts. Regardless of the exercise, just the slightest change in form (like hand position or mental focus) can make all the difference.
3. Use a Variety of Set/Rep Schemes
Most of us of tend to have a favorite rep range. The same goes for rest intervals between sets. While that rep range preference may vary between body parts, it's all too easy to keep training the way you like or the way that's just become a habit.
For example, I tend to train back and legs in a higher rep range with lighter weights, but I prefer to train biceps with heavier weight and fewer reps. In either case, doing the same thing too often isn't going to provide the variety of stimuli that will result in maximum hypertrophy.
Instead of using the set, rep, and rest intervals you prefer, use a more holistic approach and do some of each. That way you're stimulating the muscle in different ways, which ultimately leads to different types and methods of hypertrophy.
Here are three general set, rep, and rest protocols:
5 x 4-6 with 150-180 seconds rest
3 x 8-12 with 90-120 seconds rest
3 x 15-25 with 30-60 seconds rest
A good rule of thumb is to do one exercise in each of the above set, rep, rest manners. That's a good way to keep you honest and make sure you're not simply training the way you prefer to.
4. Implement Different Rep Speeds
Much like we tend to prefer a particular number of reps, we also tend to prefer – and over-utilize – certain repetition speeds. It's better to implement variety in order to stimulate the muscle in different ways.
As a general rule of thumb, do the concentric or lifting portion of each rep in a more rapid manner, while doing the eccentric or lowering portion in a more slow and controlled manner.
But even if you're sticking to those guidelines, you can still vary the actual speed substantially. Doing quicker reps is a great way to maximize power generation and recruit more motor units. Just use a little caution when training with a fast tempo, especially when going from the eccentric to concentric portion of each rep.
On the other hand, a slow rep speed maximizes tension – and subsequently motor unit recruitment – by maximizing the number of connections between actin and myosin filaments. This results in less stress on the elastic component and more stress on the contractile component of the working muscle fibers.
The fact is, fast and slow reps are physiologically different, but neither is necessarily better. That's why it's important to vary your rep speed. You can implement this variety from set to set, from exercise to exercise, or from day to day.
5. Increase Carb Intake Around Your Workout
My favorite nutritional strategy to help bring up a stubborn body part is to consume more carbs prior to training that body part and after. This is a great way to make use of the anti-catabolic and anabolic effects of insulin.
Let's say your back is lagging behind. In the meal or two prior to training your back, make sure to eat copious amounts of carbs. Not only will this boost insulin, but it will also top off the glycogen stores in the muscle cells of your back.
If properly timed, that pre-workout carb meal or supplement will also ensure your blood glucose levels are up where they should be at the beginning of your workout.
Then, within 30 minutes of finishing your back workout, have another meal with plenty of carbs. Again, this reduces protein breakdown by increasing insulin, but it also quickly refills muscle glycogen stores, thus jump-starting recovery.
Another way to implement this strategy is to eat more carbs the day prior to training that body part. This is particularly effective if you're going to train your weak body part first thing in the morning, or if you've been on a low-carb diet, as it will allow more time to refill glycogen stores.
Training a body part when it's chock full of glycogen is not only fun because of the insane pump it produces, but over time it'll also help expand the fascia encompassing the muscle.
Regardless of the training strategies you may implement, make sure to have plenty of peri-workout carbs when training your lagging muscle groups.
6. Do Negatives
One of the stimuli for hypertrophy is microtrauma to the muscle, and one of the best ways to cause microtrauma is to implement heavy eccentric or negative reps.
The general method of implementing negatives is to use a weight that's near, or even slightly more than your 1RM. Then lower the weight in a slow, controlled manner. Obviously, you'll probably need assistance doing negatives. Let's use the bench press as an example.
Once you've got the bar off the rack, begin by lowering the weight while counting to five – as in one thousand one, one thousand two, and so on. Then have your spotter help you return the weight back to the starting position and repeat. When you can no longer control the weight on the way down, you're done.
Because of the necessity of a good spotter, combined with the fact that you get essentially no pump doing negatives, they won't be much fun at all. Like 'em or not, negatives are a proven way to increase strength and ultimately increase size.
7. Do Supersets
Of all the ways to bring up a lagging body part, supersets are my favorites. Simply do two or more exercises back to back, with essentially no rest in between.
For hard-to-grow muscles, we're primarily referring to supersetting two (or sometimes three) exercises. This can be a pre-exhaust superset where you do an isolation exercise followed by a compound exercise, a post-exhaust where you do a compound followed by an isolation exercise, or it could even be two compound or two isolation exercises.
An example of a pre-exhaust superset would be doing concentration curls before barbell curls.
An example of a post-exhaust superset would be barbell squats followed by leg extensions.
Regardless of the type of superset, the goal is the same – to metabolically tax the working muscle. Likewise, because of the prolonged time under tension and blood occlusion, supersets will result in a really good, expansive pump.
Try using pre-exhaust and post-exhaust supersets. As with most strategies, neither is superior, they're just different. Variety is paramount when it comes to bringing up a stubborn muscle.
Related: A Tried and True Bodybuilding Program Template
Related: More on proper peri-workout nutritionAfter a Soviet surface-to-air missile battery showdown with a USAF U-2 spy plane near the closed city of Sverdlovsk in 1960, the US government realised they needed a reconnaissance plane that could fly even higher – and outrun any missile and fighter launched against it.
The answer was the SR-71 Blackbird. It was closer to a spaceship than an aircraft, made of titanium to withstand the enormous temperatures from flying at 2,200mph (3,540kph). Its futuristic profile made it difficult to detect on radar – even the black paint used, full of radar-absorbing iron, helped hide it.
WATCH: How to fly the world's fastest plane
A whole high-tech industry was created to provide the Blackbird's sophisticated parts. For example, the fuel, a high-tech cocktail called JP-7, was made just for the Blackbird.
Based at Beale Air Force Base in California, detachments of the SR-71 flew from Mildenhall in the east of England and from Kadena on the Japanese island of Okinawa.
Just a handful of pilots ever flew the plane. BBC Future interviewed Colonel Rich Graham, former pilot, wing commander and author of several books about the aircraft, at Imperial War |
boundaries rather than run singles. We like to show off our strength, power and individualism."
The emphasis on boundary-hitting above all else was best exemplified in the World T20 semi-final in Mumbai in 2016, when the West Indian batsmen played out 50 dot balls to India's 27 - but made up for it by hitting 146 runs in boundaries to India's 92.
Even that embodiment of Caribbean T20 - the six - reflects strategising and recalibrating the notion of failure in cricket.
"Most people fail in T20," says Brathwaite. "In Test cricket it's a lot more about patience, 50-over is more about that mix between patience and technique - knowing when to go, when not to go. Whereas 20 overs, it just feels as though a weight has been lifted off your shoulders. You can go out there and enjoy yourself.
"Now I'm the captain, my words are always, 'Express yourself.' I prefer a person to go out there and do what we think is best at that point in time, and have a 'poor' performance - quote/unquote - by stats, but within my mind I know this is what you wanted to do. As opposed to going out there and doing something that the coach or the captain or a senior player wants you to do, failing doing that, and then not knowing where to go from there because it was not your decision. So as a captain I always give the players the freedom to go out there and express themselves, and make decisions on the fly. If you execute, congratulations; if you don't, then you go back to the drawing board and see why. But it should never ever be because I didn't do what I wanted to do at that point in time."
In the 2016 World T20, says Phil Simmons, "we knew that we had boundary-hitters down to No. 8. We didn't worry about dot balls too much because we knew we could make them up. If Gayle had 20 dots in 60 balls, he'd still have a hundred."
In the IPL, CricViz finds, Gayle fails to score off 54% of the deliveries he faces in the first ten overs. But across T20, he hits 11% of his balls for six - almost twice as many as David Warner and Brendon McCullum. To Brathwaite, who has often bowled to him, "If Gayle bats six dot balls, then from a bowler's point of view you're thinking, 'Crap - he's six balls more into his innings', as opposed to thinking 'Oh good, that's six dots.'"
Krishmar Santokie: "You might think that if you're not at 80 or 90 you won't be a good bowler, but it's not true - it's about how you bowl and the type of field you set" © Getty Images
The technique for the West Indian six was honed by the original Stanford forebears and passed down to the newer generation. Brathwaite, who remembers being aided by Gayle and Samuels, explains it like this.
"When it does come off, then you have a good base, watch the ball, and make good contact. And one way to try to isolate that, instead of just doing it in the nets, is doing range-hitting with the coaches. So it's kind of a predetermined length - sometimes full and wide, sometimes full and straight, sometimes back and straight - and then set up the base that I need for that shot, to execute [it] over a period of time consistently. Because obviously in the match it's a lot harder - there's a lot more pace and a lot more pressure - so you need to have a high conversion rate at practice so you're confident enough going into the game.
"You do your homework, you set your plans, and you try to think of what plans they have for you and how you would counterattack that, but ultimately it's about me being confident mentally, and having a clear mind space, being ready - whether it be well hydrated, whether it be well rested - and then just giving myself the tools to go out there and perform as best as I can."
Yet, six-hitting, vital as it is to their success, should not obscure West Indies' other strengths. Flexibility in the batting order - Denesh Ramdin was used at No. 4 against England in the group-stage victory but was due to bat at No. 9 in the final - was one manifestation of their shrewd thinking. So was precise adaptation to the conditions - not just tweaking the team selection, but also the approach. Before their semi-final ESPNcricinfo's Gaurav Sundararaman, then in a support role with the team, studied how pull shots were particularly productive on the Wankhede pitch. West Indies bowled only seven short deliveries, conceding 12 runs; in return, India bowled 14, which West Indies thumped for 39.
Caribbean bowlers have been comparatively overshadowed by the belligerence of their batsmen, but they have risen above the competition by almost as much. Across the 2012, 2014 and 2016 World T20s, West Indies rank among the three most frugal sides during all three stages of an innings - the first six overs, the middle overs, and the final five overs - and are the very best at the death. For a period, the Nos. 1 and 2 T20 bowlers in the world were Badree and Narine, a pair of T&T spinners. Their compatriot Bravo is the all-time leading T20 wicket-taker.
"I think I'm allergic to the red ball. Every time I bowl a red ball, my hands seem to get swollen," jokes Badree. In training, his focus is on "spot-bowling" - aiming for a specific point on the pitch. "T20 cricket you just have 24 balls to bowl. So the day before the training I bowl some deliveries in the areas that I want to, and once I feel good about it, I'm good to go."
Calculated, not Calypso: T&T were making use of numbers to target their opponents long before "data" became a catchphrase in T20 © AFP/Getty Images
Caribbean bowlers have had to adapt to survive against hitters in grass-roots and domestic cricket - not to mention the nets, where, says Brathwaite, players like Gayle, Samuels and Russell "have a right go at you". It might explain why so many innovations in T20 bowling - from Badree bowling through at the start, to Narine's knuckleball, to Bravo's range of slower balls at the death - have come from the region.
Less heralded, but as revealing, is Krishmar Santokie's tale. Santokie, a Jamaican, is the antithesis of the archetypal Caribbean fast bowler - a left-arm "slow medium-pacer" in his own words - but he has forged a fine T20 career bowling precise yorkers and slower balls at the start and death of an innings.
"Whether you're fast or slow, you have to be smart. If you're not smart, you're not going to survive in T20," Santokie says. "You might think that if you're not at 80 or 90 [mph] you won't be a good bowler, but it's not true - it's about how you bowl and the type of field you set. When I'm bowling, especially at the death, I try and keep an eye on the batsman at all times. Batsmen like to move around their crease, so as a bowler I try to look at them as long as possible to have a clear mind of what he wants to do - is he moving or staying still?"
The prevalence of big hitting in regional cricket, at all levels, has also made boundary catching, which several Caribbean players pull off with remarkable frequency, essential. Pollard, indeed, has been proclaimed the world's best boundary catcher.
"If you do it time and time again, it can't be luck. For me, it's all about pride," he explained to ESPNcricinfo last year. "When I started out, I think I was known as one of the best fielders, but then you always have competition and that's how you get better. As Jonty Rhodes said, if you don't go, you never know. So if I don't jump and attempt to take that catch, I never know if I'll be able to. What I try to do is give myself the opportunity to take that catch."
Part V: Dynasty Before last year's World T20, Dwayne Bravo dared to compare the current side with the great teams of yore. "The way the West Indies goes about its T20 game, the manner in which we like to dominate the format, is much [like] how we dominated Tests in the 1980s," Bravo said before the tournament. "We see it as our baby, given what West Indies bring to the table in the format."
The comment seemed like the very apex of hubris. Yet in the following weeks, Bravo would be vindicated. It was not merely that West Indies won the title but that they showed their extraordinary depth and versatility. In the 2012 World T20 victory, they had batted first in every completed game; in 2016, they chased every time. Pollard and Narine, two T20 greats, missed the tournament through injury. Gayle, who had eviscerated England with a century in a pool match, made only nine runs across the semi-final and final.
Daren Ganga (in pads): the first original T20 thinker © Global Cricket Ventures-BCCI
It mattered not. Even without contributions from their two most renowned hitters, West Indies were brimming with alternatives. Most countries had two or three power-hitters. West Indies had almost a squad's worth.
Omitted from the original squad, Lendl Simmons landed in Mumbai, his home ground in the IPL, two days before the semi-final and promptly pummelled 82 not out. He had a confrontation with Virat Kohli at the start of his innings, which "really urged me to bat the way I did - to show him that he's not the only one who can do it", he recalled last year. "When India chase, one of their top batsmen bats deep - that was my role, batting in the middle overs, especially because I play spin well. I know they didn't have any good death bowlers, so with Russell, Bravo and Sammy to come, once we passed the middle overs, those guys could always come out and finish. I had some chances going my way, but such is life: every cricketer has his day and you just need to cash in when it is your day." It distilled West Indies' ethos: with so many players capable of playing in such an ebullient way, they avoided over-dependency on any individual.
In the final at Eden Gardens, Gayle was out to his second ball, and Simmons to his first. Samuels played magnificently, driven by his feud with Ben Stokes, but was in need of support. Enter another replacement in the squad - Brathwaite.
When Stokes came in to defend 19 from the final over, Brathwaite says he "was numb. It was a state that I've only reached a couple times since. I had a clear mindset, I just watched the ball, and allowed my instincts to react."
Even so, Brathwaite had planned for this moment for weeks, since before the group match with England.
"We knew Ben Stokes and Chris Jordan bowled very good yorkers - sometimes straight, sometimes wide - and in that situation it was about repeating that again. So I knew the long boundary was to the leg side, and if he did bowl a yorker it would be straight, or the plan would be into the wicket."
Three of the four sixes Brathwaite smoked to seal the title were to the leg side. Deliberately targeting the longer boundary: it was a novel approach that epitomised Caribbean audacity, skill and utter imperviousness to the fear of failure. And it encapsulated why West Indies are the greatest team T20 has yet known.
Tim Wigmore writes on cricket and the business and politics of sport for publications including ESPNCricinfo, the New York Times and the Economist. He is the co-author of Second XI
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.When I was a junior on the Lehigh University basketball team, our assistant coach Ryan Krueger came up to me one day after practice and asked, “Hey C.J., how serious are you about this journalism thing?”
I was a journalism major, and I also worked as an editor at The Brown and White, Lehigh’s student newspaper since 1894.
“Dead serious,” I told him.
“Well, I have this friend. He does some broadcasting. What if I had him come up to Lehigh and talk to you about the business?”
“For sure. That would be amazing.”
A few days later, this guy walks into the gym with a briefcase. I recognize him right away. It’s not just some local guy. It’s longtime NBA broadcaster Tim Capstraw.
I introduce myself, and we sit down and start talking about broadcasting. The next thing I know, he’s pulling out his laptop.
“Let’s call a game,” he says.
“Let’s … What? Are you serious?”
“Dead serious. Come on.”
He fires up a full college basketball game on his laptop, and as soon as he hits play, it’s like his whole demeanor changes. He gets that killer look in his eye. He smiles. His voice goes up a notch. He puts the game face on.
“We welcome you courtside to the CBS game of the week. I’m Tim Capstraw here with my partner C.J. McCollum. We’ve got a terrific matchup here tonight.”
And I’m sitting there starstruck, trying to figure out when to jump in.
“Uh … yeah, Tim. Wow. What a game we have here. Um. What I really like about this team is their commitment to defense.”
Tim presses pause and smiles. He gives me some pointers about how to do a good intro, which key points I should hit, and how to build up the atmosphere before the tip.
We call the whole first half together, with me acting as the color commentator, pointing out high screens and the different sets the teams are running.
The game moved so fast. I kept calling everything great. That was my fallback word.
Great defense. Great pick-and-roll. Great jump shooter. You don’t realize how much broadcasters have to switch up their vocabulary to keep things fresh.
I loved the whole experience. When it came time for us to wrap up and for me to get to practice, I didn’t want it to end.
Before he left, Tim gave me some final advice:
“C.J., you know the easiest way to get your reps up? Mute every game you watch on TV and call it yourself. That’s what I did when I was starting out.”
Ever since that experience with Tim, I’ve never watched a basketball game the same way. Even now, when I’m watching an NBA game at my house or at a hotel, I’ll often mute the sound and call the game in my head. I try to think of how to translate what I’m seeing into an interesting piece of insight that the average fan would be able to digest.
This was actually the inspiration for my Elite 101 features at The Players’ Tribune. And I hope that when my NBA career is over, I can expand my skills to the broadcast booth as well.
Media has always been my thing — whether it’s reading Zach Lowe’s in-depth NBA columns, or checking out what the analytics community is doing with data visualization and heat maps, or listening to Bill Simmons’s podcast. (Why were you trying to get me traded to the Cavs though, Bill? I heard that episode. Come on, man!)
Do I sometimes shake my head at the narratives that are created? Yeah, of course. (The Draymond Green locker room “tirade” isn’t a thing, people. It happens all the time in the league.) But I truly believe that the stories around the game are what make basketball so interesting. The media is responsible for making those stories come to life. The media is extremely important to me not just as an NBA player, but as a fan of the game.
That’s why I decided to launch an educational program called CJ’s Press Pass. The idea is pretty simple. I want to empower high school students to get hands-on journalism experience so that they will be better prepared to pursue a career in media if they think it’s for them.
We started in January with 30 students from Portland’s Madison High. I came to their classroom and explained why I have a passion for journalism and gave them their first assignment. They had to actually cover our game against the Minnesota Timberwolves.
We gave them all-access media passes. They got to go behind the scenes to see how members of the media did their jobs. Not just the Portland beat writers and columnists, but also the TV broadcast team, radio team, sideline reporters, social media managers and others.
The students couldn’t believe just how many cameras there were at the game, how many AV wires were running all around the court, and how much communication goes on between people who help bring the game to life. All for a 48 minute game.
After it was over, the students got to conduct a special press conference with myself and Blazers assistant coach David Vanterpool.
They grilled us.
Thankfully, we won the game.
My favorite question was, “C.J., can you take us through your pregame ritual and what you ate before the game.”
Easy.
“A three-egg omelet with cheddar cheese, peppers and onions, two strips of bacon, plus a half a waffle with strawberries, and, of course, some home fries on the side. With an orange juice and a water. And then a salad with chicken and spinach. Then some pasta before the game.”
You have to get your nutrients in.
After the press conference, the students were on deadline. Their assignment was to report on the game using any lane they wanted — a game report, a column, a podcast, or a video.
The only rule was that they had to paint a vivid picture of the whole experience.
The winner got a prize, of course. The student who produced the best piece would get to help me cohost my weekly radio show on iHeartRadio, and they would also get their first big-time byline, right here on The Players’ Tribune.
Below is the winning piece from Madison High senior Hannah Ortloff. I loved how Hannah set the scene in her lead paragraph, and she did an excellent job with the pacing and flow of the story.
Hannah, in a few years, when you’re a professional journalist and I’m hopefully an aging vet with a few titles under my belt, please remember to take it easy on me.
Congrats, and great work.
*
All-Access
By Hannah Ortloff
On the afternoon of Wednesday, January, 27, Madison High School’s library was filled with jittery teenagers and teachers alike as we eagerly awaited the arrival of Trail Blazer C.J. McCollum. Some were frantically trying to think of an impressive hard-hitting journalism question to ask the Lehigh grad, while others were discussing the best possible selfie angle, or if the NBA star would sign their stomach.
Once C.J. entered the room, any fears about whether or not we should feel nervous around him melted away. The room full of jitters turned quickly to one full of genuine laughter as soon as C.J. began talking. He had each one of us stand, say our name, age and, of course, why we love journalism. McCollum graduated from Lehigh University with a major in journalism, prompting him to start his new program, C.J.’s Press Pass, for aspiring journalists. Much to my luck, and the luck of many of my classmates, C.J. chose Madison’s journalism program to participate.
McCollum started by giving us a basic rundown of who he is, how he got to be where he is today, and what shows he is currently watching on Netflix. He then opened the floor for questions, with topics ranging from his college experiences to his opinion on tattoos. It was clear that C.J. is not some stuck-up, too-cool-for-school basketball player. In fact, he’s really not too different from the rest of us. As he pointed out, “I’m just like you guys, only I have a better jump shot.”
Wednesday afternoon was only the beginning of the fun. Four days later, on January 31, C.J. invited us to watch the Blazers take on the Minnesota Timberwolves. We arrived at the Moda Center two hours early in order to get our media-access passes and then took a full tour. We visited the broadcasting center to see how all of the behind-the-scenes coverage goes down, watched Damian Lillard shoot threes during warmups, and then got the chance to interview various reporters.
Like any Portland native, I’ve grown up attending Blazers games, but usually watch from the “nosebleed” section. However, this time, a few of my friends and myself were ten rows up from the court as part of “C.J.’s Crew,” which included complimentary C.J. McCollum towels and bragging rights. Afterward, we were invited to ask assistant coach David Vanterpool and C.J. some post-game questions. Once again, C.J.’s laid back charm became evident and any nervousness left over was soon gone. We left that night excited and energetic to share our experiences, but even more so, grateful for the opportunities McCollum had given us.
C.J. McCollum is a role model for not only aspiring journalists and sports fanatics, but for students everywhere. He is a great example of someone with passion and charisma, but a down to earth lifestyle. He loves his mom and isn’t ashamed about it, he follows DJ Khaled on Snapchat and he is able to live his dream of playing basketball without sacrificing his love for writing. C.J. pointed out at his first talk with us that a lot of players have different hobbies to pass the time off the court. Some make music, others watch Netflix, while C.J. chooses to write.
In addition to his written repertoire, which is impressive in itself (with works including an interview with NBA commissioner Adam Silver), C.J. also hosts two radio shows, one of which he is inviting us to come watch at the iHeartRadio Studio.
Overall, this experience has been something none of us will soon forget, especially as some of us head off to college. McCollum offered up some advice for us when it comes to the future: Figure out what you enjoy doing and what you are good at first, the rest should follow.
*
We asked C.J.’s Press Pass students to share their photos from the day with the Blazers. Scroll through a gallery of their images below.
Photographs by Abigail Reyes, Irissa Adams, Julian Daviau, Taea Hill, and Ziomara Martinez.CWA supports medicinal cannabis legalisation at state conference
Updated
The Country Women's Association has thrown its support behind legalising medicinal cannabis at its annual conference in Tamworth.
The Association passed two motions, the first in support of the use of medicinal marijuana, and the second in support of the legalisation of growing, manufacturing and distributing marijuana for medicinal purposes.
State President, Tanya Cameron, said there was a fair bit of debate about the motions.
Ms Cameron said members had to think hard about their decision but a good majority were in favour of both motions.
"At the end of the day the members decided that they were voting on the principle of the idea of supporting the use of medical marijuana and that it was an opportunity for us to perhaps change that legislation," she said.
"It's more a case of us adding our voices if you like to those that are already calling for the legalisation of medicinal marijuana."
The Association last voted on medicinal cannabis more than 10 years ago.
"We know a lot more about it now than perhaps we did when we last voted on this same topic," Ms Cameron said.
"There was some discussion about whether it was 2002 or 2003 but it certainly has [been discussed before] and at the time it was a tied vote and the President used her casting vote to keep the status quo so the motion was actually lost that time.
"But this time they both went through."
Topics: women, rural-women, community-and-society, cannabis, medical-research, tamworth-2340
First postedIf you could purchase 100 block erupter sapphires for 35BTC today, that would give the fund another 33Gh/s (@250Watts). The break even TODAY is about 85 days. Say the network hash rate doubles in the fall, that would mean 170 days or if it triples, 255 days. They sip power so running them longer isn't an issue. I realize you would need good hubs which are ~$70US each for an aluminum 10 port USB 3 powered hub (aitech sells one through amazon for 69.99 - I believe the seller's name is computerExtension). I know these work great for 10 usb miners. Are you currently running a couple of 6770's and a couple of 7770's for bitcoin? Even if we just purchase sufficient amounts of block erupters to replace those, we would be further ahead. The usb hubs would com in handy for the next gen asics too I'm sure. They have to release a little usb key for those if us who can't afford the big rigs!!I ordered 20 block erupter blades last wednesay and had them running by Friday evening before I left for work. I paid 5.99 BTC/10 and I saw just last night the price dropped to 4.19BTC/10 (free UPS express shipping until Aug 15th on 5BTC+ orders). The miners were new and worked perfectly. I'm hesitant to mention this seller as I see BTCGuild store is 1000 units shy right now!I'm just thinking in the short term to keep up our percentage of the network share while you formulate a long term plan.Thoughts anyone?Take care
Thanks for the confidence guys, it's appreciated. I'd like to get as much feedback as possible in order to reach a consensus on the direction we should take going forward as far as future hardware purchases go. I favor Bitfury gear due to their efficiency claims and ability to demonstrate progress in their development process. On the other hand I've seen little evidence to convince me that knc will be able to deliver products on their timeline. Does anybody disagree with my take on this and if so why? Also does anybody have any other suggestions as far as which vendor they feel is a better choice and if so why? Avalon has said they were done with pre-orders and that they were developing 55nm? chips of their own for October delivery. Clearly their reputation has been tarnished, but what's everyone's take on the latest from Bitsyncom? Also as far as criteria go for hardware selection, my own priorities are as follows: 1) Credibility - Can this vendor deliver what they claim and most importantly can they deliver it WHEN they claim. To date pre-order vendors have a 100% failure rate, though obviously some have failed more spectacularly than others. 2) Efficiency - Will this product be hashing long enough to at least break even in the face of continued network expansion? This obviously affects resale price of hardware as well. 3) Price point - I believe this is self explanatory. Cheers.Maps of T-Mobile's spectrum holdings The maps below provide the information how much spectrum is licensed to T-Mobile across the US. Click on the counties to see how much bandwidth is available for T-Mobile in AWS, PCS, 700 and 600 MHz spectrum bands. If the licensed spectrum is not continuous the blocks are separated with a vertical line: AWS: 10|10 MHz The color intensity on the map corresponds to the total spectrum holdings in each county. The color intensity on the map corresponds to the total spectrum holdings in each county
License information last updated on 8/19/2018
More maps presenting different views of T-Mobile's spectrum holdings:
Do you want to know who are the other license holders? Check out Spectrum Omega map
Questions about the licenses, maps, and terminology? Ask /r/tmobile community.by
The negotiations over Iran’s supposed nuclear bomb-building abilities seem to be stuck in a rut. Given the detailed undertakings by Iran incorporated in the interim agreement made last year it should have only been a hop, skip and a jump to forge a final agreement.
In reality it hasn’t been so easy. Over many years the US with European connivance most – not always – of the time manufactured and manipulated the whole crisis. To overcome the suspicions aroused by that, now past, tactic is not easy.
That is not just my opinion after following this subject for 30 years. It is that of the former vice-chair of the US National Intelligence Council, Graham Fuller.
Now a new book, “Manufactured Crisis” by the astute investigative journalist, Gareth Porter, has taken the lid off the attempt by the US, often in collusion with Israel, to paint Iran into a corner, whilst shunning any effort by Iran to resolve the dispute.
But before we get into that I want to make one point about the Islamic sense of morality.
Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei, the successive top clerics and paramount leaders of the country, have made it clear on a number of occasions that for their country to build a nuclear bomb would go against Islamic belief and jurisprudence.
I don’t find this difficult to believe – during the bitter and savage war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1980 when Iran lost 2 million people Iran refused to deploy chemical weapons even though Iraq did. They too were regarded as un-Islamic.
Iran has been consistent in its morality. Iran’s religious practice today is about as far away from the Islamic State or Pakistan’s Taliban as you can get.
The US has not been consistent in its own Western morality, whether judged by Christian belief or secular values. It provided – as did some European states – sophisticated arms and intelligence to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq during its long war with Iran.
This is not to say that in recent years Iran has been straightforward in its nuclear dealings. It hasn’t. It has also played a hide and seek game with the US, the EU, Russia and the supervisory nuclear authority, the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency.
In its nuclear research it has not taken the straight road to a peaceful use of nuclear energy. It has on certain key points built in a possible dual use of its nuclear infrastructure.
It has done enough of this to allow the US, the EU, the IAEA and Israel to milk this ambiguity for all its worth. They have tried to convince the world that Iran has no compunction about building a bomb and time was its main constraint.
Never has it been admitted that Iran has been playing chess in a desperate attempt to compel the West to lift the sanctions that were imposed way back in Jimmy Carter’s presidency at the time of the hostage crisis, when US diplomats were detained.
Studied ambiguity over its nuclear program is the only lever Iran has had to persuade the West to lift sanctions.
Indeed, it is that that has brought the US and EU to the negotiating table. Enriching uranium has been nothing more than an Iranian tactic to get the sanctions removed and to checkmate President George W. Bush’s plans for regime change.
In his book Porter makes his own devastating points:
* In 2004 Bush explicitly refused to countenance an agreement between Iran and the UK, Germany and France that would have committed Iran to a minimal nuclear program that would not have constituted a threat of proliferation. * There was a systemic failure in CIA intelligence that parallels the misleading intelligence that Iraq had nuclear weapons – that let Bush get away with his decision to go to war with Iraq. He ignored the findings of his own National Intelligence Estimate in 2007 which concluded Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons research in 2003. * The well-quoted dossier of “intelligence” that was publicized by the IAEA in 2009, which “proved” that Iran was engaged in secret nuclear weapons work, was made up mainly of information supplied by Israel. * It was President Bill Clinton who aligned US policy towards Iran with Israel’s. Yet Israel’s top intelligence officials did not share the public alarm mouthed by Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Benjamin Netanyahu who used any argument they could lay their hands on to denigrate Iran. * It was Bush who injected poison into the relationship with his goal of “regime change”. That is why he opposed the European-negotiated compromise.
Now, under President Barack Obama, the US is gradually building a relationship of trust with Iranian leaders. But it needs to bend towards the Iranian position somewhat more if it is to convince them that US policy has truly changed.
Only then will a final agreement made and the fear of an Iranian nuclear bomb be laid to rest.
Jonathan Power is a columnist and associate at the Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research in Lund Sweden.
Copyright: Jonathan PowerNormally if you wanted to tear-up the dirt track or speed through a forest-laden trail, you’d most likely be riding with a typical mountain bike. But as fun as tackling the terrain is, it can definitely be tiring. For those who just want the thrill of shredding through rough landscapes without the pain, Neematic’s new FR/1 eBike comes to the rescue with its custom frame design and 62 mph top speed.
What allows Neematic’s FR/1 to stand out from other electric vehicles on the market isn’t all-terrain aptitude, but also its distinctive design. While other off-road eBikes look like a pair of rugged tires were slapped on the same old form-factor, Neematic started from the ground up with a design built specially to handle the outdoors.
In setting out to build the fusion of futuristic style and power that is the FR/1, co-founder Domas Zinkevicius claimed they “wanted to create a top performance e-bike for rough terrain.” By integrating the motor into the frame to ultimately increase the bike’s overall torque, it looks like Neematic may have been successful in its initial quest.
With 12 years of eBike design experience on their belts, the engineers behind the FR/1 have adapted a unique suspension system. While the design is certainly a fresh sight, it isn’t all just for show. The eBike’s untypical frame shape results in a weight distribution which makes the bike a state-of-the art performer, whether you’re climbing uphill or shredding the trail.
Based around an aluminum tube frame, the FR/1 sports a 2.2 kWh Li-ion battery which allows it to travel up to 100 km (62 miles) on a single charge. Oh and in case you were concerned about a lackluster top speed, the FR/1 maxes out at a wild 100 km/h (62 mph). The eBike also comes equipped with what Neematic claims are “top-notch bicycle components” like Hope tech3 V4 brakes, Pinion drive and DMR pedals.
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Having been under development for the past three years, the FR/1 eBike is finally ready to hit the trail with a release slated for later this year. Aside from the fact that we know it’s going into production sometime in the coming months, there’s no other word on pricing or availability. However, if Neematic’s new eBike is one that catches your eye, you can sign up to request a test drive over on the company’s site.Greetings, traveler! With millions of sights to see in the universe, the team at THE OBSERVIST is here to make sure you get the best traveling experience possible.
Stanton System
Discovered a mere forty-four years ago, this system quickly turned into an industrial powerhouse after its four planets were auctioned off to massive corporations. The system’s second planet, a low mass gas giant, was originally considered to be a ‘tough sell’ by the UEE. Rumors at the time indicated that they had even toyed with bundling it together with one of the other planets. However, it was eventually bought by Crusader Industries, as the planet’s iconic floating platforms, originally built by the Navy, provided a unique opportunity to construct large-scale commercial transport ships in an atmosphere. At the time of the purchase, the Terra Gazette called the Stanton II sale the most expensive real estate deal ever done that didn’t involve any real land.
That statement wasn’t completely true. Included in the purchase of the gas giant now known as Crusader were its three moons. No one thought much of the moons when the planet was purchased, but that didn’t stop Crusader CEO Kelly Caplan from devising a plan to utilize them. Encouraging travel on the company’s line of starliners, she wanted tourists to flock to Crusader’s floating platforms for the unique experience of standing in the upper atmosphere of a gas giant, and she hoped to convince them a trip to the planet’s moons would also be worthwhile.
Caplan also let it be known that Crusader welcomed outpost development on these moons. Since space on the floating platforms was extremely limited, they encouraged companies to set up shop on solid ground as another way to increase traffic to their part of the system. Companies needed only to adhere to strict environmental standards meant to preserve each moon’s natural beauty. Many companies found the rules to be too onerous and decided against establishing any operations.
To further entice visitors and companies to Crusader’s moons, Caplan gave them names everyone would recognize — Cellin, Daymar and Yela. The names were taken from characters in a famous 24th century children’s story, A Gift for Baba, a longtime favorite of Caplan’s youth which she in turn had recently begun to read to her own children. The names turned out to be perfect, as each moon had a distinct environment that corresponded to its namesake’s temperament. It also didn’t hurt that the story’s tale of traveling through space fit in with Crusader’s corporate ethos.
Though Caplan’s plan didn’t populate the moons as much as she hoped, several outposts were built and still dot the moons’ surfaces today. Some outposts are abandoned, but many still do brisk business and need haulers to deliver supplies and snag outbound shipments. Yet, the team at THE OBSERVIST doesn’t think that outposts are the reason to visit Crusader’s moons. No, it’s these moons’ stunning pristine vistas, which feature the beautiful, swirling gas giant looming above that make a visit to any of Crusader’s moons memorable.
Cellin (Stanton 2a)
Cellin is Crusader’s closest satellite. Visitors to the moon are greeted by the massive gas giant sitting prominently in the sky above. The view alone will take your breath away and makes for |
, agents recovered numerous classified materials in digital and hard copy forms. The investigation did not reveal evidence that Nishimura intended to distribute classified information to unauthorized personnel.
So what is the difference between Nishimura and Clinton?
Neither of them ever intended to do anything wrong.
So why were they treated so differently?
Needless to say, social media is exploding with outrage over this decision to let Clinton go free. Many Americans are openly asking why they should continue to play by the rules if politicians like Hillary Clinton are not required to do so.
Unfortunately, this is what America has become. Our politicians are a reflection of who we are as a society, and as I have stated before Hillary Clinton is going to be the overwhelming favorite if there is an election in November. At this moment, she has solid leads in all of the “swing states”, and she only really needs to win one of them…
Perhaps you enjoy talk of battleground states. Well, there’s a scenario for you, too. First, pick the six “closest” swing states (VA, NH, IA, OH, FL, NC). Got it? Now understand that New Hampshire excepted, Clinton only has to win one of them in order to reach the requisite 270 electoral votes to win. (Optional third step for Republicans only: start shotgunning Pabst Blue Ribbon and don’t stop until November.) Lest any Trump supporters seek solace in poll numbers, recent polls have Trump sliding further behind in all the relevant swing states. According to a Ballotpedia battleground poll released last week, Trump trails by 14% in Florida, 4% in Iowa, 10% in North Carolina, 9% in Ohio, and 7% in Virginia.
Hillary Clinton is a horrible, evil, miserable human being, and right now she is the odds-on favorite to become the next president of the United States.
But ultimately it is the American people that are to blame for blindly supporting corrupt politicians such as Clinton, and if they willingly pick her to be our next president then we will certainly deserve whatever consequences follow.DUBAI (Reuters) - Two young men were killed and two people wounded in a drive-by shooting attack at an event marking the Shi’ite religious festival of Ashura in Iran late on Friday night, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
Assailants in a car approached a crowd of Shi’ites in the city of Dezful, in the south-western province of Khuzestan, and opened fire at around 2230 (1900 GMT), Fars said, citing an eyewitness.
Hossein Karimi Yeganeh, 28, and Bahman Rezaie, 25, were killed in the attack, and two wounded people were taken to hospital, Fars said. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
The shooting took place at an event commemorating Ashura, a 10-day festival of mourning that commemorates the killing of Hussein, a Shi’ite leader, by his Sunni rival shortly after the Islamic schism.
A similar attack took place at a Shi’ite site in Saudi Arabia on Friday night, where a gunman killed five worshippers before being killed by the police.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for that attack.Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes have a car which is capable of challenging for race wins and the world championship, according to Sir Jackie Stewart.
Mercedes have started the season strongly, with Hamilton finishing fifth and third in the first two races.
Stewart told BBC Sport: "Yes, they can win races. Lewis will drive the living daylights out of whatever car he's got.
Mercedes exist to win and they have the resources to do so Sir Jackie Stewart Three-time world champion
"They can challenge for the title, but they will need to keep up with Red Bull and Ferrari in terms of development."
Kimi Raikkonen won the opening race of the season in Australia, with world champion Sebastian Vettel controversially winning in Malaysia.
Hamilton is currently fourth in the world driver's standings on 25 points, a point behind Red Bull's Mark Webber. Vettel leads on 40 points, with Raikkonen second on 31.
The three-time world champion added: "If the Red Bull is as good as it can be, that's your main opposition, while Ferrari are already more competitive at the start of the season than they were last year.
"The Lotus is very competitive, too, and McLaren will fight back, but [Mercedes team principal] Ross Brawn is an extraordinarily talented man. Mercedes exist to win and they have the resources to do so."
2008 world champion Hamilton joined Mercedes this year after spending six seasons with McLaren, who supported his racing career from the age of 13.
Mercedes, along with their drivers Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, played down hopes for this season despite the car impressing in testing.
But the Silver Arrows were quick in Australia and the second best team in Malaysia, as Hamilton finished third and Rosberg fourth behind the Red Bulls to show that the team had made a step forward.
The next race, which is live on the BBC, is in China on 12-14 April.
Stewart added: "If Mercedes had let Rosberg pass Hamilton in Malaysia, could he have caught the Red Bulls? It's not impossible."
Lewis Hamilton Debut: 2007 Australian Grand Prix
2007 Australian Grand Prix Team: Mercedes
Mercedes Former team: McLaren
McLaren Starts: 112
112 Championships: 1 (2008)
1 (2008) Wins: 21
21 Podiums: 50
50 Pole positions: 26
26 Points: 938
Hamilton has outscored team-mate Rosberg in the first two races, although the German was instructed to hold position in Malaysia, and Stewart believes it is the newcomer who is currently in the strongest position within the team.
Stewart said: "There's no question that Lewis holds the upper hand because he's had more success - he's had more race wins and a championship. He's also started the season well. Nico has won a race [in China last season], but he has yet to follow that up.
"Mercedes have got themselves a very expensive driver and they'll want him to do well.
"They've got the people who Lewis feels will be good for the team. [Technical director] Paddy Lowe is coming from McLaren and I'm sure part of the reason is because Lewis is there.
"Nico is a skilled and talented driver and he may well be better on his tyres but he would have learned his lesson in Malaysia that you can't leave it until the last minute to try and take the initiative. It'll be interesting to see how he responds."I saw a recent poll suggesting that former first lady, United States senator and secretary of State Hillary Clinton would beat Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in a hypothetic presidential campaign, even in the reddest states.
This made me think of a happy thought for Democrats: it is within the realm of possibility that Clinton would win all 50 states in an epic, historic and realigning mega-landslide against the party that threatens a Republican default, a Republican economic crash and a Republican government shutdown.
Here's why:
Republicans have been accused of waging a war against women, a war against workers and a war against the poor. Republicans have been accused of waging a war against the environment while they deny global warming. We even have Republicans waging a war against the American economy, while some Republicans even deny the deadly economic dangers of a U.S. default.
It gets better for Democrats: Now, Republicans are waging a war against everyone. Veterans and military families face hardship because of the Republican shutdown. Small-business people cannot get loans because of the Republican shutdown. Tourists find national parks closed because of the Republican shutdown. It goes on and on and on, which is why Republican polling numbers have been falling like a snowball down a mountain during an avalanche.
It gets even better for Democrats: Republicans have been accused of waging a war against the 99 percent, which is bad enough, as Mitt Romney learned the hard way. But now, Republicans are even waging a war against the 1 percent.
Think about it: If the debt ceiling is not increased and markets crash, the 1 percent get screwed along with everyone else. And -- this is important -- if the government shutdown continues, consumer confidence and consumer purchasing power go down. Retail sales go down. Sales and earnings and profits of most businesses, large and small, go down. And with the latest GOP scheme for a short term deal, which will continue the sadomasochism in Washington through the Christmas shopping season, the Banana Republicans could ruin the holiday for Mom and Dad, the kids, and businesses across America.
Bill and Hillary Clinton represent better days for the economy, and a Clinton presidency that led to powerful economic growth, prosperity and jobs even while the Banana Republicans tried to impeach him. Hillary Clinton represents to voters the ability to lead, the ability to govern, and the ability to grow the economy. If she runs against the Banana Republicans, who are so unpopular today, she could actually win all 50 states in November 2016. That's a happy prospect indeed, for Democrats.What are the benefits of being there? The first application is entertainment. It will not take until 2050 for people in the Western world to start attending concerts and sporting events from the comfort of their couches. Nor need it cost the earth – just as 3D movies are slightly more expensive than their 2D versions, so VR entertainment will be priced comfortably within reach of those who already pay big sums for pay-per-view sports and other events. As more people join in, the prices of the devices will drop.
As the cost declines, so too will the heft of the gadgets. The first VR rigs, invented by VPL Research, a pioneer in the field, were huge things, bulky body suits with lots of trailing wires, data gloves and heavy headsets that looked as if a mechanical octopus had attached itself to the top of the wearer. (A later, smaller version cost some $9000 and was called the EyePhone.) Today they come in two forms. The simpler version is a cradle to slip a smartphone into, such as Samsung's Gear VR or Google's Cardboard (literally a piece of cardboard). The other type is exemplified by the Playstation VR, Oculus Rift or HTC Vive, which come with built-in displays but rely on external processing power (typically in the form of a computer or game console). It is a safe bet that by 2050 even the most demanding devices will not require external processors, and they will be lighter and smaller than anything that exists today.
The second early application of virtual reality is gaming. Gamers have always demanded faster processors, better screens and more reliable connections, happily paying large sums for the privilege of being at the cutting edge of technology. They will do the same again with VR, creating the initial market for new products and giving manufacturers a sample group on which to test new ideas. In the 33 years since Tetris was first released, computer games have become eerily lifelike and immensely complicated, with computer graphics that rival anything in big-budget superhero action movies. The year 2050 is another 33 years away – and the rate of improvement in computer graphics is only accelerating.
These early, easy wins will lead to more useful ones: doctors examining patients from afar; immunocompromised children attending school without fear of catching bugs; factory inspectors checking products via remote robot; soldiers training for unfamiliar terrain; business negotiations where participants can see every fidget of their counterparts – the list goes on.
Yet it is when you look beyond the obvious that VR becomes truly compelling. Chalktalk, a program created by Ken Perlin of New York University, suggests one possible future. Chalktalk is a virtual pad on which its users can sketch anything – shapes, graphs, computer code, mathematical equations – just as they would on a blackboard. The difference is that the shapes become three-dimensional objects, the equations work, the code compiles. In one example, Perlin draws a pendulum and sets it swinging.
Welcome to the future. Virtual reality and augmented reality will become commonplace and so integrated into life they will even change the way cities look. Patrick T. Fallon
The swings are measured on a graph, which is also drawn. In another, he makes a chart, which resolves into a 3D graph. A matrix of logarithms influences the curves. In a third, he sketches a vase, finessing it and refining it until it becomes a fully formed 3D object. Step out for a coffee just a decade or two in the future, and the 3D printer in the corner will have finished manufacturing that object by the time you are back. These far-out ideas are already possible using computer screens and existing technology. But it is easy to see how advanced versions of similar ideas might be used in virtual reality for teaching, collaboration, business, or applications yet to be imagined
An augmented world
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If presence is what makes VR so uniquely powerful, it is also what limits it. This is where augmented reality (AR) comes in. If virtual reality is something that requires being in a delineated space where you don't crash against walls or coffee tables, augmented reality is made for the outside world. AR is to smartphones what VR is to desktop computers.
Again, existing technology hints at what is possible. Pilots have for years used "heads-up displays" projected onto the front of their cockpits or on visors mounted on their helmets. These displays are becoming common on car windscreens too. But this is the most primitive form of AR. A slightly more advanced version is Google Glass, which displays information in a pair of spectacles worn like normal glasses. But it shows only a small rectangular display, which is not that much better than a screen held in a hand and seen at a distance. Magic Leap, a secretive Florida-based start-up, goes one better: its technology shows 3D objects that bear some relation to the objects around them.
Yet these too are for the moment novelties – models of the solar system, for example, rather than useful information overlaid onto the real world. Indeed, that is what makes AR trickier than VR: the glasses must not only display information but also map and understand the physical world, sense depth and distance, crunch data to figure out what they are looking at and place objects in the correct positions.
There are genuine issues to worry about, says author Leo Mirani: "The companies that make these devices will transmit back to their headquarters every twist of your neck, every flick of your pupils, every reaction to stimulus." Supplied
By 2050 this will be the norm. In advanced societies, AR glasses will have replaced smartphones for all but the most technophobic. No longer will directions be displayed as blue lines on flat smartphone screens. Instead they will appear as trails to be followed on the streets ahead. Restaurant menus will be redundant. Walk past a café and its entire selection will be available to scroll through, with steaming projections of what the dishes look like. Conversations with people who speak other languages will be simultaneously translated.
Plumbers will go out of business as detailed visual instructions for fixing a blocked sink will be readily available, overlaid on the problematic drain. Buses need not display information. Your glasses can tell you the bus number, its destination, its route and the expected time of arrival in a language of your choice. Municipal authorities could scrub away the road markings and signs that mar our cities.
The visual clutter of early 21st-century life will be replaced by pristine environments in which what we see depends only on what we need to know, and nothing more. We will also be able to decide what level of reality we want. Most of it? Or as little as possible? We could spend our days wandering around 14th-century versions of our cities if we so desired, and still be fully functioning creatures of the 21st. Just as no two smartphones are the same once you turn them on – each user has a different set of apps, shortcuts and contacts – so will the world appear different to each one of us.
If this sounds far-fetched, consider that many newspapers no longer publish print editions, that London buses no longer accept cash as a form of payment, that there are taxis on our streets that bear no external signage and can be hailed only through an app (and for all practical purposes are invisible as taxis to those without smartphones), and that all of this has happened within a decade of the introduction of the first iPhone.
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Not all the social implications have been thought through: Users who don't comply with the rules may find themselves cut off, cast adrift into a world with no reality but the real one. Sascha Schuermann
The coming of virtual reality has been predicted for at least a quarter of a century. The latest wave of excitement – triggered in large part by the purchase of Oculus, a VR start-up, by Facebook for $2 billion in 2014 – brings to mind the optimism of the early 1990s. But there is cause to believe that this time is different.
First, the number of people who use computers is manyfold larger. The pool of early adopters who might cough up cash to buy the latest thing is correspondingly much larger as well. Second, the amount of money needed is tiny by most standards. In 1990 a prototype VR headset cost nearly $10,000; in 2016 the Oculus Rift was priced at $599. In less than a decade the price is likely to have dropped by an order of magnitude.
By 2050 it will be cheap enough to reach much of the world, not just the rich bits. Third, VR has gone from something that was the domain of geeks in Silicon Valley to a technology for which every major entertainment company is preparing content. More and more film festivals have a VR section; gamesmakers are releasing titles in VR. In the early 1990s, studio executives would say, of embracing new technologies, "Why bother?" recalls Nick Demartino, who at the time ran a technology studio at the American Film Institute. Today, he says, they are terrified of missing out.
The fourth reason for optimism is that the technology VR needs has now advanced to a point where it is not wildly impractical to think that it is poised to take off. The internet is everywhere, processing power is cheap and plentiful, and high-definition displays have been here for years.
Your glasses can tell you the bus number, its destination, its route and the expected time of arrival in a language of your choice. Municipal authorities could scrub away the road markings and signs that mar our cities. Supplied
But for VR to fulfil its potential, technology needs to progress farther, making both incremental improvements as well as great leaps.
Take incremental improvements first. Already telecoms operators are racing to be the first to offer 5G mobile networks. The vast majority of the world uses either 3G mobile broadband or 4G/LTE, which transmits data 10 times faster than its predecessor (the G stands for "generation"). The next version, 5G, will be anywhere between 10 and 100 times faster than 4G/LTE, but it will come with other improvements as well, including support for lots of devices at the same time and extremely low latency (the time lost in the process of transmission)
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High-speed connections are important not only to access information, but also to connect to processing power. As Moore's law, the 1965 rule of thumb whereby processors get twice as fast every 12 months (later amended to 24 months), stops working its magic (see Chapter 4), computation will move to the cloud. For lightweight AR glasses to become a reality, they will need to be in constant communication with bigger computers somewhere far away.
Other technologies will need to improve too. Displays will become lighter, pixels smaller and denser, and computer graphics will have ever more polygons. These things are a matter of when, not if. They are already in development.
Then there are the technologies that are yet to mature. A modern smartphone conceals within it a dozen or so sensors. But that number will explode, both within and outside our machines. The world will need to be crammed full of tiny sensors for our new devices to know where they are and what they are looking at, and to understand space and depth. This is easier to imagine indoors. Living rooms or offices can be kitted out with sensors and 3D projectors. Discreet devices can project lifelike objects or avatars of people, while sensors track our movements and interactions with them. This too is not far in the future: Microsoft's Kinect, a gaming device, can sense movement.
Advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning will also be important. One person using an AR device is a lot less useful than a hundred million people using AR: the usage patterns and behaviours from a massive number of users can be analysed to improve the technology, allowing machines to figure out what people expect when they look at something or tilt their heads in a particular fashion.
Great leaps forward
Farther into the future, it is the great leaps that will make VR and AR appear seamless in 2050. We may experiment with things like sensor-laden wristbands or clothing with circuitry woven into them. As time passes, technology will come ever closer to our bodies – eventually finding its way inside us. It starts with contact lenses instead of glasses. The technology for this, in a rudimentary form, is coming into view. In 2016 Samsung applied for a patent for smart contact lenses.
From contact lenses it is a short leap to imagine a simple operation to replace the lens of the eye with a technologically superior version, perhaps done at birth. While we are getting speculative, why not replace the entire eyeball with one that comprises all the gadgetry required to make AR work? Indeed, as human beings become more comfortable with the idea of implants, technology will burrow its way deeper into us, perhaps concluding with implants in the brain.
Pessimists predict that VR will make the world a lonely place, with people absorbed in their private virtual worlds at the expense of the real world around them. VR will rot our children's brains, they fret. Keystone
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That is how we receive information. But how do we transmit it? When Minority Report, a film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, was released in 2002, its vision of the future was one where computers were panels of glass that required touch and gesture to manipulate. This has come to pass; moving our fingers around glass screens has become a natural form of input. Even infants can figure it out. Dale Herigstad, an "advanced interaction consultant" and one of the people who worked on the film's futuristic interface, thinks he didn't go far enough. Why do you need big screens when empty space is a good enough canvas to project upon and draw shapes on?
Just as glass screens as displays will seem archaic by 2050, so too will the idea of bashing away at a keyboard seem antediluvian. Google is working on something called Project Soli, which uses radar to sense the movements of fingers; the idea is that natural actions, such as turning a radio knob or pressing a button, can be simulated without the need for actual knobs or buttons. Herigstad thinks that we will create something akin to sign language: entire new grammars and vocabularies to communicate with our machines, languages that will feel as natural as swiping left on a smartphone screen (which itself is something that did not exist a decade ago).
Or perhaps systems will evolve by 2050 that allow machines to look directly into our brainwaves. This is not as remote as it sounds; at least one company, called Emotiv, has been formed to explore the possibilities of what it calls "brain-computer interfaces". Long before that we will be able to control things simply by looking at them and blinking. The technology for this, too, is in development – and it works, if in a rudimentary fashion.
There is a third, equally important aspect to virtual reality, beyond display and input: haptic (or physical) feedback. Touching a smartphone screen is a satisfying experience because of the resistance offered by a stiff piece of glass. Drawing shapes in the air may work because of visual cues. But what of things that require physical sensation, such as shaking hands? A decade or two ago the answer might have been tech-enabled gloves. But the future offers better. Nonny de la Peña, a pioneer of VR, believes it is sound you cannot hear that carries the answer to haptic feedback.
Sound travels in waves, and as anyone who has ever attended a rock concert can attest, it is possible to feel the bass pulsating through the crowd. At the right frequency, pitched at the correct angle, sound could also provide the sensation of touching something, of shaking hands with a virtual friend several thousand miles away.
None of these systems needs to work perfectly on its own. Nor will they be right for every situation. But working together, along with technologies as yet undreamed of, they provide the basis for a world in which computers have ceased to exist as things we carry around. Instead, they will be everywhere, including inside us.
No hiding place
Society will have to accept certain trade-offs to enjoy this future. The first is constant, near-perfect surveillance. Today, the data collected by your smartphone already know more about you than your partner or your mother. With GPS tracking, motion sensors and call logs, it is possible to draw a rich picture of your day-to-day activities. Add in browsing on social networks and search history, and your smartphone may know you better than you know yourself.
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But there are still things that machines don't know about us. With VR, this will change. The companies that make these devices will transmit back to their headquarters every twist of your neck, every flick of your pupils, every reaction to stimulus. This surveillance will reach further in AR: devicemakers will be able to see everything you see. They will, literally, be able to see the world through your eyes.
An employee wearing a virtual reality (VR) headset and using an electronic rifle participates in a demonstration at the SoReal virtual reality park in Beijing, China. Sky Limit Entertainment Group's SoReal, a start-up co-founded by Zhang Yimou, the director of 'House of Flying Daggers' and 'The Great Wall', is preparing to open this year what the company bills to be the world's first virtual-reality park. Gilles Sabrie
The companies in charge will claim they have no choice, as these data form the basis on which the service works and, besides, they help improve it for the next version and for other users. They will point out that no human beings have access to this information, that only machines and algorithms ever sift through it. They will have a point. But that does not make it any less creepy. Moreover, governments will inevitably want access to all that information as well. It will be too valuable to pass up.
Present-day users of smartphones and free web services have shown that they are willing to give up some degree of privacy in exchange for convenience. This is on the understanding that their data will be used to make profits – through targeted advertising, for example – and not abused to track their moves. So long as this compact holds, increasing surveillance is unlikely to bother everyday consumers.
But the future will require a more robust framework than exists today. Those that work in the field hold out hope that regulatory, legal and enforcement powers will keep large corporations, as well as overreaching government agencies, in check. The debate that started with Edward Snowden's massive leaks in 2013 is gathering momentum, and both companies and bureaucrats have pushed back against excessive data collection by states. Meanwhile, antitrust agencies around the world are keeping a check on big tech companies.
The second concern is that our world will be irredeemably mediated by corporations. To judge by the current state of consumer technology, it will be a small handful of firms that come to dominate the business of VR and AR. Every developer will be beholden to them; every consumer will have to agree to their terms and conditions. Their views of what constitutes acceptable behaviour and content (informed by the cultures they come from and by lawyers who want to limit liability) will form the basis of our interactions with the world. Indeed, just as they can disappear things from search results or social-network feeds, the power of AR may allow them to disappear people and objects from the real world too – it is all there but you just can't see it.
Users who don't comply with the rules may find themselves cut off, cast adrift into a world with no reality but the real one. And the manner in which VR is evolving is very different from the development of the internet. Whereas the web was built on open standards and on the principle that anyone should be able to access, publish and link to each other, VR is being dominated by large companies with a fondness for "walled gardens".
Society will have to come up with ways to check the power of these companies, perhaps by enshrining new rights. Today, if Facebook or Google shuts down an account, its owner has little recourse. But as our online selves take shape, the question of who has the right to our avatars will become more urgent. Is signing up to a company's terms and conditions enough to sign away your virtual life? Or will companies have to allow their users to freely import and export their data? The latter seems more likely. Other rights will be up for debate too. What is your right to see the world unmediated, with naked eyes? Does that conflict with others' rights to block you or stay hidden? For a world based on virtual and augmented reality to work, these questions will need to be answered sooner rather than later.
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A third worry is security. Despite years of work, computer security is nowhere near perfect. Even the most secure systems can be broken into by a determined hacker. And at the consumer level, security is only as good as any individual's ability to adhere to best practices. It is possible that by 2050 computer security will have advanced to a point where strong encryption, properly implemented, is the default, where passwords are a thing of the past and where it requires the might of a nation-state to break into systems. With the notable exception of Yahoo, the biggest tech companies have shown themselves up to the task of maintaining user security: hacking incidents at Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple are notable by their absence. This may be one positive result of a VR world run by giants.
The final concern is perhaps the least worrying. Pessimists predict that VR will make the world a lonely place, with people absorbed in their private virtual worlds at the expense of the real world around them. VR will rot our children's brains, they fret. But these worries have been repeated over and over, about everything from social media, video games, television and rock music in the 20th century to the printing press in the 16th and indeed the written word in the time of Socrates (at least according to Plato).
Augmented reality is made for the outside world. AR is to smartphones what VR is to desktop computers. Pau Barrena
Greybeards complain that children these days spend all their time staring into smartphone screens, but the kids in question are using their devices to engage with the world around them – taking pictures to Snapchat to their friends, Whatsapping about things they see, observing life in all its colour – rather than wandering around in made-up worlds. Even as technology changes, human beings remain fundamentally the same, and this means we will always want to interact with the world of flesh and flora.
The above is an edited extract from Megatech by Daniel Franklin, published by Allen & Unwin.
Leo Mirani is The Economist magazine's news editor. Previously he reported on technology for Quartz. The author would like to thank the following people for their generosity with their time and insight: Justin Hendrix, Janet Murray, Alastair Reynolds, Mark Skwarek and Saschka Unseld. Megatech is a production of The EconomistFor almost thirty years, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) tragically allowed public outrage and political pressure to dictate its strategy in combating the street gangs that terrorized Chicago’s neighborhoods. Now that the violence has slowed to record-low levels, President Obama and his administration need to look no further than his own hometown to find the best strategy for addressing the ISIS threat.
Until a recent change in CPD tactics, gang violence destroyed communities with law enforcement’s blindly implemented anti-gang policing strategies proving ineffective. These tactics were the result of public outrage and political pressure and they showed a fundamental lack of understanding of the threat they intended to address. So, too, is the U.S. military’s plan to combat ISIS with traditional military tactics.
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In 1978, Larry Hoover, the leader of a violent Chicago street gang known as the Gangster Disciple Nation, persuaded the leaders of the city’s various ethnic gangs to form an alliance, creating the nation’s first domestic “supergang.” The founding principles of this organization, now called the Folk Nation, were to establish a social and financial support structure for disenfranchised inner city youth, profit from illicit activities, and consolidate power within the geographic borders of their “turf.”
Over the ensuing years, the gang found footholds throughout the Chicagoland area and the public paid little attention. But on October 13, 1992, after seven-year-old Dantrell Davis was killed during a shootout between the Folk Nation and a rival gang, the public demanded immediate action from city officials. Under considerable political pressure, the CPD was forced to initiate an aggressive campaign to stamp out violent street gangs in the Windy City.
In attempt to quash the gang threat, the CPD engaged specialized strike forces to attack strategic strongholds, initiated aggressive suppression tactics in high-crime neighborhoods (e.g., random stops), and targeted gang leaders for heightened surveillance and stiff criminal justice sanctions. All three proved to be woefully inadequate and as a result, street gangs actually became entrenched in the social fabric of the communities they operated in, gaining power rather than being neutralized.
The tactics and strategies of the Folk Nation have shown striking similarities to those employed today by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) – a modern international “supergang” – and the U.S. military is resorting to the same tactics the CPD used to no avail.
In 2006, what is known as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) was formed by an alliance between the Mujahedeen Shura Council in Iraq, al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, Jund al-Sahhaba, and certain groups within Jabhat al-Nusra. The group overran US-trained and equipped Iraqi troops in Mosul and Tikrit for months, gaining ground and taking hold. As with the Dantrell Davis killing, it wasn’t until ISIS released the video execution of journalist James Foley that the public at large demanded action and began to call for an immediate armed response.
We are not recognizing that while ISIS has adopted more conventional battle tactics than Al Qaeda ever utilized, it shares more traits with U.S. street gangs in its origin, operating style, and culture than it does with any traditional military force. Like a street gang, ISIS is a social movement more than a military unit, which is why we are seeing young disenfranchised American Muslims leave the United States to join ISIS. Therefore, conventional wartime strategies will fail to neutralize it.
Look no further than how communities reacted to the CPD’s gang response strategies. Specialized strike units led to corruption and further misconduct. Gang suppression campaigns snared combatants and civilians alike, causing community relations to break down and making it harder for officers to work effectively in their communities. Increased search and arrest tactics fomented tensions between community leaders and those charged with their protection, putting officers at odds with those who could provide a counterbalance to influential gang leaders. As a result, youths fled to the open arms of street gangs.
Similarly, using drone strikes to target ISIS “leaders” fails to acknowledge that ISIS has a somewhat disorganized and remarkably fluid leadership structure. The eradication of one leader leads to someone else filling the vacuum, which further destabilizes communities as younger, less experienced leaders emerge and revert to violent measures to consolidate power.
Back in Chicago, last month marked the 22nd anniversary of Dantrell Davis’ death. After three decades of steady gang violence, in 2013 the city finally realized an overall crime rate reduction to a level not seen since 1972. The number of shooting incidents involving victims sixteen and younger dropped by more than 40 percent.
City officials insist these numbers are evidence that revisiting its anti-gang strategy to empower local community groups, eliminate barriers to reintegration, create and expand after-school programs, and establish mentoring programs for young people have directly resulted in the reduction of street violence.
To be sure, the CPD’s new tactics – social mobility programs, increased financial aid, and community outreach – will not eliminate ISIS altogether, but the lessons the CPD learned after 30 years provide a rough guide to how we should view these organizations and address these threats.
We cannot afford to continue charging forth into a blind conflict with ISIS where the strategies are dictated by political pressure instead of well thought out tactics. If we do, any measure of military success will prove to be a pyrrhic victory in the region, radicalizing another generation of Middle Eastern men and women and further exacerbating the problem. With history as our guide, these are lessons we should take note of sooner rather than later.
Hillmann is a director at LEVICK, where he provides crisis and geopolitical strategic communications services to foreign heads of state and C-suite executives in a variety of industries, including technology, energy, defense, and finance.IT was not very long after this that there occurred the first of the mysterious events that rid us at last of the captain, though not, as you will see, of his affairs. It was a bitter cold winter, with long, hard frosts and heavy gales; and it was plain from the first that my poor father was little likely to see the spring. He sank daily, and my mother and I had all the inn upon our hands, and were kept busy enough without paying much regard to our unpleasant guest.
It was one January morning, very early—a pinching, frosty morning—the cove all grey with hoar-frost, the ripple lapping softly on the stones, the sun still low and only touching the hilltops and shining far to seaward. The captain had risen earlier than usual and set out down the beach, his cutlass swinging under the broad skirts of the old blue coat, his brass telescope under his arm, his hat tilted back upon his head. I remember his breath hanging like smoke in his wake as he strode off, and the last sound I heard of him as he turned the big rock was a loud snort of indignation, as though his mind was still running upon Dr. Livesey.
Well, mother was upstairs with father and I was laying the breakfast-table against the captain’s return when the parlour door opened and a man stepped in on whom I had never set my eyes before. He was a pale, tallowy creature, wanting two fingers of the left hand, and though he wore a cutlass, he did not look |
IUDs has increased within the United States from 0.8% in 1995 to 5.6% from the period of 2006 to 2010.[17] The use of IUDs as a form of birth control dates from the 1800s.[1] A previous model known as the Dalkon shield was associated with an increased risk of pelvic inflammatory disease (PID). However, current models do not affect PID risk in women without sexually transmitted infections during the time of insertion.[18]
Types [ edit ]
The types of intrauterine devices available, and the names they go by, differ by location. In the United States, there are two types available:[19]
The WHO ATC labels both copper and hormonal devices as IUDs. In the United Kingdom, there are more than 10 different types of copper IUDs available. In the United Kingdom, the term IUD refers only to these copper devices. Hormonal intrauterine contraception is considered to be a different type of birth control and is labeled with the term intrauterine system (IUS).[20][21]
Copper[22] Mirena[23] Skyla[24] Liletta[25] Kyleena[26] Hormone (total in device) None 52 mg levonorgestrel 13.5 mg levonorgestrel 52 mg levonorgestrel 19.5 mg levonorgestrel Initial amount released None 20 μg/day 14 μg/day 18.6 μg/day 16 μg/day Approved effectiveness 10 years (12 years) 5 years (7 years) 3 years 3 years (5 years) 5 years Mechanism of action Copper toxic to sperm -Levonorgestrel thickens cervical mucus to prevent sperm from reaching egg -Prevents ovulation at times Advantages among IUDs -No hormones -Emergency contraception -Various hormone level options -Lighter periods after 3 months Disadvantages among IUDs Heavier menstrual flow and cramps Ovarian cysts (although they can be asymptomatic)
Copper [ edit ]
A copper T-shaped IUD with removal strings
An IUD as seen on pelvic X ray
Most copper IUDs have a plastic T-shaped frame that is wound around with pure electrolytic copper wire and/or has copper collars (sleeves). The arms of the frame hold the IUD in place near the top of the uterus. The Paragard TCu 380a measures 32 mm (1.26") horizontally (top of the T), and 36 mm (1.42") vertically (leg of the T). Copper IUDs have a first year failure rate ranging from 0.1 to 2.2%.[27] They work by damaging sperm and disrupting their motility so that they are not able to join an egg. Specifically, copper acts as a spermicide within the uterus by increasing levels of copper ions, prostaglandins, and white blood cells within the uterine and tubal fluids.[12][28] The increased copper ions in the cervical mucus inhibit the sperm's motility and viability, preventing sperm from traveling through the cervical mucus, or destroying it as it passes through.[29] Copper can also alter the endometrial lining, but studies show that while this alteration can prevent implantation of a fertilized egg ("blastocyst"), it cannot disrupt one that has already been implanted.[30]
Advantages of the copper IUD include its ability to provide emergency contraception up to five days after unprotected sex. It is the most effective form of emergency contraception available.[31] It works by preventing fertilization or implantation but does not affect already implanted embryos.[30] It contains no hormones, so it can be used while breastfeeding, and fertility returns quickly after removal.[32] Copper IUDs also last longer and are available in a wider range of sizes and shapes compared to hormonal IUDs.[14] Disadvantages include the possibility of heavier menstrual periods and more painful cramps.[12]
IUDs that contain gold or silver also exist.[20][33] Other shapes of IUD include the so-called U-shaped IUDs, such as the Load and Multiload, and the frameless IUD that holds several hollow cylindrical minuscule copper beads. It is held in place by a suture (knot) to the fundus of the uterus. It is mainly available in China and Europe. A framed copper IUD called the IUB SCu300 coils when deployed and forms a three-dimensional spherical shape. It is based on a nickel titanium shape memory alloy core.[34] In addition to copper, noble metal and progestogen IUDs; people in China can get copper IUDs with indomethacin. This non-hormonal compound reduces the severity of menstrual bleeding, and these coils are popular.[35]
Inert [ edit ]
Inert IUDs do not have a bioactive component. They are made of inert materials like stainless steel (such as the stainless steel ring (SSR), a flexible ring of steel coils that can deform to be inserted through the cervix) or plastic (such as the Lippes Loop, which can be inserted through the cervix in a cannula and takes a trapezoidal shape within the uterus). They are less effective than copper or hormonal IUDs, with a side effect profile similar to copper IUDs. Their primary mechanism of action is inducing a local foreign body reaction, which makes the uterine environment hostile both to sperm and to implantation of an embryo.[36] They may have higher rates of preventing pregnancy after fertilization, instead of before fertilization, compared to copper or hormonal IUDs.[37]
Inert IUDs are not yet approved for use in the United States, UK, or Canada. In China, where IUDs are the most common form of contraception, copper IUD production replaced inert IUD production in 1993.[38] However, as of 2008, the most common IUD used by immigrants presenting to Canadian clinics for removal of IUDs placed in China was still the SSR. Because the SSR has no string for removal, it can present a challenge to healthcare providers unfamiliar with IUD types not available in their region.[39]
Hormonal [ edit ]
Hormonal IUDs (brand names Mirena, Skyla, Kyleena, and Liletta; referred to as intrauterine systems in the UK) work by releasing a small amount of levonorgestrel, a progestin. Each type varies in size, amount of levonorgestrel released, and duration. For example, Mirena and Liletta measure 32x32mm while Skyla and Kyleena measure 28x30mm. The primary mechanism of action is making the inside of the uterus uninhabitable for sperm.[40] They can also thin the endometrial lining and potentially impair implantation but this is not their usual function.[41][42] Because they thin the endometrial lining, they can also reduce or even prevent menstrual bleeding. As a result, they are used to treat menorrhagia (heavy menses), once pathologic causes of menorrhagia (such as uterine polyps) have been ruled out.[43]
The progestin released by hormonal IUDs primarily acts locally; use of Mirena results in much lower systemic progestin levels than other very-low-dose progestogen only contraceptives.[44]
Mirena is approved for use up to five years in the US, though studies support its efficacy for up to seven years.[45] Like Mirena, Kyleena is also approved for up to 5 years but is smaller and releases slightly less levonorgestrel. Skyla is even smaller and releases an even lower dose of levonorgestrel than Kyleena, but is only approved for up to three years. Liletta is more similar to Mirena in both shape and dose of levonorgestrel released; it has currently been approved for usage up to three years.[46]
Adverse effects [ edit ]
Regardless of IUD type, there are some potential side effects that are similar for all IUDs. Some of these side effects include bleeding pattern changes, expulsion, pelvic inflammatory disease (especially in the first 21 days after insertion), and rarely uterine perforation. A small probability of pregnancy remains after IUD insertion, and when it occurs there's a greater risk of ectopic pregnancy.[47]
IUDs with progestogen confer an increased risk of ovarian cysts,[48] and IUDs with copper confer an increased risk of heavier periods.
Menstrual cup companies recommend that women with IUDs who are considering using menstrual cups should consult with their gynecologists before use. There have been rare cases in which women using IUDs dislodged them when removing their menstrual cups, however, this can also happen with tampon use.[49]
Unlike condoms, the IUD does not protect against sexually transmitted infections.[50]
Myth Fact IUDs can cause infertility IUDs do not lead to infertility or make it harder for a woman to become pregnant. Some of the prior studies that found an association between IUDs and infertility were investigating the Dalkon Shield which is no longer used.[51] IUDs cause infections IUDs do not cause increased infection. Once again, this is likely referring to the Dalkon Shield which is no longer used. The IUD contained multifilament strings which provided bacteria a space to grow and move up the string. Today’s IUDs use monofilament strings in order to prevent this from happening. [52] However, as with any medical intervention, IUDs can lead to increased risk of infection immediately after the insertion. IUDs should only be used by older and/or monogamous women IUDs are not solely for older and/or monogamous women. According to the U.S. Medical Eligibility Criteria for Contraceptive Use, women who have not had children and adolescents are classified as a category 2 for IUD use.[53] This means that the benefits generally outweigh the risks although more careful attention may be required.[54] A woman is supposed to have her period regularly to be healthy. Women do not need to have periods regularly. A period signifies the end of a woman’s body preparing for pregnancy. If a woman does not desire pregnancy, then she does not need a period. There is a condition known as polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) which causes women to miss their periods and can lead to an increased risk of endometrial cancer.[55] However, an IUD causes the endometrial lining of a uterus to thin which is the opposite of what is occurring with PCOS.
Insertion and removal [ edit ]
Removal strings of an intrauterine device exiting the cervical os of a nulliparous woman. Image was taken immediately after insertion and injection of lidocaine.
It is difficult to predict what a woman will experience during IUD insertion or removal. Some women describe the insertion as cramps, some as a pinch, and others do not feel anything. Substantial pain with insertion that needs active management occurs in approximately 17% of nulliparous women and approximately 11% of parous women.[56] In such cases, NSAIDs are effective.[56] However, no prophylactic analgesic drug have been found to be effective for routine use for women undergoing IUD insertion.[56]
During the insertion procedure, health care providers use a speculum to find the cervix (the opening to the uterus) and then use an insertion device to place the IUD in the uterus. The insertion device goes through the cervix which is what causes the pain felt during the insertion. The procedure itself, if uncomplicated, should take no more than five to ten minutes.[57] Generally, the removal is not nearly as painful as the insertion because there is no instrument that needs to go through the cervix.[58] This process requires that the health care provider to find the cervix with a speculum and then use ring forceps, which only go into the vagina, in order to grasp the IUD strings and then pull the IUD out.
Mechanism [ edit ]
Illustration of intrauterine device
IUDs primarily work by preventing fertilization.[59] The progestogen released from hormonal IUDs mainly works by thickening the cervical mucus, preventing sperm from reaching the fallopian tubes. IUDs may also function by preventing ovulation from occurring but this only occurs partially.[60][61]
Copper IUDs do not contain any hormones, but release copper ions, which are toxic to sperm. They also cause the uterus and fallopian tubes to produce a fluid that contains white blood cells, copper ions, enzymes, and prostaglandins, which is also toxic to sperm.[60] The very high effectiveness of copper-containing IUDs as emergency contraceptives implies they may also act by preventing implantation of the blastocyst.[62][63]
History [ edit ]
The history of intrauterine devices dates back to the early 1900s. Unlike IUDs, early interuterine devices crossed both the vagina and the uterus, causing a high rate of pelvic inflammatory disease in a time period when gonorrhea was more common. The first IUD was developed in 1909 by the German physician Richard Richter, of Waldenburg. His device was made of silkworm gut and was not widely used.[64]
Ernst Gräfenberg, another German physician (after whom the G-spot is named), created the first Ring IUD, Gräfenberg's ring, made of silver filaments. His work was suppressed during the Nazi regime, when contraception was considered a threat to Aryan women.[64] He moved to the United States, where his colleagues H. Hall and M. Stone took up his work after his death and created the stainless steel Hall-Stone Ring. A Japanese doctor named Tenrei Ota also developed a silver or gold IUD called the Precea or Pressure Ring.[64]
Jack Lippes helped begin the increase of IUD use in the United States in the late 1950s. In this time, thermoplastics, which can bend for insertion and retain their original shape, became the material used for first-generation IUDs. Lippes also devised the addition of the monofilament nylon string, which facilitates IUD removal. His trapezoid shape Lippes Loop IUD became one of the most popular first-generation IUDs. In the following years, many different shaped plastic IUDs were invented and marketed.[64] These included the infamous Dalkon Shield, whose poor design caused bacterial infection and led to thousands of lawsuits. Although the Dalkon shield was removed from the market, it had a lasting, negative impact on IUD use and reputation in the United States.[65] Lazar C. Margulies developed the first plastic IUD using thermoplastics in the 1960s.[66] His innovation allowed insertion of the IUD into the uterus without the need to dilate the cervix.[67]
The invention of the copper IUD in the 1960s brought with it the capital 'T' shaped design used by most modern IUDs. U.S. physician Howard Tatum determined that the 'T' shape would work better with the shape of the uterus, which forms a 'T' when contracted. He predicted this would reduce rates of IUD expulsion.[64] Together, Tatum and Chilean physician Jaime Zipper discovered that copper could be an effective spermicide and developed the first copper IUD, TCu200. Improvements by Tatum led to the creation of the TCu380A (ParaGard), which is currently the preferred copper IUD.[64]
The hormonal IUD was also invented in the 1960s and 1970s; initially the goal was to mitigate the increased menstrual bleeding associated with copper and inert IUDs. The first model, Progestasert, was conceived of by Antonio Scommegna and created by Tapani J. V. Luukkainen, but the device only lasted for one year of use.[65] Progestasert was manufactured until 2001.[68] One commercial hormonal IUD which is currently available, Mirena, was also developed by Luukkainen and released in 1976.[64] The manufacturer of the Mirena, Bayer AG, became the target of multiple lawsuits over allegations that Bayer failed to adequately warn users that the IUD could pierce the uterus and migrate to other parts of the body.[69]
China [ edit ]
In China, the use of IUDs by state health services was part of the government's efforts to limit birth rates. From 1980 to 2014, 324 million women were inserted with IUDs, in addition to the 107 million who had tubal ligation. Women who refused could lose their government employment and their children could lose access to public schools. The IUDs inserted in this way were modified such that they could not be removed in a doctor's office (meant to be left indefinitely), and surgical removal is usually needed.[70] Until the mid-1990s, the state-preferred IUD was a stainless steel ring,[71][72] which had a higher rate of complications compared to other types of IUD. It gave rise to the idiom 上环 ( Shànghuán ) meaning "insert a loop". Nowadays, the IUDs include T and V shapes, the former being the most common and easiest to remove.
To implement the two-child policy, the government announced IUD-removals be paid for by the government.[70] Women "who are allowed to have another child" (see one-child policy) or "who cannot continue to have the IUD for health reasons" get free removals, everyone else do not.[73]
Cost [ edit ]
The price of an IUD may range from $0 to $1300.00.[74][clarification needed]“I’ll get there an hour early,” I thought to myself. “Maybe there will be ten or fifteen people in line, but I need some time to get photos before the doors open.” I arrive at 9:06 to a packed parking lot and a long line. I’m #56 in line at Tesla’s Cleveland location, one of three stores in my home state of Ohio, and it’s raining.
We don’t have one of those cushy indoor mall Tesla Stores in Cleveland. The storefront is actually in an old Infiniti dealership. So it was umbrellas out for fellow line waiters and myself.
Two guys behind me arrive from Ann Arbor, Michigan, a three-hour drive. “Yeah, we can’t buy Teslas in Michigan,” says one of the guys (referring to Michigan’s statewide ban on Tesla sales and service locations). “It was almost the same distance to Columbus (OH) and Cleveland. We figured this line would be shorter, so we came here.” Another person is there to reserve two Model 3’s for her family. “I dropped off the kids and came straight here! This will probably end up being my son’s first car. He’s 8 now.”
By the time the doors open at 10:00, the line has swollen to over 100 people. Cars are still pulling in the lot. Tesla employees make their way through us with great efficiency. It’s all hands on deck, and there are at least eight stations within the store processing new reservation holders. By about 10:25, I’m in the door and getting processed by a Tesla representative named Brandon, who enters my information into an iPad.
The line at Tesla Cleveland around 9:30 am. Brandan checking in a Model 3 reservation-holder. Model 3 reserver gets his credit card out to make the $1000 deposit. Cleveland Tesla representative checks in a Model 3 reserver from Buffalo, NY.
“I go to Kent State,” says Brandan, referring to my kent.edu email address (where I also attended college, and with whom I’m now employed). It turns out he is the fully loaded P90D with Ludicrous mode I see driving around campus all the time. Tesla often allows store employees to borrow demo cars. I chuckle at the notion of a college student driving around in a $130k car. Lucky kid.
Three minutes of information gathering and short conversation with Brandon later, and I’m done. I’ve officially reserved a $35,000 car I know practically nothing about: a car I will be lucky to get in two years.
So now, with visions of affordable semi-autonomous cars driving in my head, I wait. Tonight at 8:30 pm PST, Elon Musk will unveil the Model 3 to the world.
I hope I like it. I’ve already bought one.Kelli Ward, a Republican candidate vying for Sen. John McCain's Arizona Senate seat, won her second congressional endorsement Monday. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call File Photo)
Former state Sen. Kelli Ward, who is challenging Arizona Sen. John McCain in the Aug. 30 Republican primary, won her second congressional endorsement Monday.
Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie endorsed Ward and donated $2,000 to her campaign.
A statement from the Ward campaign called Massie a "major figure in the so-called liberty movement begun by former Texas Congressman Ron Paul who has also endorsed Ward."
[Roll Call's 2016 Election Guide: Senate]
“We need Dr. Ward in the U.S. Senate to stand with Rand Paul and Mike Lee," Massie said in a statement, referring to the junior senators from Kentucky and Utah.
"Her insights from the real world as a mother, military wife, and physician will be an invaluable addition in the fight against career politicians to reduce spending, reverse our national debt, repeal Obamacare, and return to a responsible foreign policy," Massie said.
Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert was the first member of Congress to endorse Ward. She's expected to pick up another congressional endorsement from a member of the House Freedom Caucus soon.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated that Massie is a member of the House Freedom Caucus.It’s common to hear that if your car is damaged due to a pothole, you should file a claim to get the locality responsible for the road to cover the expenses. Good luck with that.
Flat tires, bent rims: This winter has been full of them, thanks to months of hellacious weather and an epically bad environment for potholes. Hand-in-hand with this year’s plague of potholes is a surge in pothole-related damage claims filed around the country.
For instance, the Sun Times reported this week that more than 1,100 pothole-related claims were recently submitted in Chicago. Not only did the figure represent a record high, it was nearly quadruple the number of claims introduced at a city council meeting in February (305), which at the time was the highest monthly total seen in four years.
In Chicago, and throughout the country, a driver has the right to file a claim when a car is damaged as a result of a pothole, or any other unsafe road condition that is supposed to be addressed by local public works crews. But for a wide range of reasons, most claims are rejected, and even when cities do pay up, they rarely cover the full costs of repair. Some towns, counties, and entire states are notorious for being ruthless when it comes to rejecting claims, paying off drivers under only the most egregious of circumstances.
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(MORE: End of the Road for Speed Traps?)
In theory, Chicago can cover damage claims up to $2,000—above that, you have to take the city to court—but it maintains a general rule of paying no more than one-half of a pothole-related repair, “on the theory that motorists are at least partially responsible for hitting potholes instead of driving around them,” the Sun Times noted, understandably. According to Chicago Magazine, last year the city paid off 754 claims, at an average of $240 per claim.
Chicago appears generous compared to some other cities, such as Colorado Springs. Here, as in other municipalities, the city will refuse to pay if it hasn’t received complaints about the existence of the pothole that’s caused the damage, and also if road crews haven’t been given ample time to patch up the hole. A Colorado TV station recently looked into how Colorado Springs was rejecting pothole-related claims at a rate higher than 98%. In addition to other tactics—such as directing drivers to take up claims with private contractors if they’re doing construction work in the area—the city says that it considers one or two weeks as a reasonable amount of time to address a pothole after drivers start complaining. In other words, if you alert the city of a pothole one day, and then a week or 10 days later your son hits that same pothole and blows a tire, the city probably wouldn’t cover the repair costs.
Drivers in Virginia face an uphill battle as well. A spokesperson for Arlington Country, in Virginia, told a local newspaper that pothole claims were considered on a “case-by-case basis,” but that they were almost universally rejected. “Only in unusual circumstances would the county pay damages, because the county has sovereign immunity and, therefore, under the law, generally has no legal liability,” she said. “It would be a very unusual circumstance that would lead us to accepting a claim.”
The vast majority of drivers will be out of luck in Toronto as well, which was found to have a 96% denial rate according to a recent report. What’s more, in a sample of claims, more than half were rejected “automatically without an investigation.”
Drivers seem to have much better odds, relatively speaking, of getting some cash in Grand Rapids, Mich., where nine out of 55 pothole damage claims were approved for payment last year, for a total of $4,185 in compensation.
(MORE: Why 2014 Will Be an Epically Bad Year for Potholes)
Because claims can and are rejected for every reason under the sun—if cities paid everybody, it would lead to fraud, and they’d go broke, after all—drivers are advised to keep meticulous track of the incident, repair estimates, and expenses incurred. It’s a good idea to take photos of the offending pothole, as well as the damage it caused, and to fill out the local filing claim forms with close attention to detail, in a timely manner. Just don’t expect to hear back from the city in an equally timely fashion. The Chicago Magazine story says that reimbursement can take as long as 18 months.
It’s also advisable to not get your hopes up in general.
Contact us at editors@time.com.The U.S. and Israel have the worst inequality in the developed world, according to a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
The OECD found that the gap between rich and poor is at record levels in most of its 34 member countries. But the U.S. and Israel stood out from the pack.
In the U.S., the richest 10% of the population earn 16.5 times the income of the poorest 10%. In Israel, the richest 10% earn 15 times that of the poorest.
That compares with the average ratio of 9.6 times across the OECD.
The income gap has been growing steadily in recent decades. In the 1980s, the rich made about 7 times as much as the poor.
The report also reveals wealth inequality is even more extreme than income inequality.
Data from 2012 shows that among 18 member nations, the top 10% of households controlled half of all wealth, while the bottom 40% owned just 3%.
Based on the top 5%, the U.S. has the widest wealth gap. These households own nearly 91 times the wealth of the average.
Related: Worried about job security? Get used to it
Both the U.S. and Israel have seen inequality grow faster in part because of comparatively low spending on social programs and benefits, said Mark Pearson, the author of the 330-page report. Other countries, such as France, are better at redistributing wealth using taxes and benefits, he said.
Another factor contributing to inequality in the U.S. is a wide skill gap in the workforce. That means highly skilled people can command significantly bigger salaries than low skilled workers.
For example, U.S.-based doctors can make a lot more money than they can in the U.K. and Germany. And low skilled laborers in the U.S. tend to have lower incomes than they would in other countries, said Pearson.
Related: This country has the best minimum wage in the world
Israel also has problems with encouraging women to enter the workforce, which can prevent poor families from getting ahead, said Pearson.
"There's a [long] way to go in Israel to get the female employment rates higher," he said, noting that religious and cultural factors have kept many women at home.
The report shows that having strong female participation in the workforce, and smaller gender pay gaps, can help make a country more equal.
"More women in work really does seem to have an effect on inequality. It reduce[s] inequality," said Pearson.The sign appears to be part of a superhero-themed marketing campaign that is not related to guns. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)
Walmart is apologizing after a photo of a back-to-school sign over a glass firearms display in one of its stores rocketed across social media.
“Own the school year like a hero,” the Walmart sign read.
One Twitter user had a simple question for Walmart, the largest retailer of firearms and ammunition in the United States: “What are you suggesting?”
The sign appears to be part of an ongoing superhero-themed marketing campaign that is not related to guns.
The photo appeared to create confusion within the company, whose explanation for the store’s location was at odds with a woman claiming to have seen and photographed the display.
Charles Crowson, a spokesman for Walmart, told The Washington Post that the chain’s operations team is working to identify the store in question, which involves looking for what the company is calling “patient zero” — the first photo of the display.
Crowson said the display and the configuration of the store suggest the photo is legitimate. It was not clear whether the sign was placed there by an employee or a shopper.
“What’s seen in this photograph would never be acceptable in our stores,” he said in a statement. “We regret this situation and are looking into how it could have happened.” He declined to comment on the connection critics were making between guns and mass shootings on school campuses.
[Walmart blasted after an online ad includes the n-word]
Crowson said early indications that the sign was at a store in Evansville, Ind., were incorrect.
But Leeanna May, who told The Post she took the photo, insisted it was true.
May said she was in Evansville on an early-morning shopping trip Wednesday with her husband when they walked by the sporting goods section, where May spotted what she called a “disgusting” display.
“We have already lost so many innocent lives to guns,” she said, adding that she drew an immediate connection between firearms and school shootings. May said she alerted store employees but could not find a manager.
“People don’t seem to honestly care,” she said.
Walmart’s Twitter account replied to dozens of angry comments about the photo. In what appears to be the first reply over the incident, the company tweeted May, whose account is now private, at 8:17 a.m. Wednesday morning to ask the location of the store.
We appreciate you letting us know about this display. Which store location was this? -Vik — Walmart (@Walmart) August 9, 2017
I'm happy to tell you our store manager Christina has removed the sign from the display. Thanks again for alerting us to this. -Vik — Walmart (@Walmart) August 9, 2017
After May said that the store was in Evansville, the company replied at 9:33 a.m. to say: “I’m happy to tell you our store manager Christina has removed the sign from the display. Thanks again for alerting us to this.”
Crowson reiterated Wednesday that the company does not believe this sign was at the Evansville store after a review of photographs and surveillance video, which concluded the configuration of the sporting goods section was “not consistent” with the photo.
The display is yet another marketing-related mishap for the megachain.
In July, Walmart was blasted for using a racist term to describe a wig cap sold on its online store. The third-party item’s color was listed as “n—– brown.”
Walmart also drew fire ahead of Sept. 11 last year, when a Panama City Beach, Fla., store used Coca-Cola products to build an American flag display with two black towers, signifying the World Trade Center under a banner image of the New York skyline with a message “WE WILL NEVER FORGET.”
Read more:
Tourists stumbled upon a car crash — then saw the driver drag a body into the woods
‘Long time coming’: Army returns remains of Arapaho children who died at assimilation schoolRussian Military Chief Calls America "Evil"
Baluyevsky says U.S. missile defense is aimed at Moscow as tensions rise Prison Planet | November 13, 2007
Paul Joseph Watson Russia's top military chief has dubbed America "evil" while cautioning that the "insidious" U.S. missile defense shield weapons system has nothing to do with countering Iran and is aimed squarely at Moscow, as tensions continue to heat between the two superpowers. The Chief of the Russian General Staff, Gen. Yury Baluyevsky told Russia Today, an English-language state TV channel, that Washington's plans to place a radar in the Czech Republic and ten missile interceptors in Poland supposedly to counter Iran was just a pretext to deploy weaponry close to Russia's borders. "If the Americans deploy the radar by 2011 and anti-ballistic missiles by 2012-2013, they will certainly be directed against Russia, and we can easily prove it," said Baluyevsky. (Article Continues Below) "There will be no Iranian threat to the United States in the near future. Iran will be unable to create intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States until at least 2020," he added. In the same interview, Baluyevsky labeled America as "evil" and swore to defend Russian military interests while absolving Russia of the responsibility of defending the rest of the world against American imperialism. "Today, there is no need to be afraid of the Russian Armed Forces. However, I do not believe that the Russian military is obliged to defend the world from the evil Americans," he said. Baluyevsky's inflammatory comments are likely to sour increasingly hostile relations between Washington and Moscow and they come just a month after Russian President Vladimir Putin compared the Pentagon's plan to deploy weapons in central Europe to the Soviet Union's 1962 deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba, which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Alex Jones' terrifying new film End Game: Blueprint For Global Enslavement explores the history of eugenics and answers why the elite are so obsessed with thinning the human population. Click here to order the DVD or subscribe to prison planet.tv and watch the documentary in high quality online streaming format. E-MAIL THIS LINK
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Infowars.com is Copyright 2007 Alex Jones | Fair Use Notice1. Chicago Blackhawks
Record Goal Differential Corsi For% Previous Rank 21-9-1 +34 54.8% 1
The Blackhawks are the NHL's best team. Though, Brent Seabrook's bobblehead figurine is the league's worst:
Oddly, the bobblehead looks a lot more like Jon Lester than it does Seabrook:
Jon Lester wearing a #Blackhawks jersey at tonight's game. pic.twitter.com/h7muPCDjao — Scott King (@ScottKingMedia) December 15, 2014
2. Tampa Bay Lightning
Record Goal Differential Corsi For% Previous Rank 19-9-3 +23 54.2% 2
Nikita Kucherov and Tyler Johnson are the second and third most efficient even-strength point producers in the NHL this season. Stamkos who?
3. St. Louis Blues
Record Goal Differential Corsi For% Previous Rank 20-8-2 +19 50.7% 4
Vladimir Tarasenko's emergence as one of the best pure goal scorers and volume shooters in hockey has caused the St. Louis Blues to take over 32 shots per game this season.
St. Louis' newfound offensive potency begs the question: When was the last time someone saw Ken Hitchcock without sunglasses? Because it seems like we may have a hockey version of Weekend at Bernie's on our hands.
4. Pittsburgh Penguins
Record Goal Differential Corsi For% Previous Rank 19-6-4 +25 51.3% 3
The Penguins were somehow surprised that Sidney Crosby contracted the mumps, but they were literally the only ones:
Crosby's busted face broke the internet:
sidney crosby now has the most retweeted cheeks since kim kardashian plz rt — Luke Peristy (@LukePeristy) December 14, 2014
5. Anaheim Ducks
Record Goal Differential Corsi For% Previous Rank 21-6-5 +12 49.4% 8
The only person who didn't really feel for Sidney's bloated face? Ducks defender Ben Lovejoy:
Karma, yo!
6. New York Islanders
Record Goal Differential Corsi For% Previous Rank 20-10-0 +9 52.4% 5
The Islanders are solid, but could really use a top-end left-winger. Perhaps they should give Elizabeth Warren a look.
7. Los Angeles Kings
Record Goal Differential Corsi For% Previous Rank 15-10-6 +9 53.2% 6
The Kings appear to have re-found their fastball, and are controlling over 55 percent of shot attempts at 5-on-5 over the past month.
All hail the Corsi juggernauts, long may they reign!
8. Nashville Predators
Record Goal Differential Corsi For% Previous Rank 19-8-2 +21 52.7% 7
The Predators' three first-liners all rank in the top-11 among NHL forwards in even-strength scoring rate this season (minimum 400 minutes). So Neal no longer has to feast alone:
james neal refers to milk as cereal water — 18 (@nealeatsalone) May 20, 2014
9. Minnesota Wild
Record Goal Differential Corsi For% Previous Rank 16-11-1 +11 53.5% 9
The Wild have the best shot differential on a per-game basis in the entire league, but in the brutal Central Division they are going to need D |
HRC statement on hiv and aids 730PM TRACKED.docx> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> -- >>>>>>> Dominic Lowell >>>>>>> LGBT Outreach Director | Hillary for America >>>>>>> 661.364.5186 >>>>>>> dlowell@hillaryclinton.com >>>>>>> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','dlowell@hillaryclinton.com');> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>> >> >> >> -- >> Dominic Lowell >> LGBT Outreach Director | Hillary for America >> 661.364.5186 >> dlowell@hillaryclinton.com >> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','dlowell@hillaryclinton.com');> >> >> > > > -- > Ann O'Leary > Senior Policy Advisor > Hillary for America > Cell: 510-717-5518 >The jumping around thing I kept mentioning? Yeah, it starts for real now. Have some fluff.
A hand laid itself against her head, amazingly cool for once. It was an odd sensation, novel and soothing.
“Jesus, Elsa you’re burning up.” She giggled at the voice, what a notion. Her, the Ice Queen, burning. Freezing was more of her thing. But again that hand felt so cool she nuzzled into it. Whimpers escaped her throat when the hand pulled back. But it brought something better, a damp cloth that was gently pressed to her neck.
She moaned and tried to curl into Anna. Because who else could it be? She wanted it to be Anna if it wasn’t, and if it was then she was glad. Anna didn’t move, didn’t flinch or retreat, letting Elsa hook her knees into her side as a blonde head managed to find its way onto a lap.
“We gotta cool you down.”
“No, no. Can’t. Too dangerous.” Moving she rolled so she could place her hands into her armpits, well away from any flesh but her own. Her powers were bad enough when she was coherent, but here and now with Anna in the room? She would die first.
“Shhhh.” Fingers ran through Elsa’s hair, gently fighting the tangles and giving the occasional scratch. Opening her eyes she sighed upon seeing teal eyes. It was Anna, good kind Anna. Anna said something else, but Elsa was too entranced by the sensation of nails in her hair.
That was when Anna started to leave, to go away. Frightened Elsa tried her best to pull Anna into the bed, but her arms felt like noodles.
“I’ll be back. Don’t worry.”
“Promise?” She couldn’t be like… she would come back. Trust. She would have to trust. It took a while to calm down, to focus on relaxing each muscle that wanted to tense and cramp up. But that was easy once she gave back into to the blurry sensation of swimming.
There was no way to tell how long Anna had been away. But her reappearance was marked by the return of the cloth on her forehead, freshly cooled. Then gently Anna pushed something between her teeth. At first she tried to clamp onto it, surprised.
“Come on Els, I need to take your temperature.” The scolding was more amused than harsh. Opening her eyes she managed a groggy groan before Elsa accepted it underneath her tongue. The hands were back, scratching their way through her hair and over her scalp until they tickled the curls at the base of her neck. A few seconds later the thing beeped, making her realize just exactly what it was.
“There we go, a hundred and two. Gotta keep track of that okay?” The thermometer was replaced with a small cube of ice. It was almost painfully cold on her tongue but Elsa didn’t really mind, she just curled into the comfort. Letting the ice melt as the liquid flowed down the back of her itchy throat.
The body moved, pulling her up so her nose was placed against Anna’s own neck. It took almost thirty minutes, Elsa feeling limp and having to be maneuvered like a life-sized rag doll, but the end result was worth it.
“Go to sleep Els. I know you aren’t, you snore.”
“Mmmh.” Elsa really wished she was a bit more cognizant. Then her grunt might have been a lot more convincing argument instead.
“How about a cute fanfiction? I know a super adorable one that’ll put you right out.” A hand hid her eyes from the blindingly bright phone screen, as Anna started in. Blankets were pulled up and tucked in while Elsa felt her conscious slowly fade away. The words of some story pulling her into a dream of ponies and purple moons.The New York Times recently chronicled the rise of machines in manufacturing that used to be the domain of low wage humans. It noted that even tasks previously deemed too complex for machines to do or too subtle for mechanical manipulation have been solved by engineers. To a manufacturer, the advantages of using robots for any task that can be automated are well known:
robots don’t go on strike
robots can work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, year round
robots don’t have to take breaks during their shifts
robots don’t have pension obligations
The primary disadvantage to manufacturers is high capital expenditures to purchase expensive equipment. This high cost translates to potentially higher hourly cost of production relative to using human labor. The cost is also upfront and inflexible since you can’t simply lay off and rehire a robot. Humans only require minimal upfront investment – just basic training – to do manufacturing/assembly jobs.
As a result, every manufacturer does an analysis to figure whether the high upfront investment in machines translates into enough production efficiencies compared to minimal investment in humans. On the whole, we’re still largely using people across all sectors and geographies; however, that could soon change pretty quickly. Obviously better engineered machines means more things can be automated but a surprising accelerator may be The Federal Reserve (The Fed).
To combat unemployment and economic stagnation, the Fed has kept interest rates at practically 0%. The idea is to make loans incredible cheap to stimulate investment by companies which should create jobs (enable companies to borrow cheaply to invest in expansion) and spur consumption (enable consumers to borrow cheaply to buy a car or house).
The unintended consequence is the cost of investing in machines has dropped to near 0%. As a manufacturer, I can get robots practically for free upfront, use them to produce goods cheaper, sell those goods, and then pay back the low interest loan. I am actually now much more incentivized to increase production through investing in machines than in people.
As a result, The Fed could be making unemployment worse inadvertently. It may be achieving its goal of stimulating the broader economy, but it may be exacerbating the unemployment problem which largely exists among unskilled labor which is primarily used in manufacturing and construction. It is becoming cheaper and cheaper to automate with robots than it is to hire people.
I just hope the machines will have the human decency to spare Ben Bernanke for all he’s done when they finally take over.Canadians have conflicted thoughts about immigrants when it comes to their roles in society and the workforce, according to a CBC News survey designed to capture attitudes on discrimination.
Statistics Canada figures indicate there were 6.8 million foreign-born residents in Canada as of 2011. That represents 20.6 per cent of the population, giving Canada the highest proportion of foreign-born residents in the G8 group of industrialized nations. Although Australia, which is not in the G8, has an even higher rate at 26.8 per cent.
Canada "is a welcoming place for all ethnicities," according to 75 per cent of respondents to the CBC News survey.
However, responses became more divided when questions turned to specifics, such as the economy.
Across the country, 79 per cent of respondents said they would be comfortable both employing or working for someone of a different ethnic background.
A much smaller group — 55 per cent — "agreed" or "strongly agreed" that immigrants are "very important to building a stable Canadian economic future."
But the survey also found that 30 per cent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that "immigrants take jobs from Canadians."
"Very often in the current debate over multiculturalism, these two things are presented as being opposed to each other," says Jack Jedwab of the Association of Canadian Studies.
"They don’t have to be," he argues, and points out that shows up "in the answers Canadians are giving to questions like these."
Canada 'an easy place to be'
The CBC national online survey was conducted by Research House between Oct. 22 and 29. It comprised 1,500 adults aged 18 or older, including 260 people who were visible minorities. The poll gauged the respondents' feelings on a range of issues and scenarios, from immigration and multiculturalism to their "comfort level" with people of different ethnic backgrounds living or working in their community.
Kirth Mofford, 39, of Assured Automotive in Toronto, who's taking apart a radiator on a minivan that’s been in an accident, says 'for anybody who has ambition, Canada is an easy place to be." (James Murray/CBC)
Zafar Soogrim, a Canadian-born manager at Assured Automotive, a collision repair business in Toronto, said he agrees with the majority of those polled that Canada should be a welcoming place for all ethnicities.
"The more people there are, the better it is for the economy," he says.
Kirth Mofford, an auto technician who works under Soogrim, says he came to Canada from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean to study and decided to stay because he fell in love with Canada.
"Canada is good, it’s multicultural, everybody gets along," he says. "For anybody who has ambition, Canada is an easy place to be, man."
Attitudes vary by region
It found that while 65 per cent of respondents said they are "proud of Canada's multicultural makeup," attitudes about ethnic minorities vary notably across Canada by region.
For example, 72 per cent of respondents in the Atlantic provinces and 73 per cent in B.C. said they would be comfortable being in a romantic relationship with someone of a different ethnic background, compared with 65 per cent in Ontario and 63 per cent in Quebec.
Salome Sallehy came to Canada from Iran as a child. Now living in Toronto, she describes herself as a Canadian Iranian. (Robert Parker/CBC)
ParissaDurrani and Salome Sallehy are both in relationships with men from a different ethnic background. For Durrani, though, it's important that she and her fiancé, Ali Hameed, share the same faith. She's concerned about passing on her values and beliefs to her kids. "Knowing you’re on the same page as your partner, I’m sure will make things much easier," she says.
Sallehy, who came to Canada from Iran with her parents, married outside her faith to Tim Franz, who she describes as a U.S.-born English German American Canadian. She argues, "I know this is a little harsh, but sticking to your own kind, it’s almost like inbreeding."
In the Atlantic provinces, 86 per cent said they would be comfortable if someone of a different ethnic background married their best friend, while in the prairies that dropped to 71 per cent.
In B.C., 72 per cent of respondents "agree" or "strongly agree" that they are proud of Canada's cultural mosaic. Meanwhile, 57 per cent of Quebec respondents agree with that point.
Are we racist? This week CBC is exploring Canadian attitudes on discrimination, immigration and multiculturalism, and the question "Are we racist?" We want to hear from you — send us your story with a photo of yourself by emailing us at community@cbc.ca or on social media using the hashtag #MyExperienceWithRacism. We're on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @CBCNews.
In another illustration of regional variation, 86 per cent of respondents in the Maritimes said they would feel "comfortable" or "very comfortable" if "someone with a different ethnic background moved next door to me," compared with 72 per cent of those who responded to the poll in the prairie provinces.
Another notable finding of the survey was the attitude towards aboriginals compared to feelings toward people of different ethnic backgrounds in general.
Overall, the survey found that 79 per cent of respondents would be "comfortable" or "very comfortable" living next to family of a different ethnic background than them, compared to 75 per cent who were comfortable or very comfortable if "an aboriginal family moved next door to me."
Those attitudes also varied by region. In Ontario, 80 per cent of respondents said they felt comfortable or very comfortable with an aboriginal neighbour. In the prairies, that number dropped to 61 per cent.
According to the 2011 Household Survey, there are about 1.4 million aboriginal people in Canada, and the overwhelming majority lived in Ontario and the Western provinces.Bayterek (Kazakh: Бәйтерек, translit. Báıterek; "tall poplar [tree]") is a monument and observation tower in Astana, the capital city of Kazakhstan. A tourist attraction popular with foreign visitors and native Kazakhs, it is emblematic of the city, which became capital of the country in 1997. The tower is located within on the Nurzhol Boulevard, and is considered a symbol of post-independence Kazakhstan.[1]
Design [ edit ]
The monument is meant to embody a folktale about a mythical tree of life and a magic bird of happiness: the bird, named Samruk, had laid its egg in the crevice between two branches of a poplar tree.
The 105m (344.5 ft.) tall structure rises from a wide flat base within a raised plaza. It consists of a narrow cylindrical shaft, surrounded by white branch-like girders that flare out near the top, supporting a gold-mirrored 22 m diameter sphere. The base contains a ticket booth and exhibition space, with two lifts rising within the shaft to the observation deck within the 'egg'. Entrances to the monument are sunk below eye level, reached by stairs from the surrounding plaza. (It's somewhat similar to the 1982 World's Fair Sunsphere in Knoxville, TN, USA.(266 ft.)[citation needed]
The observation deck is 97 m above ground level, corresponding to 1997, the year that Astana became the nation's capital. It consists of two levels, one with 360 degree views of Astana and beyond, with a second, higher level, reached by a flight of stairs. The top level features a gilded hand print of the right hand of Nursultan Nazarbayev, the first President of the independent Republic of Kazakhstan, mounted in an ornate pedestal. A plaque invites visitors to place a hand in the imprint and make a wish. Alongside the handprint, and also oriented in the direction of the presidential palace, is a wooden sculpture of a globe and 16 radiating segments, commemorating the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, held several times in Astana.
Photo gallery [ edit ]
The 10,000 Kazakhstani tenge note showing the image of the Bayterek tower
Bayterek tower
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
^ Paul Brummell (7 September 2018). Kazakhstan. Bradt Travel Guides; Third edition. p. 92. ISBN 978-1784770921.
Coordinates:Financial markets have begun to price in a higher possibility of an interest rate hike in the US later this summer. And, the consequent rebound in the US dollar has once again shone the spotlight on China’s currency, the Renminbi (RMB). But should investors be overly worried about a mix of a future Fed hike - probably next a baby step of 0.25% - and the direction and level of the RMB?
China’s central bank, The People’s Bank of China (PBoC), this week fixed the daily reference rate at the lowest point in the past five years.
However, by contrast with August 2015, when policymakers implemented a one-off currency adjustment, and in January 2016 when the RMB was fixed lower than the markets expected, “global markets appear relatively sanguine about this issue for now” according to Jade Fu, a London-based investment manager at Heartwood Investment Management, a wholly owned subsidiary of Svenska Handelsbanken.
Mainland China-born Fu, who previously worked at Bank of America and Barclays Capital, commenting says: “Concerns are growing though, that likely Fed tightening - albeit modest - and the prospect of higher US interest rates are likely to start to test markets and the resolve of China’s central bank in its policy of managing its currency.”
In particular, she points to “fears” that the PBoC could be forced to “take further steps to depreciate the RMB in an environment of US dollar strength, thereby increasing the risk of another one-off currency intervention.”
Steps Towards Reserve Currency Status
According to Fu, the investment house that provides investment management services for financial advisers and charities with over £2.34 billion (c.$3.6bn) of assets under management and administration, believes this scenario “can be avoided” and expect that the authorities will manage the RMB’s depreciation “gradually and transparently”. They contend that it is a feature that markets will learn to accept.
“Our long-held view has been that the Chinese authorities are not looking to aggressively depreciate the RMB and spark a currency war to boost China’s export sector, which would risk both severe capital flight and economic instability,” says Fu, who manages Heartwood’s IM’s Growth Investment Strategy.
Instead, Heartwood IM believe the Chinese authorities are looking to gradually depreciate the Renminbi over time, as part of the policymakers’ broader strategic objective to further integrate China’s economy and markets into the global financial system.
On this note, take the RMB’s inclusion in the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Right back in December last year for some indications. This represented an important step towards China’s currency assuming international currency reserve status.
Fu adds: “In particular, we expect the RMB will be increasingly viewed as an alternative currency to the US dollar in Asia, as the domestic market infrastructure in China is developed, creating deeper and more liquid local bond and equity markets.”
And, highlighting the uptake of the currency across the Asia region, the latest figures from SWIFT’s RMB Tracker reveals that the Chinese currency is the fourth most active currency for payments between India and China/Hong Kong by value.
In April 2016, figures from SWIFT showed that 3.8% of all payments made between India and China/Hong Kong were exchanged in RMB. This contrasts with just 0.2% back in April 2014. And, since 2014, the Chinese currency moved from position number six to position four for payments by value - overtaking the Hong Kong dollar and the British pound. The US dollar, however, continues to lead the corridor with a share of almost 80%, followed by the Indian rupee (7.2%) and the euro (6.3%).
However, SWIFT’s recent data also shows that India’s use of RMB for payments in value with China and Hong Kong is on the rise. That said, India still exhibits one of the lowest RMB adoption rates among Asian countries and ranked 38th worldwide. Nevertheless, the RMB fell in April to sixth position as a global payments currency by value with a share of 1.82%, which put it trailing the Canadian dollar by a small margin with a share of 1.83%.
Of course, this year some of the pressure has been taken off the RMB to depreciate as the US dollar has weakened. However, the Chinese currency remains expensive on a range of valuation measures.
Providing evidence of this the currency [RMB] has appreciated by nearly 20% versus the US dollar over the last ten years to May 26 2016, and 44% on a trade-weighted basis for the same period. It is also 30% overvalued on a real effective exchange rate basis according to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).
Chinese Authorities: A Change Of Tack
Recent policy initiatives have focused on fiscal stimulus and an easing of credit conditions, and the Chinese authorities appear to be moving away from currency interventions. Fu notes that there has also been some improvement in the “transparency of policymakers’ communications with markets in their efforts to avoid unwanted surprises”, such as was seen last August and this January.
“Hitherto, this change of tack from the Chinese authorities appears to be working and we’ve seen the policy of gradual currency depreciation playing out in 2016,” Fu posits. “We expect that this trend will continue and also believe that China’s currency performance will be assessed not just exclusively against the US dollar, but also versus a broader range of currencies.”
Potential ‘Brexit’ & Chinese Debt Mix
SEB, a leading Nordic financial services group that had total assets amounting to SEK 2,700 billion (bn) with assets under management totalling SEK 1,637bn as at March 31, 2016, has noted that a possible British exit from the European Union (aka ‘Brexit’), Chinese debt and the pace of global economic growth are “worrying investors”.
In its latest quarterly ‘Investment Outlook’ out this June that runs to 31-pages, SEB predicts that the US Federal Reserve (Fed) will raise its key interest rate in July. While from a Nordic perspective it asserts that Riksbank, Sweden’s central bank, is “done with cutting its key interest rate.”
The second issue of the banks’ quarterly Investment Outlook notes also that the pace of annual global growth “remains at about 3%” and that investors have accepted a slow-growth and low-inflation environment. That said, they point out that “the economic situation has improved, commodity prices have recovered and global consumers are still feeling good.”
US Dollar
Turning to the US dollar, it has encountered a resurgence of buying demand following a complete reversal in expectations for a US interest rate rise from the Fed as early as this summer.
“It was only a couple of weeks ago that the market expectations for a US rate rise for June had fallen close to zero and this resulted in the Greenback being flattened,” says Jameel Ahmad, chief market analyst at FXTM, an international online forex broker.
However, there has been an unexpected revival in US economic data over the past few weeks and following upbeat comments from Fed policymakers. As such the financial markets are now starting to price in a possibility that US interest rates might be raised over the upcoming quarter.
FXTM’s Ahmad nevertheless adds: “I still don’t think a US interest rate rise has fully been priced in yet, meaning there is still room for further buying momentum when it comes to the US Dollar.”
That said, the latest US consumer confidence figures for May released just today (31 May 2016) present mixed signals. The number declined again for the month with the Conference Board’s index, which is conducted by Nielsen, falling slightly to 92.6 over April’s figure of 94.7. The consensus had been for 96.
This decline was mainly due to consumers rating current conditions “less favorably than in April” according to Lynn Franco, Director of Economic Indicators at The Conference Board. She added that they [consumers] “continue to expect little change in economic activity in the months ahead.”
But ultimately, if the US non-farm payrolls at the end of this week (Friday, 3 June 2016, released at 8:30am EDT) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US Department of Labour impresses, the market expectations for a US interest rate rise this summer will “move form an increasing possibility to a likely possibility” argues Ahmad.
One possible obstacle though that the Fed might have to encounter is how policymakers in China might react as there are suspicions that the PBoC might freely allow the RMB to weaken as a result of a strengthening US Dollar pressuring the global currencies.
“Another US interest rate hike will likely have an impact on the emerging market sentiment as well, which at the very least will lead to a possible return to capital outflows,” FXTM’s Ahmad says.
Dennis de Jong, managing director at UFX.com, an online Forex broker that specializes in trading commodities, currencies, stocks and indices, commenting on US consumer confidence, says: “Alongside first quarter figures pointing to a slowdown of the world’s biggest economy last week, US consumer confidence has fallen, giving those calling for Fed Chair Janet Yellen to raise borrowing rates for the first time this year food for thought.”
But for the lower than expected confidence of consumers in the US, “Yellen will know that the situation is not clear cut” says Dutchman de Jong. He adds: “A strong dollar and poor global demand has hurt exports and oil prices remain in the doldrums. There is also the significant matter of a US presidential election in November to contend with, which has contributed to domestic economic uncertainty.”
Hawkish sentiment from the Fed at their last FOMC meeting has “pulses racing” according to de Jong ahead of a June meeting, where many expect Yellen and her fellow FOMC members to “bump rates” by a quarter of a percentage point. “However, any rate move will be data dependent and whether today’s figures will be convincing enough in the weeks to come remains to be seen,” he notes.
The ride from now on in will be nothing if not interesting and one cannot discount renewed market volatility. If one had concerns over the direction of the Chinese currency or a Brexit for that matter later this month in the upcoming EU referendum on 23 June, perhaps investors might ponder too the scenario of Donald Trump being the next US President and what impact that could have on markets. The words potential toxic cocktail come to mind.Brett and Courtney Tolliver sit with their daughter EllaKate, 4, and son Trenton, 7, at the train depot in Princeton, W.Va. (Wade Payne/For The Washington Post)
Gym is Trenton Tolliver’s favorite class. But the 7-year-old is also a huge fan of the weekly Bible course at Princeton Primary, his public elementary school. He gets to play matching games about Bible stories and listen to classic tales. Noah and the Ark is a favorite. Adam and Eve and the garden of Eden, of course. And the story about how their son Cain killed his brother, Abel.
“That one was a little bit of a surprise,” Trenton said as he sat with his parents, Brett and Courtney Tolliver, one day this month watching his little sister’s soccer practice on a lush field in this small town in the mountains of southern West Virginia.
This spring, Bible classes such as Trenton’s are on the minds of many here in Mercer County. For decades, the county’s public schools have offered a weekly Bible class during the school day — 30 minutes at the elementary level and 45 minutes in middle school. Bible classes on school time are a rarity in public education, but here they are a long-standing tradition. The program is not mandatory, but almost every child in the district attends. And there is widespread support for the classes: Parents and community members help raise nearly $500,000 a year to pay for the Bible in the Schools program.
Now Bible in the Schools is facing a stiff legal challenge. Two county residents with school-age children argue in a lawsuit that the program violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment and the West Virginia constitution. Filed in January and amended last month by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the suit charges that the Bible class “advances and endorses one religion, improperly entangles public schools in religious affairs, and violates the personal consciences of nonreligious and non-Christian parents and students.”
Supporters are adamant that the weekly class is an elective meant to explore the history and literature of the Bible, not to promote religious belief.
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“My experience with it has been very positive. I’ve never known of anyone who has been pressured or felt ostracized,” said the Rev. David W. Dockery, senior pastor at First Baptist Church of Princeton. “Any time God’s word can be proclaimed is beneficial and is a good thing.”
Trenton’s parents also find it hard to see why there would be objections.
“I think it’s a great program mainly because it’s the only chance for some of these kids to even see the Bible,” said Brett Tolliver, 27. “More importantly, I don’t know who it harms. The kids aren’t forced to be there.”
Courtney Tolliver, 26, a teacher in the district, agrees.
“It’s not teaching religion, but it teaches character and respect and how important it is to tell the truth,” she said. “The kids love it and the ones who don’t participate aren’t made to feel left out.”
But the plaintiffs in the suit and their backers argue that the program’s popularity shouldn’t matter in the face of Supreme Court rulings such as McCollum v. Board of Education in 1948 that have banned public schools from initiating or sponsoring religious activity. The suit alleges that the lessons in the Mercer schools are similar to what a child would hear in Sunday school and that they advocate the Ten Commandments and treat stories in the Bible as historical fact.
The suit quotes from one lesson: “If all of the Israelites had chosen to follow the Ten Commandments, think of how safe and happy they would have been.” Another lesson asks students to imagine that humans and dinosaurs existed at the same time. It says: “So picture Adam being able to crawl up on the back of a dinosaur! He and Eve could have their own personal water slide! Wouldn’t that be so wild!”
The district declined a request to observe one of the classes.
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Elizabeth Deal, who describes herself as agnostic, is one of the plaintiffs in the case. Her daughter attended elementary school in nearby Bluefield, but Deal kept her out of the Bible class. Even though the class was optional, Deal said there weren’t any alternative lessons or activities for those who opted out. Her daughter was told to sit in the computer lab for that half-hour and read a book.
Bypassing the class left her vulnerable to bullying. Deal said other students told her daughter that she was going to hell. One day a student saw her daughter reading a “Harry Potter” novel and told her, according to the mother: “You don’t need to be reading this. You need to be reading the Bible.”
Eventually Deal moved her daughter to a public school a few miles away in Virginia where there is no Bible class. She pays an out-of-state fee of several hundred dollars, but she no longer worries about her child being taunted.
Deal said she joined the suit because she believes strongly in the separation of church and state. “When something is wrong,” she said, “you have to stand up against it.”
A portrait of Jesus Christ adorns the side of a building in Princeton, W.Va. (Wade Payne/For The Washington Post)
God is a big deal in Mercer County, home to about 125 churches that dominate the main streets of its biggest towns, Princeton (population 6,400) and Bluefield (10,400), and smaller burgs such as Athens (1,000), Bramwell (360) and Oakvale (120). A lot of the good jobs in the county have left — 22 percent of its 61,000 residents live below the poverty level — but the churches have stayed.
You can find the Church of God here. And the Church of Christ. And the Church of Jesus. There are a couple of Catholic churches, a synagogue and a mosque, but the vast majority of houses of worship are Baptist, Methodist or Pentecostal. The radio in the region is filled with gospel stations, Bible talk shows and Christian rock. Billboards tout the Ten Commandments or offer stern messages on abortion and eternal salvation. Beneath a Chick-fil-A billboard in Princeton, another asks: “If you die tonight. Heaven or Hell?”
The Rev. Ray Hurt has been the lead pastor at the Church of God in Princeton for more than two decades. The church, one of the largest buildings in town, can hold up to 2,000 people for Sunday services and often does. For Hurt, Bible in the Schools, which has been in the public schools here in one form or another since 1939, is simply a way for students to further their knowledge.
“There is a great deal of not just poetry and prose in the Bible, but from what I’ve read almost every piece of history that’s in the Bible has eventually been proven,” he said. “We see the Bible not just as a book of faith but as a pretty accurate account of history that informs us about a lot of things that happened.”
Hurt, whose son, the Rev. J.B. Hurt, is also a minister in the Church of God and a member of the county school board, says he would oppose the program if he thought it was being used to teach religion or if students were required to take the class. But he also embraces the idea that the Bible offers irrefutable lessons in morality and teaches the difference between right and wrong.
“If you read the Bible, you’re going to get a whole lot of good ideas that are going to stick with you and make you a better person,” he said. “You don’t have to push religion with it. It speaks for itself in terms of morals and ethics and those things.”
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The idea that a weekly Bible class for 6,600 students in 16 public elementary schools and three middle schools is somehow simply an academic offering doesn’t sit well with Lynne White, 54, a former two-term school board member and mother of two sons who went through Mercer schools.
“As a person of faith myself, I don’t see any problem with having an after-school Bible program,” White said. “But to me this seems a pretty clear violation of the Constitution.”
White holds the school board and leadership responsible for spreading what she says is a false sense of what the Bible in the Schools program is and does.
In a commentary for the Charleston Gazette-Mail, White wrote that “the Bible in the schools program in Mercer County is being sustained on a foundation of lies.”
She argued that the classes are character education based on biblical values, that they were not electives because West Virginia doesn’t offer electives in elementary or middle school and that even though the classes are funded by private donations, that doesn’t mean they should be taught during the instructional day. She also said it was untrue that children who didn’t take the class weren’t made to “feel different or ostracized.”
When White posted the article on Facebook, she heard from some supporters, but many others questioned her faith. “I will pray for you and all non-believers Lynne White. God Bless!!” one wrote.
Another wrote:
“Lynne White You are not a Christian, a Christian is a person who strives to be more Christ like with everything they do and I do not believe Christ would be working to shut this program down or alter it to include your worldly views.”
The Rev. Ray Hurt in the foyer at the Church of God in Princeton, W.Va. “We see the Bible not just as a book of faith but as a pretty accurate account of history that informs us about a lot of things that happened,” he says. (Wade Payne/For The Washington Post)
Mohammad Iqbal at the Islamic Center of the Islamic Society of the Appalachian Region in Princeton, W.Va. “It should be optional, not enforced,” he says of the Bible class. (Wade Payne/For The Washington Post)
If it were simply a popularity contest, Bible in the Schools would be allowed to continue as is. Even the president of the local mosque in Princeton says it should stay.
“It’s good to be God-fearing no matter how you approach it,” said Mohammad Iqbal, head of the Islamic Society of the Appalachian Region. “Whether it’s the Bible, whether it’s Koran, whether it’s Torah, whether it’s some other book. But it should be optional, not enforced. If the parents have no objection and the student has no objection, it is okay.”
But the program’s fate will not be resolved by popular vote or on Facebook posts. Instead, the question will be tried in the courtroom of Judge David A. Faber of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia in Bluefield. (Faber was nominated by President George H.W. Bush.)
Representing the Mercer school district is the First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit law firm based in Texas that specializes in religious freedom cases. Hiram Sasser, a lawyer at the firm, said the district’s main objective is to allow the Bible course to remain as an elective while making sure it complies with the law. The district filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on Wednesday.
“There are two things to look at,” Sasser said. “The first is whether you can have a Bible course at all. And the other is whether you can have the Bible course as it is presently constituted. It’s fair to say that we’re very confident on the first issue. And on the second issue... our client is very, very flexible in terms of making sure that the content is in compliance with the law.”
But the plaintiffs aren’t looking for flexibility. They want the Bible class out of the school day.
Children play at Mercer Elementary School in Princeton, W.Va. (Wade Payne/For The Washington Post)
The program “is unconstitutional at its core and cannot be saved via modifications,” said Patrick Elliott, a lawyer with the Freedom From Religion Foundation. “There is no legally permissible way for Mercer County Schools to continue with any type of program like this.”
According to Elliott, the Mercer program is “extremely rare” and there are only a handful of districts around the country with similar courses.
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The amended complaint, Elliott said, seeks to prevent the school system from “organizing, administering, or otherwise endorsing Bible classes for Mercer County Schools’ students in grades kindergarten through eighth grade.”
Charles C. Haynes, the founding director of the Religious Freedom Center at the Newseum in Washington, doesn’t foresee the program surviving a court challenge in its current form.
“This is a loser for the school district,” Haynes said. “It’s difficult to satisfy the First Amendment in elementary school when it comes to the Bible. Students at that age really aren’t prepared to tell the difference between what is history and what is religious conviction.”
Haynes argues that people of faith are doing their religion a disservice when they try to have it taught by a government entity. They would rightly object, he said, if they lived somewhere where they were the religious minority and supporters of another religion wanted a course on their |
space above the surface of the water and cover the column with plastic wrap or parafilm. Be sure to cut a slit or two in the plastic wrap or parafilm to permit gas exchange.
Place the column near a window or tungsten lamp. Check to make sure that the column is not heated too much by the light. The temperature of the column should not be much above room temperature.
Column structure and physiology:
Figure 4. The column contains at least two steep gradients (oxygen and hydrogen sulfide).
The water column at the surface is in contact with the atmosphere and is therefore aerobic but it becomes increasingly anaerobic with depth. The surface layer of the column may produce an aerobic liquid air biofilm (pellicle) that can be sampled by dipping a coverslip into the column and lifting a portion of the film from the water.
In the highly anaerobic base of the column, decomposition and the activity of sulfate reducing bacteria results in the production of hydrogen sulfide gas. This hydrogen sulfide gradient decreases toward the top of the column. These two gradients (oxygen and hydrogen sulfide) acting in opposite directions, create a continuous range of habitats selective for a variety of microorganisms.
Figure 5. The column is illuminated by sunlight or by tungsten bulbs. In a perfectly uniform column one might expect a variety of photoautotrophs to be stratified in specific zones within the column, but such uniformity is rarely observed.
Typically the lower portions of the column are colonized by photoautotrophic green and purple sulfur bacteria. The aerobic surface of the column is occupied by oxygenic cyanobacteria. Just below the surface phototrophic purple non-sulfur bacteria predominate.
The majority of the bacteria are located in a thin film between the soil/mud substrate and the container wall. When using plastic containers such as two liter pop bottles, these bacteria can be sampled by inserting a needle through the container wall, or by freezing the column and cutting into the column with a utility knife and shears to expose the surface layer of the column.
Cylindrical plastic columns, such as those provided by Carolina Biological, can be frozen and the entire contents can be extruded under pressure.
Figure 6. A great variety of heterotrophs also can be found in these columns including obligate anaerobes such as clostridia and methanogenic bacteria.
Figure 7. Measuring the electrochemical potential of an established Winogradsky column.
ASSESSMENT / EVALUATION
FOLLOW-UP ACTIVITIES
Light effects - Have some students mask certain regions of the bottle so that light cannot penetrate (use aluminum foil or cardboard masking). Does this affect the appearance of the column?
More light effects - Have students explore the absorption spectra of the various types of phototrophs which grow in each region of the column by masking portions of the column with colored gels (consult with your theater department for colored gels used in lighting).
Recovery of phototrophic bacteria - Carolina Biological sells Winogradsky column kits (FA-70-3490). These use a cylindrical plastic column with a rubber stopper base. These kits are quite convenient and easy to set up. To recover phototrophic bacteria from a column, freeze the established column and then push out the frozen plug into a pan. Microorganisms for microscopic observation or further culturing may be obtained from the plug surface. This could also be done by cutting into a frozen column in a plastic 2 L soda bottle. Use a utility knife or pair of heavy shears with care to expose the column surface.
Electrochemical potential – Cut two lengths of bell cord wire, one long enough to reach the bottom of the column and the other just long enough to touch the surface of the mud below the water layer. Strip the last cm of insulation from the ends of each wire. Place the long wire in the column so that the lower end rests at the bottom of the column. Place the short wire so that it just reaches the mud water interface. Bend both wires so that they hang over the top edge of the column. Connect the wires to a VOM (Volt Ohm Meter) set to measure voltage in mVolts. You might be able to borrow one of these from your Physics Department. What is the source of the electrical current? Is it chemical or photochemical? How could you decide? Could the world energy crisis be cured by drawing energy from mud flats and bogs?
ATTACHMENTS
REFERENCES
The electro-chemical gradient that develops within the column can be measured with a standard VOM (Volt Ohm Meter) see electrochemical potential under Follow-Up Activities.The voltage generated varies with time, but one Winogradsky column in a 20 L carboy generated between 0.3-0.5 volts continuously for three years without supplemental nutrient.The success of the column will be evident within a few weeks with the appearance of dramatically colored biofilms of phototrophic green and purple sulfur bacteria just under the glass or plastic layer of the column. At the top of the water column, green algae and cyanobacteria will appear.
Instructions for constructing Winogradsky columns can be found in many laboratory manuals and in informative Carolina Tips (Sept. 1, 1978).
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0618744, and in part by the Waksman Foundation for Microbiology. Developed in collaboration with Dr. John Lennox, Penn State Altoona. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.©2002-2008 Center for Biofilm Engineering, http://www.biofilm.montana.eduBy Kevin Minkus (@kevinminkus)
2016 in Review
By most accounts, the 2015 MLS Cup runners-up had a pretty poor 2016. A team that was generally expected to contend for a Supporters’ Shield and a championship finished the season 9th in the East on 36 points. During a stretch to start the year that saw them win just two games in 11, they jettisoned their Best XI forward, Kei Kamara, for feuding with their best chance creator, Federico Higuain. Higuain then sat out 14 games throughout the rest of the season with injury issues stemming from a sports hernia.
In spite of this turmoil on offense, the team’s real problems were on the other end of the field. The Crew gave up three or more goals 11 times, and their 58 total goals allowed was second worst in the league, though they were only fifth worst in expected goals allowed. The fact that Columbus is a possession oriented team means that they generally surrender few shots- in 2016, they allowed only about 12 shots per game. But the shots they did give up tended to be higher quality chances.
Cohesion on the back line was a big part of these defensive woes. TAM-level centerback Gaston Sauro went down with a knee injury in May, sidelining him until August. This on top of a hamstring issue in April meant he only played 13 games all season, a pretty disappointing number for fans who hoped to see the 2015 playoff partnership of him and Michael Parkhurst continue to coalesce. Instead, journeyman Tyson Wahl was pressed into the starting lineup, and the results were not good. This combined with a left back platoon between Waylon Francis and Corey Ashe, made consistency difficult for mainstays Parkhurst and Harrison Afful.
But there were some bright spots. Even with Higuain off the field, Columbus’s offense was one of MLS’s best. Many casual fans of the league might not have noticed while the team was fighting to stay out of the cellar, but Ola Kamara, who didn’t get his first start until May, was fantastic. His 1.0 xG + xA per 96 minutes was the highest rate among players with more than 500 minutes. With Justin Meram and Ethan Finlay, who recorded 14.4 and 13.4 xG+xA respectively, the trio made up the only set of three teammates to land in the top 25 for xG + xA.
Though the Crew only scored 50 goals, they led the league with 58.5 expected goals. This underperformance was the second greatest in the league, and it’s a mostly safe bet it won’t continue into 2017.
Offseason Additions/Subtractions
Biggest Subtractions:
Michael Parkhurst - In one of the bigger surprises of the offseason, captain Michael Parkhurst was dealt to Atlanta United for allocation money. Most seem to agree it was smart, if painful, business, as Parkhurst, who just turned 33, appeared to be past his peak at times last season.
Mohammed Saeid - Few in Columbus wanted to see Saeid go, but such is the nature of expansion drafts. Saeid started 24 games for the Crew last season, mainly in the center of the midfield. The depth is there to adequately replace him, but it’s always risky dropping a known commodity in MLS for the unknown.
Steve Clark - The Crew let their veteran goalkeeper walk after three seasons with the team. Clark was a good goalkeeper during that time, but not a great one.
Biggest Additions:
Jonathan Mensah - The 26-year old Ghanaian DP centerback will be expected to be the anchor of the defensive line in 2017. Mensah has appeared 57 times for his country, including at the previous two World Cups, but his club form raises a few questions. He made only 15 appearances for Russian Premier League side Anzhi Makhachkala in 2016, and before that spent time at Evian in Ligue 1 and Ligue 2.
Jukka Raitala - Finnish left back Jukka Raitala was brought in from the Norwegian Tippeligaen, He’s spent time in Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands, and will likely battle Waylon Francis for starting minutes.
Mohammed Abu - Another young Ghanaian, Mohammed Abu was also brought in from the Tippeligaen. A holding midfielder, he will likely slot in next to Will Trapp or Tony Tchani if he can carve out some minutes for himself.
Positional Expectations
Most expect Columbus to at least start the year in a 4-2-3-1. The possibility of a 3-man backline, though, has been floating around. Here’s where the team stands at each position:
Goalkeeper: It’s unclear who will be tasked with replacing Clark on day one. 21-year old American Zack Steffen will most likely get the keys to the car at first. Steffen made nine appearances last year with USL affiliate the Pittsburgh Riverhounds, so Greg Berhalter should at least have an idea of what he’s getting. Brad Stuver will be waiting in the wings in case Steffen struggles. Stuver has been with Crew SC since 2014, but hasn’t gotten much of a crack with the first team. Crew fans might be worried with how unproven this group currently is, and that’d be justified.
Defenders: Gregg Berhalter has a few options to pair with Mensah at centerback. Nicolai Naess will likely begin there to start the season. He joined the team last year in July, and looked decent in some starts beside Parkhurst at the end of the year. Josh Williams is also an option in the middle, but should only really be expected to make spot starts off the bench. Alex Crognale was signed as a homegrown from the University of Maryland, but he might be a year away from contributing meaningful minutes at CB. First round draft pick Lalas Abubakar probably fits this description, as well.
Out wide, Harrison Afful has the starting right back slot locked down. He’s one of the league’s best there. Afful loves to get forward, and, as Columbus is generally so strong in possession, he can afford to without too much risk of getting caught in transition. As already mentioned, Francis and Raitala should compete for the starting spot on the left. Expect Francis to get the nod early on, as he’s already familiar with the team’s system, but he’s not a lock.
Midfielders: The Crew are very deep and very flexible in the midfield, except at the number 10 spot. When Higuain was out, that was filled by a committee of Dilly Duka, Tony Tchani, Mo Saeid, and others. None of those guys are true number 10s, though. Cristian Martinez may make another step forward there in year two, but he’s raw and not quite a true 10. Justin Meram may get a shot there, too, if necessary. Luckily for Columbus, the team’s wingers are so strong and so adept at creating from out wide that the team is still able to produce quality chances with Higuain out of the lineup. Meram, Finlay, and Duka will all be tasked with putting in the types of quality performances they’re capable of.
In the number 6 and number 8 slots, Wil Trapp, Tony Tchani, Abu, new Sao Paolo loanee Artur, and Rodrigo Saravia will all get minutes. Trapp, one of the best young defensive mids in the league over the last two years, will look to make the jump from ‘best young’ to ‘best’. He will have stiff competition for minutes pushing him to get there.
Forwards: The forward line will be led by Ola Kamara. If he plays 30 games at the level he performed at last season, he should be an MVP candidate. Adam Jahn is a capable backup to Ola, with a decent scoring record in his limited minutes over the last 5 seasons. Former Division III standout Marshall Hollingsworth may get first team minutes as a third option after spending most of 2016 in Pittsburgh. Things are a little thin here, too, but each of the wingers can step up to play with Kamara in a two forward system in a pinch.
2017 Prognosis
Crew SC’s offense is good enough to contend at the top of the East, especially if Higuain can stay healthy. If he only gives the team, say, 20 games, then I think the offense is maybe a cut below the league’s best, but certainly still good enough to make noise in the playoffs. The team’s success, then, hinges on its backline. On the face of it, my money is on Berhalter’s pieces coming together the way he expects them to. He has assembled enough flexibility to tinker until he finds a defensive structure that works- it just might take a few weeks for him to get there. In the absolute worst-case scenario, his defensive signings don’t pan out, and the Crew struggle just below the red line. I don’t see that happening, though. Expect the Crew to be back near the top in 2017.Wow just liked the title says, I am speechless. My Secret Santa HOOKED ME UP! Seeing the box labeled fragile I was bewildered with what it contained inside. Upon opening the box I was greeted with a warm letter. I could tell that my SS really put some thought & effort into this exchange. The Walt Disney quote made me realize someone was cutting onions in my home... No one DRINKS LIKE GASTON! My new favorite mug to drink bee... Err I mean milk. Yes milk I'll make sure to bring out this bad boy for those early morning toasts ;) never in a million years would I imagine having an Incredibles pillowcase. And a homemade one at that! Now my pillow will fight back against the slobber that drenches it every night. Hi-ya! Take that drool! Sorcerer Mickey is the best Mickey. It symbolizes that Disney Magic that so many of us embrace. It is a music snow globe that plays The Sorcerer's Apprentice! How awesome is that? Unfortunately the globe detached from the base on the way to me. Thankfully nothing is broken or cracked. I'm thinking some type of glue or seal should fix it right up. Any suggestions from my fellow Redditors would be greatly appreciated :) Disney_Girl_LRC I cannot thank you enough for such thoughtful meaningful gifts. You have brought such joy to this man child. May the Disney Magic live on!The woman who played the "drunk girl in public" in a recent viral video, which was later revealed to be a hoax, has issued an apology for her part in the clip. The video, which portrayed a series of men attempting to take advantage of the woman as she wandered Hollywood Boulevard pretending to be intoxicated, was presented as a real-life "social experiment" meant to illustrate the horrifying realities of rape culture. Except, it wasn't a real-life social experiment, and instead relied on a lot of people who seem to have unwittingly participated in something very different than what was described to them.
Actress Jennifer Box says she was one of those people in a YouTube video she posted this week. In her apology, Box claims the hoax was described to her as "a lighthearted prank show," not a social experiment.
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"Had I known the damaging outcome of this video, I never would have participated," Box says. "And for the record, every male seen in this video were nothing but perfect gentlemen [sic]."
Watch Box's apology below:Since the vast majority of people are referring to the male sex when they use the terms he, him, and his and the female sex when they use the terms she, her, and hers, they do not misgender anyone with pronouns. Some of these people have called me he and him, but that’s because they thought I was male, not because they thought I had any particular gender identity. They sex and mis-sex people with pronouns, but they do not gender or misgender anyone with pronouns. Most people don’t even know what gender identity means, so they certainly aren’t ascribing any gender identity to anyone.
Only people who subscribe to the concepts of gender identity and gender-based pronouns (rather than sex-based pronouns) can misgender, and they can only really misgender people who share those ideas. They can’t exactly misgender people who don’t identify with gender, but they can misidentify and misunderstand them,and, as far as I know, only people who subscribe to the concept of gender identity have perpetrated this misidentification on me.
They say I have special womanly feelings that I don’t have. They seem to think I’m content to be treated like a woman, but I’m not. I have never heard or read a one of them describe the female gender identity in any terms other than femininity and sex-based stereotypes, so I’m sure that I don’t have a female gender identity. “Female gender identity” isn’t even a sensible term because sex and gender are mixed in the same phrase. How can anyone have a gender identity that is a sex?
Some told me that I “identify as a woman,” but when they “identify,” they just call themselves whatever they want, sometimes insistingor desperately desiring that other people go along with it. I don’t do that, so I must not identifyin the way they “identify.” I don’t even bother to correct people when they call me “he.” I don’t care anywhere near as much about pronouns as the people who subscribe to gender identityseem to care. My self-perception, my concept of womonhood, and my concept of genderare radically different from theirs, so their notions of “identify” do not apply to me.
I do, however, identify as a target of female oppression. Not just a victim, but a target: subject to intentional victimization and disadvantage, which differs from the misogyny some males experience when they are mistaken for female. But identifying as a target of female oppression can’t be a part of the concept of identifying as a woman as long as identifying as a woman is considered to apply to males, because males are not the targets of female oppression. So the concept of woman as a gender identity excludes an important part of my experience of being a womonand, again,doesn’t apply to me.
One person suggested that I might be agender. But considering myself agender wouldn’t make any sense unless I subscribed to the idea that some other people are the opposite of agender. Just as there can be no atheists without theists and no asexuals without sexuals, there can be no agender people without gendered people. Agender (and nonbinary, and genderqueer) is just another gender identity in the sense that both terms derive their meaning from a core belief in gendered human beings. A belief that I don’t hold.
I can certainly see that some people seem very interested and invested in gender, but I don’t have any reason to see gender as fundamental to who they are. I don’t have any reason to think of anyone as gendered or having a gender identity.Some may want me to do so, but I’m not obliged to adopt their ideology.I owe them nothing more than acknowledgment of their ideology. Gender is just another construct; gender identity is just another narrative. If they were useful to me as construct and narrative, I might use them and observe themfor others’ sake. But they aren’t useful, so I don’t use them.
Not only is the concept of gender identity not personally useful, it is based on patriarchal sex roles and used to dismiss and cover up the violent, coercive, and the misogynistic meaning, use, and origin of said sex roles aka gender roles. Subscribing to the concept would make me complicit in that dismissal and cover-up. Identifying with the ideology of female oppressors would be a form of self-harm. Even if I thought that identifying that way would benefit me, it would be egocentric to the point of misogyny to do so despite the implications for other females.
Since I don’t view people as having gender identities and never ascribe any sort of gender to anyone, I can’t possibly misgender anyone. To accuse me of misgendering is to project onto me an ideology that is misogynistic, ahistorical, and apolitical.
Regardless of how other people try to fit me into their gender ideology, I know that I do not identify with gender; therefore, I cannot have a gender identity. To misgender someone is to ascribe to that person a gender that differs from the person’s self-proclaimed gender. The misgenderer believes that people are gendered and the misgendered identifies with gender: they share a gender-based ideology. Since I have no gender, to ascribe a gender to me at all is to project a gender-based ideology onto me and misidentify me far more fundamentally than misgendering misidentifies anyone.
AdvertisementsRare, historic photographs of Louis Riel and Manitoba, taken in the 1860s and 1870s, were found amongst civil war memorabilia at a recent auction in Australia.
A famous print shows Louis Riel (centre) surrounded by councillors from the Metis Legislative Assembly of Assiniboia. (University of Manitoba)
The rare photos were shown to the Manitoba public for the first time on Friday at the University of Manitoba. (Tiar Wilson/CBC)
The photos, eight of them, are now in part of the archives and special collections at the University of Manitoba. They were shown to the Manitoba public for the first time on Friday.
One shows Louis Riel and a number of his councillors who joined him as part of the Métis Legislative Assembly of Assiniboia.
"It is likely the earliest print of this well-known image, dating somewhere around 1869 and quite possibly taken by photographer Ryder Larsen, according to the U of M.
The photos, which provide a glimpse into what the Red River settlement looked like, are known as cartes de visites — a type of small photograph patented in Paris, France, in 1854.
Among them are images of Ojibwa mourners in a graveyard near Lake of the Woods, Man., and a "traffic jam" on dirt tracks at Portage and Main in 1872.
"These eight cartes des visites are important acquisitions for the province," Shelley Sweeney, head of the U of M's archives and special collections stated in a news release.
The images and more information about them can be found on the U of M website link at the side of this page.Get the biggest Newcastle United 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
For Newcastle United, this is shaping up to be the biggest and deepest overhaul of playing personnel for nearly 20 years.
Think back to 1992/3, when Kevin Keegan started consolidating the momentum generated by his arrival with bona fide game-changing arrivals like Peter Beardsley and Andy Cole. Or the mid-nineties, when the process of ruthless cutting of squad members was justified by bringing in the likes of David Ginola, Alan Shearer and Les Ferdinand.
More recently, the board see paralells in what happened in 2010. Newcastle used money generated by Andy Carroll’s departure to re-shape the landscape completely – selling Kevin Nolan and Joey Barton to bring in Demba Ba and Yohan Cabaye. It was the first shots of a quiet revolution.
There is nothing quiet about this summer’s revolution. Rafa Benitez promised changes and affirmative action and that is what is being delivered.
Solid, Championship signings are arriving quickly but just as crucially, three of their longest servers have now gone. Fabricio Coloccini, Papiss Cisse and Steven Taylor needed to go – others who have added to the climate of fatalism that Steve McClaren struggled with will follow.
Almost as incredibly, the club are replacing them quickly and sensibly. You can see the logic of Benitez’s every move: there is faith in his judgement.
For those of us who sat in the Newcastle United boardroom a few years ago to be told – quite bluntly – that the club knew it might never win over a sizeable section of its support, the last three months have felt quite extraordinary.
The depth of discontent felt by many United fans was acknowledged in the boardroom by Derek Llambias. The feeling was no doubt shared by Lee Charnley, who hoped that Newcastle’s approach would be cuter and smarter than their rivals: unpopular, perhaps, in the short-term but borne out in the end.
The idea that Newcastle had been too prone to emotional, knee-jerk decisions in the past was behind much of the logic of the last few years but it perhaps veered too far in the other direction. The refreshing thing about the close season so far is seeing everyone with the club’s interests at heart essentially singing from the same hymn sheet.
Benitez arrived at Newcastle perhaps three weeks too late to save the club from relegation. United should have made the change after Chelsea but Charnley took the temperature of influential figures, listened to the dressing room, took counsel from the man himself and surmised that Steve McClaren could still be capable of saving Newcastle.
His judgement was flawed but it has been better this summer. The often overly political and complicated power-lines at Newcastle have been stripped back and simplified: Benitez’s calls are the ones that matter now.
That means Graham Carr is now answerable to Benitez. Charnley also takes Benitez’s counsel on signings. That is a massive change from last summer when the recruitment drive was the work of those two men. A reconfigured board – one of the little details yet to be revealed – will be confirmed and announced when the guts of the recruitment drive have been concluded.
What Benitez is doing now is using the power afforded to him to do nothing less than re-shape the entire playing staff in his own image.
The first requirement in his negotiations was to be able to build a squad good enough to blow away the division. No ifs, no buts and no excuses: Benitez wanted a sensible level of resource to be able to redress the imbalances in the squad and make the group big enough and good enough to cope with any of the challenges thrown at him.
Doubts over Tim Krul’s fitness and – perhaps – Karl Darlow’s aerial presence have led to Matz Sels arriving. It looks unforgiving for the outsider but Benitez sensed too much complacency among many of the squad.
Benitez also wants to bring in others: another striker to replace Papiss Cisse, a midfielder in Isaac Hayden but he’d also like a left-back and quite possibly another midfielder. There has been talk of building a squad that would enable the club to field two XIs that could win the division.
It also meant beefing up the defence – literally and metaphorically – and explains why the club have signed their first over-30 for six years. It also gives you an explanation for why Grant Hanley – big and strong but hardly a like-for-like replacement for the nimble Fabricio Coloccini – is one of his targets.
United’s attitude is this: they have the best manager, the largest support, the biggest wage bill and – by the time they’re finished – the best squad by a distance. If those things don’t lead to the title and promotion, it will be extraordinary.
Just as crucially, big earners with big reputations who weren’t delivering are leaving. Cisse and Coloccini are still more than good enough for a crack at the second tier but in truth they lacked the heart for a crack at the Championship.
Benitez is assessing which others are not conduicive to the professional, upbeat atmosphere he wants to create. There will be other departures and it may be that by the time they kick off next season, Paul Dummett will be the club’s longest serving player.
Benitez still has big issues to sort. Moussa Sissoko’s determination to leave will test his mettle, but he’s coped with worse. Decisions on the captaincy and the number nine shirt are symbolically important.
Then there is the future to think about. What United might have done if they were a Premier League club doesn’t bear thinking about: they will need a similar brutal and ambitious recruitment drive next summer if they go up.
But first things first – the transformation of Newcastle United is underway. It feels like an exciting time to be at St James’ Park.How to get featured
1. Find feature accounts
First you need to find at least a handful of feature accounts that suits your style of photography. You can usually find accounts by looking at what hashtags your favourite Instagrammers use. Try to find accounts which have a larger amount of followers and a decent level of engagement (likes per photo).
Follow them and take note of the hashtags that they use.
2. Photographic style, subject & aesthetics
This step is very important! Thoroughly study and take note of the type of photos they post, their aesthetic & photographic style, subject matter and the quality of their photos. They will not choose your photos to feature if they are not in line with what they post regularly.
At @awesupply we often get a lot of submissions which have nothing to do with the theme of the account (Travel, Adventure & Lifestyle), the quality of the submitted photos are not up to standard or the aesthetic style of the image just isn't right. For example, the colours of the photos we feature at AweSupply are often very natural, realistic and soft (see above), however some users submit images which are super saturated and harsh - these photos will definitely never get featured.
Another reason why this step is very important is because the feature accounts audience and followers have already been proven to like this style of photo. This will increase the chances of converting them into your followers if you're lucky enough to get featured.
3. Submit your images
Once you have paid attention to the two steps above, you should start submitting your photos to these feature accounts to get featured. Include their hashtags in your photos captions and tag them in your photos.Bone abnormalities are common in theropod dinosaur skeletons, but before now no specimen was known with more than four afflicted bones of the pectoral girdle and/or forelimb. Here we describe the pathology of a specimen of the theropod dinosaur Dilophosaurus wetherilli with eight afflicted bones of the pectoral girdle and forelimb. On its left side the animal has a fractured scapula and radius and large fibriscesses in the ulna and the proximal thumb phalanx. On its right side the animal has abnormal torsion of the humeral shaft, bony tumors on the radius, a truncated distal articular surface of metacarpal III, and angular deformities of the first phalanx of the third finger. Healing and remodeling indicates that the animal survived for months and possibly years after its ailments began, but its right third finger was permanently deformed and lacked the capability of flexion. The deformities of the humerus and the right third finger may be due to developmental osteodysplasia, a condition known in extant birds but unreported in non-avian dinosaurs before now.
Table 1 lists symptoms that we used for diagnosis. We used extant reptiles and birds as model organisms when possible, because non-avian dinosaurs are phylogenetically bracketed by extant reptiles and birds and because symptoms of pathological conditions of reptile and bird bones often differ from the symptoms of the corresponding ailments in mammals ( Table 1 ). The use of mammals such as humans as model organisms in diagnoses of pathological conditions in dinosaur fossils is therefore potentially misleading, although it is the only recourse in cases for which corresponding conditions in reptiles and birds have not been sufficiently described.
(a) Right radius and ulna (above) and enlargements of distal end of radius (below) in (from top to bottom) lateral, abductor, and medial views; broken outline indicates three bony tumors. (b) Left and right humerus (left humerus on left, right humerus on right) in lateral view, each photographed with lateral epicondyle directly facing the viewer, with heavy broken line indicating the midline of the posterior (retractor) surface of each to show the abnormal degree of torsion in the right humerus. (c) Medial surface of left scapula, with broken outline indicating fracture. (d) Left (on left) and right (on right) manual phalanx III-1 in dorsal (top) and palmar (bottom) views, with broken lines indicating plane of articulation with adjacent bones, to show the alteration of this plane in the right-hand phalanx. (e) Distal ends of left (on left) and right (on right) metacarpal III in lateral/abductor view (top) and palmar view (bottom), with broken outline indicating edge of articular surface, to show abnormal truncation of articular surface in right metacarpal III. (f) Left manual phalanx I-1 (on left), with its right-hand counterpart for comparison (on right), in palmar (top) and lateral/abductor (bottom) views, with broken outlines indicating healed fibriscesses. (g) Medial surface of left ulna, with broken outline indicating healed fibriscess and arrow indicating abnormal bony growth. (h) Left radius and ulna in medial view, with arrow indicating healed fracture. (i) Left (top) and right (bottom) metacarpal III and phalanx III-1, with phalanx III-1 in full extension and full flexion, to show the reduced range of motion of this digit in the right hand. Scale bars = 50 mm.
Dilophosaurus wetherilli is a basal neotheropod dinosaur [ 11 ] from the Kayenta Formation of Arizona [ 12 ]. The holotype specimen, UCMP 37302, is publicly-deposited and accessible to researchers as part of the collection of the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP) in Berkeley, California. This study involved surface examination of the specimen at the museum. Eight pectoral girdle and forelimb bones bear pathological features in the specimen ( Fig 1A–1H ).
Fractures, punctures, and other bone maladies are common in the skeletons of non-avian theropod dinosaurs [ 1 – 5 ]. The pectoral girdle and forelimb are frequently afflicted, which suggests vigorous use of the forelimbs [ 3, 4 ]. Only six non-avian theropod skeletons are known to have pathological features on more than one bone of the pectoral girdle and/or forelimb. In four of the six specimens, only two pectoral girdle and/or forelimb bones are known to be afflicted. A specimen of Allosaurus fragilis bears an idiopathic lesion on the right scapula and a fractured and infected proximal phalanx of the right second finger [ 6 ], a specimen of Deinocheirus mirificus bears evidence of injury on the proximal two phalanges of the left third finger [ 7 ], a specimen of Tyrannosaurus rex exhibits a collapsed glenoid with deformation of parts of the left scapula and coracoid [ 8 ], and another specimen of T. rex exhibits a furcula with a stress fracture and a left humerus with extensive periostitis apparently resulting from a tendon avulsion [ 8 ]. A third specimen of Tyrannosaurus rex bears pathological features on four pectoral girdle and forelimb bones. It exhibits a fractured furcula, an exostosis on the right coracoid, a possible tendon avulsion on the right humerus, and a deep pit on the right first metacarpal that may be due to gout [ 4, 8 – 10 ]. Before now, this was the highest number of pectoral girdle and/or forelimb bones reported to bear pathological features in a non-avian theropod dinosaur. Here, we report the presence of twice this number of afflicted pectoral girdle and forelimb bones in a non-avian theropod dinosaur, Dilophosaurus wetherilli.
Descriptions and Diagnoses
Left scapula On the internal surface of the left scapula is an incomplete fracture that extends transversely 5–6 cm from the posterior margin of the scapular blade (Fig 1C). The fracture does not entirely transect the bone but stops approximately 1 cm before the anterior margin. A bony callus is present along the fracture on both sides. The callus is less than 1 cm high, consistent with the minor periosteal reaction that follows avian and reptilian bone fractures [13,15,22] and unlike the aggressive periosteal reaction that follows bone fractures in mammals [18,20]. This callus appears smooth and remodeled, and its maturity suggests that the fracture had healed with good alignment, which further suggests that the fracture occurred at least some weeks before death. The healing rate for fractured bones in non-avian dinosaurs is unknown, but bone fractures typically heal in two to six weeks in ext |
antennae, collectively are a sensor," says Robert Wingo of the Los Alamos Natural Laboratory.
"We just needed to figure out a way to extract a signal from that sensor."
Wingo and his team have just finished a successful three-year study, funded by US Homeland Security, into bees' skill in sniffing out security threats.
And scientists are finding insects are faster learners than dogs.
Using simple Pavlovian training methods, bees can be trained to associate a variety of scents with food sources.
"I press a button to give the bee a scent, then use a cotton bud to put sugar by its antennae," says Inscentinel bio-sensor scientist Stacey Kendall
"When they stick their tongue out you can feed them. Pairing the sugar with the smell means they will learn."
Image caption Sensing smell is a highly complex biological process that science finds hard to replicate
A honeybee can be trained to react to a single odour in just six seconds, although the cycle can require repeating up to five times for slower learners.
To detect a particular scent like explosives, a number of trained bees are then placed inside a hand-held detector.
The bees extend their tongue anticipating food when they detect the target odour. The detector is equipped with cameras and computer software to translate the bees' responses and guide the human handler to the source.
Wingo is convinced by the potential of bees.
"We have used our honeybee-based smell system to detect explosives, for narcotics.
"One time we trained them to detect me. We did a line-up with other volunteers and we walked our sensor box up and down the line and sure enough they detected me," says Wingo.
Such success may offer a future where sniffer bees rather than sniffer dogs become a more familiar sight where police are detecting smells.Remember come November the promises of Obama and Clinton.
Via Daily Caller:
This Labor Day, America has 83,000 fewer coal jobs and 400 coal mines than it did when Barack Obama was elected in 2008, showing that the president has followed through on his pledge to “bankrupt” the coal industry.
A 2015 study found the coal industry lost 50,000 jobs from 2008 to 2012 during Obama’s first term. During Obama’s second term, the industry employment in coal mining has fallen by another 33,300 jobs, 10,900 of which occurred in the last year alone, according to federal data. Currently, coal mining employs 69,460 Americans, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Much of the blame for the job losses is targeted at federal regulations aimed at preventing global warming, which caused coal power plants to go bankrupt, resulting in a sharp decline in the price of coal.
Keep reading…The Chicago Blackhawks announced today that they have acquired forward Kris Versteeg and forward Philippe Lefebvre from the Florida Panthers in exchange for forward Jimmy Hayes and defenseman Dylan Olsen. Lefebrve will report directly to the Toledo Walleye of the ECHL.
“We are excited to bring Kris back to Chicago and are pleased to add a player with his experience and versatility to our lineup” said Vice President and General Manager Stan Bowman. “Kris is well respected within our organization and will be able to make a seamless transition to our team because of his familiarity with many of our players and with Coach Quenneville. This move strengthens our team depth and Kris’ skill is a great complement to our current roster.”
Versteeg, a member of the Blackhawks 2010 Stanley Cup championship team, has registered seven points (2g, 5a) in 18 games this season with the Panthers. The 27-year-old forward recorded a season-high two points on two occasions (Oct. 11 vs. PIT and Nov. 10 at NYR).
The Lethbridge, Alberta, native has tallied 212 points (92g, 120a) in 349 career National Hockey League games with Chicago (2007-10), Toronto (2010-11), Philadelphia (2011) and Florida (2011-13). Versteeg posted 101 points (44g, 57a) in 170 games with the Blackhawks from 2007 to 2010 and was a finalist for the 2009 Calder Trophy during his first full season. He earned 14 points (6g, 8a) in 22 games with Chicago during the team's run to the 2010 Stanley Cup title.
Prior to his professional career, Versteeg recorded 167 points (62g, 105a) in 264 games with Lethbridge, Kamloops and Red Deer over four Western Hockey League seasons from 2002 to 2006.
Versteeg was originally selected by the Boston Bruins in the fifth round, 134th overall, of the 2004 NHL Entry Draft before being acquired in a trade by the Blackhawks on February 3, 2007.
Lefebrve, 22, has recorded six points (2g, 4a) in eight games this season with the ECHL’s Cincinnati Cyclones. The Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, native has earned 18 points (9g, 9a) in 92 career American Hockey League games with Hamilton and 22 points (10g, 12a) in 36 career ECHL games with Wheeling and Cincinnati.
Prior to his professional career, Lefebrve appeared in 256 Quebec Major Junior Hockey League games with Drummondville and Montreal from 2007 to 2011, posting 174 points (76g, 98a) in those contests.
Hayes, 23, has recorded 13 points (6g, 7a) in 43 career NHL games with the Blackhawks, along with 76 points (35g, 41a) in 120 career American Hockey League games with the Rockford IceHogs. Olsen, 22, has appeared in 28 career games with the Blackhawks, earning one assist. He owns 30 points (6g, 24a) in 152 career AHL games with the IceHogs.Orange County is home to nearly 100,000 Catholics of Vietnamese ancestry. A shrine honoring the Blessed Mother and the contributions of the Vietnamese people to the American Church will be an important addition to this emerging center of Catholic faith, thought, and culture.
Shortly after the fall of Saigon in April of 1975, thousands of Vietnamese families fleeing persecution began to arrive at Camp Pendleton near San Diego in search of a new life. Orange County Catholics responded in faith by welcoming them into their homes and Churches by the thousands. After more than 40 years these same families have developed the largest and most vibrant center of Vietnamese culture outside of Vietnam. Vietnamese Catholics make up a large portion of this community and have prospered in Orange County over these many years, now pledging to raise funds to build a significant shrine to Our Lady of La Vang on the iconic Christ Cathedral campus in Garden Grove. These funds will also support the sanctuary and site renovations of the cathedral campus.
“In my time as Bishop of the Diocese of Orange I have been inspired by the faith and energy of the Vietnamese people. They truly place faith in God at the heart of all they do. It is an honor to join them in working to build a fitting monument to their struggles, faith and community here at the center of our Diocese. Our Lady of LaVang is a revered symbol for Catholics and non-Catholics alike and will serve as a point of unity for the Vietnamese diaspora,” said the Most Rev. Kevin Vann, Bishop of Orange.
A committee of prominent Vietnamese-American community and business leaders has been assembled to lead this effort. Additionally, a dedicated team of architects has also been retained to develop the aesthetic of the shrine to ensure it represents Vietnamese culture and tradition. This design team includes: Trung Trần, architect, GSD, Vietnam, Aaron Torrence, AIA, Torrence Architects, Đỗ Cung, conceptual design, and Rev. Martin Lâm Nguyễn, Art Professor, University of Notre Dame.
“Our community has been profoundly blessed here in Orange County. The Blessed Mother has been a steady unifying force in the face of hardship in Vietnam and now in the United States. We are pleased to have the opportunity to create a shrine in her honor on the campus of Christ Cathedral. The prominence of this shrine on the campus of this international destination will be a point of pride, unity and faith for the Vietnamese people,” said Huan Le, MD, Chair of the Our Lady of LaVang committee.
About Our Lady of La Vang
Fearing the spread of the Catholicism, the Cảnh Thịnh Emperor restricted the practice of Catholicism in Vietnam in 1798. Soon after, the emperor issued an anti-Catholic edict and a brutal persecution began. Many people sought refuge in the rainforest of La Vang in Quảng Trị Province, Vietnam, and many became very ill. While hiding in the jungle, the community gathered every night at the foot of a tree to pray the rosary.
One night, an apparition of the Blessed Mother dressed in the traditional Vietnamese áo dài, holding the infant Jesus in her arms, and flanked by two Angels of the Lord appeared to them in the branches of the tree. Our Lady comforted them and told them to boil leaves from the trees for medicine to cure their illnesses.
In 1802 the Christians returned to their villages, passing on the story of the apparition in La Vang and its message. As the story of the apparition spreads, many came to pray at this site and to offer incense. In 1820, a chapel was built.
This article was released by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange.On Sept. 28, 2016, three members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to the Justice Department suggesting that the drug company Mylan was violating Medicaid laws.
Nine days later, the Justice Department reached a massive $465 million settlement with the firm.
Story Continued Below
In between, another action happened almost invisibly: A Judiciary Committee aide to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) dropped somewhere between $4,004 and $60,000 in Mylan stock from his and his child’s portfolios.
If an aide had done the same thing in the executive branch, he or she could be investigated for violating federal conflict-of-interest law. But the Durbin aide’s ownership of shares of Mylan, and their timely sale, are reflective of Congress’ persistent refusal to crack down on stock trading by staffers, even in firms overseen by their committees.
Durbin’s aide, Daniel Swanson, isn’t alone. A POLITICO review of federal disclosures for 2015 and 2016 found that some senior aides regularly buy and sell individual stocks that present potential conflicts of interest with their work. A smaller number of staffers trade in companies that lobby Congress and the committees that employ them. In all, approximately 450 aides have bought or sold a stock of more than $1,001 in value since May 2015.
That’s likely just the tip of the iceberg, since most congressional aides aren’t required to report their trades. Only those in positions earning more than $124,406 per year must reveal their investments. Of the 12,500 staffers working for lawmakers, committees and leadership offices, only about 1,700 make that much, according to data compiled by Legistorm and the Brookings Institution.
Government watchdogs say that, at a minimum, staffers should be prevented from buying shares of companies with business before their committees. But they are not. And despite the disparity between the rigorous standards for the executive branch and the laxness of Congress, the House and Senate have taken a permissive approach even to enforcing existing rules.
That’s a serious problem, watchdogs say, because aides often have more of a hands-on role than the members themselves in crafting details of legislation that could have enormous consequences for individual companies. And because aides are rarely in the spotlight, there’s more potential for ethical lapses to go unnoticed.
“The staff level is actually more dangerous, because they don’t get scrutiny and they’re not accountable,” said Meredith McGehee, chief of policy at Issue One, a watchdog group for money and politics. “If a member does it, he can get defeated. A staff person can wield enormous amounts of power that isn’t seen, and there’s really no way to hold that staff accountable.”
Indeed, one of the key findings of the POLITICO review is that senior aides to both Republican and Democratic House leaders, who often have quiet, largely unseen input into the crafting of legislation, are active traders.
At least 11 aides to House leaders have bought and sold multiple stocks in the past two years. David Hoppe, who was Speaker Paul Ryan’s chief of staff in late 2015 and 2016, regularly traded stocks. Hoppe and his wife bought shares of the oil companies Occidental Petroleum and Devon Energy shortly before Congress announced plans to lift a years-old ban on oil exports that benefited both corporations.
Diane Dewhirst, deputy chief of staff to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, disclosed her spouse’s purchase of stock in two pharmaceutical companies, Astrazeneca and GlaxoSmithKline, in December 2016, shortly before Congress passed a medical research bill that benefited both companies.
View 3 things to know about congressional aide stock trading POLITICO reporter Maggie Severns on the investigation into how senior staffers buy and sell shares in companies that benefit from legislation in their committees.
Meanwhile, on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which sets energy policy and is the main committee overseeing Obamacare, at least six aides have bought and sold stock in companies with interests in the work of the committee. One longtime committee aide in an oversight role bought and sold more than two dozen health care and energy stocks during 2015 and 2016 and sold his stock in Express Scripts, the prescription drug sales company, as the company came under scrutiny over its role in setting drug prices last October.
On the House and Senate appropriations committees, which make broadly influential spending and policy decisions through annual government funding bills, at least 18 House aides and 14 Senate aides have bought or sold at least one stock, through their own accounts or family members’. For example, one senior House Appropriations aide working for a member focused on energy and water funding has, through various family accounts, bought and sold shares in companies including Royal Dutch Shell, Energy Transfer Partners, Dow Chemical and Emerson Electric. Another longtime aide on the committee’s staff who is focused on investigations and research, which are at the heart of the committee’s decision-making, holds and trades stock in companies with major interests in the committee’s work, including pharmaceutical companies such as GlaxoSmithKline and energy companies such as Occidental Petroleum.
Swanson, Hoppe and some other senior staffers said their brokers are authorized to buy and sell stocks without their involvement, and thus they were not consulted on the trades listed in their disclosure forms. But ethics watchdogs have long frowned on such personal deals, noting that they can be abridged at any time and that outsiders have no way to verify that they’re being followed. Aides, like members themselves, can create blind trusts that fully bar them from involvement in any trades. If they don’t want to go to the trouble of setting up a blind trust, they could protect themselves from many potential conflicts by investing in publicly traded mutual funds.
Meanwhile, some staffers also defended their trading on the grounds that the congressional actions that affected the companies they bought and sold, including the three senators’ letter to the Justice Department about Mylan, were known to the public. Ethics watchdogs, however, say that it’s often difficult, if not impossible, to determine whether an aide has information that wouldn’t be available to the public, and that any trading of stocks that are directly influenced by their committee work constitutes a conflict of interest.
“It causes the public to question whether personal stock holdings are influencing legislative activity,” said Donna Nagy, an Indiana University law professor who has written extensively on the issue. “That doesn’t necessarily mean a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote, as it would a senator or member of Congress. Did personal stock holdings influence the speed or slowness with which a report is written? That’s something that would be in staffers’ control.”
Simply having a financial stake in an industry may make a person more likely to advocate for it, at least in the eyes of taxpayers. That’s the premise behind the far tougher requirements for staffers in the executive branch, where employees are required by law to recuse themselves from any investments that could potentially conflict with their work.
Senate committee aides are held to no such legal standard. But a little-recognized Senate rule states that aides should divest themselves “of any substantial holdings which may be directly affected by the actions of [their] committee” unless they have permission from the Senate Ethics Committee.
But the rule is interpreted quite narrowly, watchdogs say: The Senate Ethics Committee often measures a “substantial holding” by the percentage of a company that’s owned by the aide, or whether an individual investment constitutes the bulk of an aide’s savings — not the amount of money that’s invested. So most stock trades aren’t covered. The Ethics Committee declined to comment.
And the Ethics Committee rarely probes stock trading by aides. Ethics watchdogs told POLITICO they couldn’t think of a single case of an aide being investigated for a conflict of interest. The committee hasn’t issued a disciplinary sanction against an aide for any reason in 10 years.
“There does not appear to be an effective system of enforcement in place,” concluded Craig Holman, lobbyist at the watchdog group Public Citizen. “This is the type of conflict-of-interest rule that should apply to all members as well as senior staff, enforced by real-time public disclosure or stock trading activity.”
“Anybody who’s ever met Dan [Swanson] knows that he has conducted himself with the utmost integrity every day of his public service on the Hill,” Sen. Dick Durbin's spokesman said. “That may not matter to POLITICO, but it matters in the real world and to Sen. Durbin, and that’s what counts.” | John Shinkle/POLITICO | John Shinkle/POLITICO
Through their brokerage accounts, Swanson, who is Durbin’s senior counsel on the Judiciary Committee, and his immediate family bought and sold stocks of at least $1,000 in value 120 times over 2015 and 2016, according to his financial disclosures. His family’s holdings amount to somewhere between a minimum of $99,043 and a maximum of $785,000, based on the price ranges in the disclosure form. Some of those purchases and sales were in mutual funds, while others were in companies with significant business interests before Durbin and the Judiciary Committee.
Among a variety of trades made through his and his family’s accounts, Swanson bought and sold stock in 2U, a for-profit online education company that bills itself as an alternative to the traditional for-profit colleges that have been heavily criticized by his boss, Durbin. He traded stock in Comcast and Verizon, both of which have come under Judiciary Committee scrutiny in the past because of proposed deals and mergers. And he held and sold stock in Express Scripts, a company that, like Mylan, has increasingly caught the eye of regulators and lawmakers for its possible role in drug overpricing.
When asked about the trades, Durbin spokesman Ben Marter provided a letter from Swanson’s brokerage firm that says trading in Swanson’s account is directed by the firm based on “a mutually agreed upon written statement of your objectives” and that the investment firm has “full authority” to make trades without giving Swanson notice.
Swanson declined to comment further.
Durbin himself is among the many House members and senators who avoid buying and selling stocks, in many cases because of the ethical ramifications of being invested in companies while voting on and passing laws. And he introduced a bill earlier this year to force President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence to completely divest themselves of any holdings that could present conflicts of interest.
If Trump dropped such investments, Durbin said, it would let “the American people know with certainty that he is putting America first.”
But when it comes to his aides, Durbin stops far short of requiring the sale of investments.
“Anybody who’s ever met Dan knows that he has conducted himself with the utmost integrity every day of his public service on the Hill,” Durbin spokesman Marter said. “That may not matter to POLITICO, but it matters in the real world and to Sen. Durbin, and that’s what counts.”
***
As Paul Ryan prepared to become speaker of the House in October 2015, he tapped David Hoppe, a fellow Wisconsin native and former Hill aide, to serve as his chief of staff. Hoppe left lobbying jobs with both his own firm, Hoppe Strategies, and the K Street powerhouse Squire Patton Boggs to work for the new speaker. After he moved back through the revolving door, Hoppe continued to trade stock in companies with interests before Congress.
Hoppe, who has a variety of investments in his and his wife’s portfolios, traded dozens of stocks between mid-December 2015 and January 2017, when he left Ryan’s office. Some of those trades were made days ahead of Congress passing legislation that benefited the companies Hoppe traded in, and at moments when companies were furiously attempting to sway lawmakers.
As Congress finalized a massive tax-and-spending package at the end of 2015, Hoppe and his wife invested in two petroleum companies that were aggressively lobbying Congress to lift the 30-year ban on oil exports, Occidental Petroleum and Devon Energy. Hoppe made the purchases 16 days before Congress announced plans to lift the ban on oil. During the fall of 2016, as Congress finalized and passed a $6 billion medical research bill, Hoppe’s spouse invested in the pharmaceutical companies Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Such investments can present conflicts of interest, or the appearance of, even if they’re not based on inside information.
“It looks terrible. They shouldn’t be doing this,” said Richard Painter, former ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, referring to stock trading by aides to House and Senate leaders. “There are two separate problems. One is that if they buy or sell stock based on insider information, they’re criminals. But if they make decisions on a bill that could have an effect on their own financial decisions, that might not be a crime — though it is a crime in the executive branch — [but] it stinks to high hell.”
In the executive branch, employees are barred from holding investments that pose potential conflicts with their work, and must recuse themselves from decisions that could conflict with their remaining investments. In Congress, however, employees are often left to set their own standards.
Hoppe said in an interview that he doesn’t direct trades in the two accounts controlled by him and his wife. Prior to joining Ryan’s office, he said, he and his wife asked their brokers to keep him out of any trading decisions.
“There were no directions in which [a broker] called me and said, ‘Do you want to trade this? Do you want to trade that?’” said Hoppe. “Has there been a time when they’ve asked me about something or another? Probably, but I can’t remember it, and I can tell you it wasn’t when I was working for Paul.”
Dewhirst, the top Pelosi aide whose spouse bought stock in pharmaceutical companies shortly before Congress moved to pass the medical research bill, has worked for Pelosi since 2003. She also recorded purchases and sales in energy and technology stocks in the past two years. Nearly all of those transactions were listed to an account controlled by her spouse. A Pelosi spokesperson said in a statement that Dewhirst is not involved with the investments.
“All transactions are made by [Dewhirst’s] spouse upon the recommendation of his investment advisor,” the Pelosi spokesperson said.
Pelosi is one of few members of House and Senate leadership who actively buys and sells stocks — and she was heavily criticized for it in a 2011 report by “60 Minutes” about the stock trading habits of members of Congress. She has since scaled back the number of stocks that she and her husband buy and sell. An account owned by Pelosi's husband traded 14 stocks in the past two years.
Most senior members of House and Senate leadership avoid the practice because of the potential for conflicts of interest. Ryan, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer all refrain from buying and selling shares of individual companies. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sold three stocks this year but has otherwise abstained from trading, and Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn made one purchase and one sale in recent years, each in Apple stock.
While they avoid any appearance of conflicts in their own trades, they seem to exercise little restraint on their aides, who are often the real experts on the intricacies of policies. Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards described Dewhirst, for example, as “the first person I call if I'm trying to really get the lay of the land on an important issue, particularly on the Hill,” in a 2015 interview.
David Hoppe (left), who was Speaker Paul Ryan’s chief of staff in 2015 and 2016, traded stock in companies with an interest in Congress. | Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call
Some aides who engage in trades, like those on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, are charged with overseeing powerful industries. In the House, committee aides are allowed to do so while holding and trading stocks in those very industries. Meanwhile, they’re sometimes being lobbied by very same companies. The company whose stock Swanson held, Mylan, spent $315,000 lobbying Capitol Hill last fall, including $170,000 paid to the Podesta Group solely to lobby on “drug pricing and oversight,” after it was accused of mischaracterizing its drug EpiPen in order to avoid having to pay a federally mandated rebate, according to public filings.
“The very senior staffers ought to be considered very much the same as members. These are policy-making individuals. They’re the people lobbyists want to meet with and influence,” said Holman, of Public Citizen. “It’s their ability to affect public policy that matters, whether or not they receive votes or subject themselves to elections.”
For his part, Hoppe recalled that during an earlier stint on Capitol Hill working for former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, he once recused himself from working on an issue involving the Walt Disney Co. because he was a shareholder. But he said he didn’t see any similar conflicts while working for Ryan, and added that he was on only a temporary stint in the speaker’s office, waiting to return to his lobbying job.
“I’m obviously older, and they don’t pay the same on Capitol Hill as I was making in the private sector,” Hoppe said. “My wife likes living in a house as opposed to living in a car.”
Many Capitol Hill aides are young and don’t earn enough money to have large investment portfolios, Hoppe said, and nearly all are drawn to public service for reasons that have nothing to do with making money. But he didn’t rule out the possibility that aides could have access to information that would boost their holdings.
“Is it in the realm of possibility that somebody could do that? Yes. Is it very likely? No,” Hoppe said. “But people who are dishonest will find a way to be dishonest.”
***
Though congressional aides are largely invisible to the public’s eye, they have played roles in well-publicized scandals in the past. In the early 1960s, a Senate aide close to Lyndon Johnson named Bobby Baker was investigated for using his office for personal gain, including accepting cash in exchange for promoting legislation, and running a vending-machine company, Serv-U. Baker’s net worth as a Senate aide ballooned from $11,000 to $2.5 million over the course of two decades. He was later convicted of crimes including fraud and tax evasion, and both the House and Senate soon started requiring aides to disclose their finances for the first time.
More recently, since Congress passed the Stock Act, a 2012 law that for the first time formally barred members of Congress from insider trading, the sole Securities and Exchange Commission investigation of a potential Stock Act violation that’s known to the public involves the actions of a congressional aide.
The aide, a former Ways and Means Committee staff director, allegedly leaked information about Medicare reimbursement rates that were about to rise. A firm called Height Securities, which specializes in gathering intelligence in Washington and relaying it to Wall Street, sent the information to hedge funds, causing stock to shoot up in a company that benefited from the Medicare rate hike.
The SEC has been investigating the case since 2013, but it was delayed for several years when House counsel refused to comply with SEC subpoenas for testimony and documents related to the investigation.
Though the SEC and the House reached an undisclosed agreement that settled the court case, the SEC hasn’t yet announced the results of its investigation. But watchdogs say it shows why the laws governing stock trades by aides need to be tightened: Congress seems intent on protecting its unique status and perks, and the SEC remains mostly silent on stock trading.
“We’d be a lot better off if the SEC would look into it, find out what’s going on, and reach the conclusion that there are no serious insider-trading concerns — or, if there are concerns, take enforcement action,” Painter said.
And while concerns over separation of powers could make it difficult for the SEC to take some investigative steps, such as seizing congressional documents, Painter said, “there’s absolutely no reason not to start an investigation, and I think 99 percent of what they need, they could get without problems.”
The potential problems arising from aides trading stocks extend beyond insider trading. There’s also the potential that investing in a company could corrupt the views or interests of staff.
New York Republican Rep. Chris Collins, a business titan who is among the House’s wealthiest members, garnered headlines earlier this year for appearing to persuade at least five of his fellow House colleagues to invest in a tiny Australian drug company called Innate Immunotherapeutics, on whose board he sits.
Little noticed was the fact that Collins’ chief of staff, Michael Hook, has made significant investments of his own that track closely with Collins’.
New York Republican Rep. Chris Collins (pictured) was the subject of many headlines earlier this year for appearing to persuade at least five of his House colleagues to invest in an Australian drug company called Innate Immunotherapeutics, on whose board he sits. Collins’ chief of staff, Michael Hook, has made significant investments of his own that track closely with Collins’. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Hook, who knew Collins before joining the lawmaker’s office, owned stock in Innate Immunotherapeutics when he joined Collins as chief of staff in late 2015. During his time working for Collins, Hook aggressively sold off investments in other companies and poured the proceeds into Innate Immunotherapeutics stock in three dozen transactions. Collins was and continues to be a member of Energy and Commerce, the central committee overseeing health care policy in the House. He was reelected to the board of directors of Innate Immunotherapeutics in August 2016, after a failed clinical trial drove down the company’s stock.
Hook reported owning at least $1 million in Innate Immunotherapeutics stock at the end of 2016. This January, Hook unloaded at least a half-million dollars in Innate Immunotherapeutics stock amid the weeks of scrutiny of Rep. Tom Price, President Donald Trump’s choice for secretary of Health and Human Services, who had bought stock in the company at Collins’ urging. Hook began repurchasing stock in the company at the end of January.
Innate Immunotherapeutics isn’t the only company with ties to Collins that Hook has invested in. In November and December 2016, Hook invested at least $150,002 combined — and as much as $350,000 — in two real estate LLCs that were raising private capital, Sinatra-Stadt Illinois III LLC and Linda Lane Apt. Group. Both LLCs are owned by Buffalo-area developer Nick Sinatra, who has donated to Collins’ campaign every election cycle since Collins first ran for his congressional seat.
The news that Collins had suggested Price invest in Innate Immunotherapeutics set off a firestorm of bad press for the two House Republicans, both of whom served on the main panel in charge of setting health care policy. Further reports of Collins’ promotion of the company to his peers — and comments made near the House floor about "how many millionaires I've made in Buffalo” — sparked an investigation from the House Ethics Committee. The committee plans to announce its course of action by Oct. 12.
Hook’s investments don’t appear to be part of the probe.
A Hook spokesperson declined a request for comment. The spokesperson also declined to say whether Hook had consulted with the House Ethics Committee on his investment decisions. The committee advises lawmakers and staff on how to comply with the chamber’s general guideline that employees’ personal actions should not discredit Congress.
“They genuinely don’t want to see the body brought into scandal, controversy or disrepute,” said Joseph Birkenstock, a former chief counsel for the Democratic National Committee. “That includes things like, is your boss twisting your arm? Are you doing things because you’re under some job pressure? Or is there any credible forum where someone could claim that your actions or your boss’ actions are connected in any way to the commercial success of this business?”
One reason that Hook’s investments have not been closely scrutinized amid all the focus on Collins’ and Price’s stock trading is that Hook’s information — while public — isn’t easy to access: It’s not online and can be viewed only in person in an office tucked into a House Office Building.
In 2012, when Congress passed the Stock Act, leaders crowed that information about the investments of both lawmakers and senior staff would be available online in an easily searchable format. But a year later, Congress silently passed revisions to the bill that wiped out many of those data requirements.
President Barack Obama celebrates with members of Congress after signing the Stock Act into law on April 4, 2012. The Stock Act bars members of Congress from insider trading. A POLITICO investigation earlier this year found that while most lawmakers refrain from trading stocks, a small number frequently trade shares in companies they oversee in Congress. | Win McNamee/Getty Images
Information on lawmakers is still available online, but it cannot easily be searched or sorted by date or company traded. The requirement that aides’ disclosures be posted online was scrapped from the law, and today such information is available only in person at computer kiosks maintained by the House and Senate.
Individuals seeking the information must log in using their name and other personal details. The documents they seek cannot be downloaded or otherwise taken out of the office in a digital format. They can be printed for 10 cents to 20 cents a page.
“There’s little excuse for these barriers, especially in the digital age," said Larry Noble, senior director at the Campaign Legal Center.
“When you have to go to an agency or to Congress to have a document printed out, and you put your name down — all that is to deter people from doing it,” said Noble. “All that was outrageous 25 years ago. That’s not the way the world works anymore.”
Other ethics requirements don't make the same exceptions for staff members. Conflict-of-interest laws governing future employment after leaving Capitol Hill treat staff similarly to members of the House. Both House lawmakers and senior staff must take a “cooling-off” period after leaving their jobs on Capitol Hill before lobbying their former colleagues. (Senators are subject to a two-year cooling-off period, while staff follow the same one-year cooling-off period as House aides.)
“The rules in the House and the Senate on trading stock are very permissive, and essentially don’t regulate members and staff who are trading in industries when they work on the committee overseeing those industries,” said Kenneth Gross, who leads the political law practice at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee provides extra guidance on stock trading to staff in its committee handbook. The handbook tells employees to avoid potential conflicts of interest and err on the side of caution by consulting the House Ethics Committee with questions, according to an excerpt provided by a committee spokesperson.
Spokespeople for the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Senate Judiciary and Appropriations Committees all declined to say what steps, if any, their staffers who trade stocks are making to comply with their Ethics Committee guidelines.
The Senate Appropriations Committee suggested that staffers are largely on their own: “Committee staff are responsible for adhering to Senate Ethics Committee rules and guidelines,” committee spokesman Chris Gallegos wrote in an email.
***
Despite the public outrage earlier this year over Collins’ and Price’s trading, Congress has done little to address the rules that allowed the two members of the committee overseeing health care to buy and sell hundreds of shares of health care companies.
Congress rarely changes its ethics laws and rules. Historically, most changes were preceded by well-publicized scandals: The last major ethics reforms took place in 2006, for example, in the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal, when lawmakers overhauled rules on what lobbyists have to disclose. And 2012’s Stock Act, which explicitly barred lawmakers from insider trading, was passed in the wake of the jarring “60 Minutes” report that spotlighted Pelosi’s trading.
Earlier this year — and five years after the Stock Act was passed — a POLITICO investigation found that while most lawmakers refrain from trading stocks, a small number frequently trade shares in companies they oversee in Congress. An analysis by Public Citizen this year similarly found that fewer lawmakers appear to be trading stocks, but a dedicated number of senators are regularly trading investments in industries that they partly oversee. POLITICO’s findings on congressional aides who are regularly trading stocks raise further questions about whether the Stock Act put a sufficient check on conflicts of interest among lawmakers or their staff, watchdogs said.
Behind the scenes, reform groups have been shopping several proposals that would prevent lawmakers — and their aides — from engaging in such behavior. One idea floated by Issue One would ban lawmakers from trading stocks aside from mutual funds. This would ensure lawmakers have broadly diversified portfolios that they do not control. Public Citizen, meanwhile, would simply apply the much tougher conflict-of-interest rules that apply to the executive branch to members of Congress and their aides.
The groups say they have heard some interest from lawmakers — but no one has stepped forward to introduce either bill. Democrats have been focused on criticizing the Trump White House’s apparent ethical lapses. And lawmakers haven’t proposed other plans for overhauling the stock trading system — in part, ethics watchdogs say, because they haven’t been sufficiently shamed into doing so by the public.
“The more embarrassing the story that comes out, the more pressure there is to do something,” Noble said. “A lot of members do honestly believe they should not be trading in stock while they’re working in legislation, [but] they may not feel as strongly about it” as the members who disagree.Thursday 19 September 2013 4:23pm
Dr. Paula Skidmore
Department of Human Nutrition
Researchers in human nutrition at the University of Otago have found that teenage boys who sleep less have more body fat when compared to girls, whose sleep deprivation has no discernible effect on their body fat ratios.
The paper, just published online in Nutrition Journal in the UK, looks at the sleeping habits and height/weight/fat ratios in 386 boys and 299 girls aged between 15 and 18-years drawn from 11 secondary schools around Otago.
Lead researcher from the |
every drop of water, ray of sunlight, and bit of nutrients in the soil. According to studies using the Land Equivalency Ratio—a way of measuring the productivity of agricultural land—intercropped fields often yield 40 to 50 percent more than monocropped ones.
H. Garrison Wilkes, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, calls milpa “one of the most successful human inventions ever created.”
2. Eat low on the food chain
Aside from the detrimental health effects of getting our protein from animal products, it's also highly inefficient. Poultry is the most efficient conventional source of meat, and still only converts 11 percent of its feed energy into human food. Beef cows convert only 1 percent and are major contributors of greenhouse gases. Shifting toward plant and insect-based protein sources is part of the sustainable food solution.
Amaranth is making a comeback in Brisa’s town.
“You have never tried chicatanas?” challenged Brisa Ochoa, as she served our family a salsa made of mashed ants in her hometown of Ayoquezco. During the first spring rains, the chicatana ant leaves its nest, only to be captured by eager residents who prize its sweet and tangy flavor. Mexico has 300 to 550 species of edible insects, more than any other country in the world, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. Among the most popular in Oaxaca are grasshoppers known as chapulines, served roasted and flavored with lime and chili, and maguey worms, served ground up and incorporated into a spicy salt. Insect protein takes some getting used to, but it’s healthier and more environmentally sustainable than livestock, boasting a feed conversion ratio of more than 50 percent.
While insect protein is important in rural Mexico, it mainly serves as flavoring for plant-based protein sources. Brisa served her salsa with beans on a fresh, warm corn tortilla resulting from an ancient process called nixtamalization. She used limestone and hot water to remove the hull from the maize, then ground up the kernels into the dough for tortillas.
Nixtamalization makes the protein in maize more bioavailable to the human body and increases its niacin content. When combined with beans, the nixtamalized corn offers a complete protein.
Gustavo, a farmer from Yagavila, Oaxaca, poses with his organic sugar cane. Photo by Leah Penniman.
Brisa’s family also grows amaranth, a native Mesoamerican grain that has been cultivated in Mexico for at least 6,000 years. Nearly eradicated by the conquering Spaniards who feared its role in traditional religion, amaranth is making a comeback in Brisa’s town, thanks to her family’s breeding and sharing its seeds. Up until this trip to Mexico, I had only experienced amaranth as a “weed” invading my neat beds of vegetables and didn’t realize that its seeds are 13 to 15 percent protein, among the highest for any grain. Amaranth is also high in fiber, calcium, iron, potassium, phosphorus, zinc, folate, and vitamins A and C. Like beans, amaranth can be combined with maize to form a complete protein.
Brisa’s family does eat chicken, beef, and pork, but usually only on special occasions. Plant and insect protein are the basis of their healthful, affordable, and sustainable diet.
3. Restore health to damaged land
Cropland can expand at low environmental cost if the encroached lands do not have much natural potential to store carbon or support biodiversity. The arid Mixteca region of Oaxaca meets these criteria and has been termed an “ecological disaster zone” by the World Bank. Soil erosion and depletion has damaged about one million acres of cropland, and corn productivity rates have plummeted to the lowest in Mexico.
León Santos says he has seen yields increase fourfold.
Jesús León Santos, sustainable agriculture coordinator at CEDICAM, an indigenous farming organization in the Mixteca, blames Green Revolution farming technology for the environmental destruction. The Green Revolution of the 1960s was an U.S.-led international effort to push adoption of farm mechanization, hybrid seeds, and chemical fertilizers in order to increase yields.
León Santos is working to revive and enhance indigenous farming wisdom in order to restore the health of the soil and the productivity of the land.
This degraded land in the Mixteca was restored to lush vegetable gardens under the direction of Jesús León Santos. Photo by Leah Penniman.
The first step for León Santos and his farming community was to build trenches, stone walls, and terraces to stop the erosion of the remaining soils and to slow water runoff so aquifers can recharge. He stabilized these barriers with tenacious local vegetation, such as the sweet-smelling vetiver grass, which withstands drought, flooding, and mudslides.
Once stabilized, the barren hillsides were reforested with native tree species, like nitrogen-fixing alders (Alnus acumilata) and pines (Pinus oaxacana). The CEDICAM community saves its own native crop seed, using an in-the-field selection process that has persisted regionally since the pre-Columbian era. They preserve and exchange the best seeds of maize, beans, squash, chile, tomatillo, chayote, squash, sunflower, and prickly pear, as well as local specialties like cempoalxochitl, quintoniles, and huauzontle.
The farmers further improve the soil by planting and tilling in “cover crops,” which add nutrients and organic matter. Some native varieties are especially good for this, like the “frijol nescafe,” ( Mucuna deeringiana) a nitrogen-fixing bean that thrives in dry soil. Finally, farmers add compost and plant debris so that the land is finally ready to receive these carefully maintained crop seeds.
The use of erosion control barriers, intercropping, and seed saving are part of the knowledge León Santos inherited from his Zapotec ancestors. And it’s working. León Santos says he has seen yields increase fourfold after incorporating these ancient and modern sustainable growing techniques. The newly established vegetation sequesters atmospheric carbon and attracts biodiversity.
The art of transforming lands of low ecological productivity into thriving foodscapes is not unique to the Mixteca. León Santos reminded me that the Aztec Empire sustained itself on chinampas, intricate gardens built of vegetation and river muck, essentially artificial islands constructed in shallow lakes. Chinampas are widely considered the most productive form of agriculture ever invented, and are so fertile that they can yield four to seven harvests per year. Indigenous Mexicans have long-standing successes in positive ecological transformation.
4. Cultivate reverence for the planet
One essential element missing from the World Resource Institute’s otherwise thorough and brilliant “menu of solutions” for the global food crisis was the ethical perspective that co-evolved with best practices in environmental management. This ethic, known as convivencia, or “living together” with both our human and natural communities, is best summarized by Kiado Cruz, a Zapotec farmer from the Oaxacan town of Yagavila:
The ground beneath our feet is our Mother Nature, who has carried us and sustains us. As we work her, we do not profane her, rather we carry out our task as farmers in the context of the sacred. It is corn through which Mother Nature nourishes us. It is flesh of our flesh, because we are people of corn. So we have to collect it in a manner that shows the respect we owe both our soil and our brother corn.
It is with a similar sense of belonging and reverence that I placed corn seeds into our home soil upon return, establishing Soul Fire Farm’s first milpa, an ancient and intricate tangle of complementary sister crops bringing us one small step closer to a sustainable food future.Can’t get that new song out of your head? You’ve probably got an earworm, which “tends to be this little fragment, often a bit of the chorus of the song, that just plays and replays like it’s stuck on loop in your head,” says Elizabeth Margulis, director of the Music Cognition Lab at the University of Arkansas and author of On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind. The quirky YouTube hit “What Does the Fox Say?” by Ylvis, Starship’s “We Built This City,” and The Baha Men’s “Who Let the Dogs Out?” are just a few tunes known to spawn earworms, according to Margulis. (Check out this SciFri segment for more on earworms.)
Related Segment Why Do Some Songs Stick in Our Heads?
The phenomenon is quite common. For instance, a study from the Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition found that more than 91 percent of people reported having an earworm at least once a week, while about a quarter had them more than once a day.
As frequent as earworms may be, however, what triggers them and why they occur still remain mysteries. That’s mainly because earworms—which tend to last eight seconds—are by definition involuntary, and therefore tracking them in a scientific setting can be a near-impossible task. Researchers have yet to develop consistent methods of inducing earworms in test subjects. The data that researchers have culled on the subject so far come from surveys of a few thousand people or from small diary studies—but participants can be unreliable in recalling how often they get earworms, for how long, what they were doing at the time, what might have caused the earworm to disappear, and so on.
Music cognition research suggests that earworms could have something to do with how music affects the brain’s motor cortex, according to Margulis. When people listen to music, “there’s a lot of activity in the motor planning regions,” she says. “People are often imaginatively participating even while they’re sitting still.”
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Repetitive listening could also breed earworms. Indeed, 90 percent of the time, we listen to music we’ve heard before, says Margulis, and “when you’ve heard [a song] the fourth or fifth time, [one] note carries with it just so clearly the implications of the next note. You can almost feel exactly what’s going to happen next.”
A song’s structure might contribute to brain burrowing, too. “There are general patterns of characteristics for songs that frequently get stuck, such as being simple, repetitive, and having some mild incongruity,” James Kellaris, a professor of marketing at the University of Cincinnati who’s conducted research on the influence of music on memory, wrote in an email.
“Fundamentally, an earworm is your brain singing.”
In one study, researchers led by Victoria Williamson, a visiting professor at Switzerland’s Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and a fellow at the University of Sheffield, analyzed more than 50 different musical features and found that earworm songs—tunes that were mentioned by at least three different people in her survey—tend to have notes with longer durations but smaller pitch intervals. This makes sense, she says, because these are two main features that make songs easier to sing, even for the musically untrained. “Fundamentally, an earworm is your brain singing,” Williamson says. Earworm songs also have a certain amount of built-in predictability, coupled with enough novelty to pique a listener’s interest.
While almost everyone gets earworms at some point, Williamson’s research has found that people with neuroticism and non-clinical levels of obsessive compulsion experience them more often, and for longer periods of time. “These people tend to have more repeated thought processes in general, so it’s perhaps not a huge surprise that these are reflected in their experiences of mental music as well,” she says.
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Earworm susceptibility also has an idiosyncratic component—experiencing them seems to involve being in the right mood (or wrong one, depending on your opinion of the earworm) at the right time. “In addition to traits of songs and traits of people (such as being mildly neurotic or having high exposure levels to music), situation comes into play as a third factor,” Kellaris wrote. “It appears that earworms are more likely to bite when the victim is tired, stressed, or idle.”
Despite the complaints of sufferers, however, the majority of our earworms are actually somewhat enjoyable or neutral experiences, according to Williamson. Her research has shown that people consider only about 30 percent of earworms to be “annoying.” “We’re more inclined to remember the things that annoy us,” she says. “So if you ask somebody about an earworm, they’ll tell you about the one that annoyed them yesterday. They won’t tell you the three or four they briefly had in their head which they didn’t really notice, or [which] just kept them company as they walked around.”
Once an earworm lodges in your psyche, how do you get rid of it? Williamson says the best method is for people to distract themselves with other music or to do something that involves language—perhaps tackle a crossword or start a conversation with somebody. A second technique seems counterintuitive: Engage with the earworm song itself by listening to it repeatedly so as to exhaust the earworm or “complete it,” says Williamson. Because earworms are only fragments of music, listening to the entire track might relieve a person of repeating the same part in her head.
So go ahead, interact with that earworm! And let us know which are your favorite or least favorite ones. We’ll try to keep them out of our heads.
Below is a playlist of some earworm songs you’ve already told us about through Twitter and Facebook. Listener beware!
*This article was updated on May 28, 2014 to reflect the following correction: The original text stated that a study led by Victoria Williamson found that “91 percent of people reported having an earworm at least once a week, while about a quarter had them more than once a day.” That finding was actually reported in a study led by Lassi A. Liikkanen.This November, Colorado’s voters will have the chance to take a historic vote by approving a ballot amendment — Amendment 64 — that would legalize the adult possession of small amounts of marijuana.
There’s a well-funded campaign being waged to convince voters to oppose this amendment. Calling itself Smart Colorado, this group claims that passing Amendment 64 would “harm” the state’s children and generally cause havoc.
Smart Colorado is not upfront about who is funding its campaign. But its recently filed disclosure with the secretary of state makes one thing shockingly clear: the campaign is largely being funded by individuals and organizations who profit from the drug war status quo.
Let’s take a look at some of the campaign’s biggest funders:
Police And Police Associations: The police profit off of the drug war because they gain access to drug enforcement grants that allow them to hire additional staff and purchase more equipment. The Colorado Drug Investigators Association gave $1,000 on September 10th. The Association of Colorado State Patrol Professionals gave $500 to the campaign on September 7th. Patrick Crouch, an agent with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, gave $50 on the same date. Regina Marinelli, another police officer, gave $100 on the same date, as did Kevin Burke, another law enforcement official. Police commander Jerry Peters has chipped in $220. These are just a few of the donations from police officers.
The police profit off of the drug war because they gain access to drug enforcement grants that allow them to hire additional staff and purchase more equipment. The Colorado Drug Investigators Association gave $1,000 on September 10th. The Association of Colorado State Patrol Professionals gave $500 to the campaign on September 7th. Patrick Crouch, an agent with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, gave $50 on the same date. Regina Marinelli, another police officer, gave $100 on the same date, as did Kevin Burke, another law enforcement official. Police commander Jerry Peters has chipped in $220. These are just a few of the donations from police officers. Drug Rehab Centers: Ai??The single largest donation to Smart Colorado comes from an organization called Save Our Society from Drugs based in Florida. It gave a whopping $126,497.21 to the campaign. The organization, as The Nation’s Lee Fang documents, runs abusive drug rehab centers that have been compared to “torture.”
Ai??The single largest donation to Smart Colorado comes from an organization called Save Our Society from Drugs based in Florida. It gave a whopping $126,497.21 to the campaign. The organization, as The Nation’s Lee Fang documents, runs abusive drug rehab centers that have been compared to “torture.” The Hospitality Industry: The hospitality industry includes food services, alcohol, and other activities that are competitors to recreational marijuana use. The Broadmoor, a resort in Colorado Springs that was recently bought by right-wing billionaire Phil Anschutz, donated $1,065.42 to Smart Colorado. The Hospitality Issue Political Action Committee gave $3,000 on September 5th.
The drug war is one of America’s biggest policy failures. It’s perpetuated by a variety of actors, not the least of which is the fact that a lot of people profit off of this bad policy. Colorado’s voters should educate themselves and not fall prey to the coming barrage of propaganda from Smart Colorado.When it comes to serving face, we’ve got you covered. Whether you have a favorite brand or need help finding the perfect match, Sephora is your No.1 destination for everything beauty.
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Make sure you have a solid foundation with the perfect primer – this will ensure that the rest of your face makeup goes on smoothly and lasts longer. Next, it’s time for concealer. If you need just the right shade, refer to our Color IQ to make sure everything matches up. Color IQ can also help you find the best foundation shade (and even brand) for your coverage needs. Some of the most popular foundation brands include NARS, Stila and Fenty.
Add some color with a contour palette. Start with a darker, matte shade that simulates a shadowed-look and enunciates your cheekbones. Next, add some warmth with a bronzer in a C-shape along your hairline. Finally, apply blush for that perfect rosy look. Some of the best face palette brands include Tarte and Anastasia Beverly Hills.
Whether you want a natural or dramatic look can depend heavily on your eye makeup. For a natural look, stick to mascara, a very light eyeshadow (if any) and a boy brow. Make sure to get a good lengthening and volumizing mascara for extra lash definition. For a dramatic look, the options are endless. You’ll definitely need some liquid eyeliner, the perfect palette and all of the brushes necessary to get started. Try some of the top eye makeup brands like Urban Decay, Kat Von D and Too Faced.
Last, but not least – don’t forgot those lips! A more subdued look may only require some lipgloss or a shade that’s closer to your skin tone. For fuller looking lips, make use of the right lip liner and some plumping gloss. You can always make your lips stand out with a bold shade in whatever finish suits your look, whether it be glossy or matte. A couple of our favorite brands are Huda Beauty and Buxom.PRINCE RUPERT, British Columbia — A disabled Russian container ship carrying hundreds of tons of fuel is adrift again but officials said Saturday there is no immediate risk of it reaching shore, hitting rocks and causing a spill.
Royal Canadian Navy Lt. Greg Menzies said a tow line from the Coast Guard ship Gordon Reid got detached, but he noted that the Russian vessel is now 44 kilometres away from shore. Menzies said efforts are under way to get the line re-attached.
The Canadian Coast Guard vessel Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Spar were also on to assist if needed, while an ocean-going tugboat was expected to arrive in the area late Saturday or early Sunday.
The Russian carrier Simushir lost power off Haida Gwaii, also known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, as it made its way from Everett in Washington state to Russia.
The Gordon Reid secured a towline Friday night and the two vessels were moving away from the coastline at 3.7 kilometres per hour in 3 to 4-meter (10 to 12-foot) swells earlier Saturday. Officials said the outcome was subject to weather, but the danger has been lessened.
“The further they get away from the coast and the nearer the larger tug gets the better,” Acting Sub. Lt. Ron MacDougall said.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper tweeted his thanks for the “great work” the Gordon Reid ship is doing off the coast.
The ship was drifting northwest in stormy seas Friday, away from shore, after losing power late Thursday, officials said.
The fear of oil spills is especially acute in British Columbia, where residents remember the Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989. Such worries have fed fierce opposition – particularly from environmentalists and Canada’s native tribes – to a current proposal to build a pipeline that would carry oil from Canada’s Alberta oil sands to a terminal in Kitimat, British Columbia, on the Pacific Coast for shipment to Asia. Opponents say the proposed pipeline would bring about 220 large oil tankers a year to the province’s coast.
The president of the Council of the Haida Nation had warned Friday that a storm coming into the area was expected to push the ship onto the rocky shore, but later President Pete Lantin said their worst fears have subsided.
“If the weather picks up it could compromise that, but as of right now there is a little sense of relief that we might have averted catastrophe here,” Lantin said.
About 5,000 people live on the island and fish for food nearby, Lantin said.
Roger Girouard, an assistant commissioner with the Canadian Coast Guard, said their top concern was the fuel and diesel oil onboard and the risk that the ship could hit the rocks and break apart.
He earlier said if the ship did come apart the rough seas would break up the oil “so we would have an ally there. It’s cold weather so we don’t have a lot of migratory species right at the moment.”
He said they have been already moving assets to the region to respond should the break apart and spill.
MacDougall said the Simushir, which is about 440 feet (135 meters) long, was carrying “a range of hydrocarbons, mining materials and other related chemicals.” That included 400 tons of bunker oil and 50 tons of diesel.
The vessel is not a tanker but rather a container ship. In comparison, the tanker Exxon Valdez, spilled out 35,000 metric tons of oil.
A spokesman for Russian shipping firm SASCO, the owners of the vessel, said it is carrying 298 containers of mining equipment in addition to heavy bunker fuel as well as diesel oil onboard for the voyage.
The U.S. Coast Guard had a helicopter on standby in the event that 10 crew members need to be pulled off the ship. Officials said the injured captain was evacuated by helicopter, but they were given no further medical details.
The Haida Nation said it had set up an emergency command center in Old Massett, located on the northern tip of Haida Gwaii, in case the vessel runs aground.
The Simushir is registered in Kholmsk, Russia, and owned by SASCO, also known as Sakhalin Shipping Company, according to the company’s website. The SASCO website says the ship was built in the Netherlands in 1998.
Gillies contributed from TorontoNvidia has just announced that its new GeForce 650 or higher graphics cards will come with special in-game money for free-to-play titles like Hawken, World of Tanks, or Planetside 2, as part of a brand new campaign to promote upgrades among gamers who enjoy online experiences.
Free-to-play PC titles are beginning to deliver some high-quality experiences both in terms of gameplay and in terms of visuals, as the developers can squeeze out more power and implement better looking tech into their games.
Nvidia has decided to capitalize on this new niche and has confirmed that all GeForce 650 graphics cards or higher will come with special vouchers good for in-game benefits inside Hawken, World Of Tanks, or Planetside 2.
More specifically, if someone gets a GeForce 650 or 650 Ti, they'll get a World of Tanks 2050 Gold & 1 Month Premium (worth $25/€25), a Planetside 2 - Gear Up pack (worth $25/€25) that includes Infantry Camo, Weapon Camo, Exclusive Gun, 7 Day XP Boost, 7 Day Resource Boost equivalent to 2500 Station Cash, and a Hawken 3600 Meteor Credit (worth $25/€25).
If they get a GeForce GTX 660 or higher, they'll get a World of Tanks 7500 Gold & 1 Month Premium (worth $50/€50), Planetside 2 - Premium Gear Up pack (worth $50/€50) that includes Infantry Camo, Weapon Camo, Vehicle Camo, Exclusive Gun, 7 Day Squad XP Boost, 7 Day Squad Resource Boost, 7 Day XP Boost, 7 Day Resource Boost equivalent to 5000 Station Cash, and a Hawken 7200 Meteor Credit (worth $50/€50).
Each of these online games boast special improvements when running on Nvidia graphics cards, as World of Tanks enables 3D Vision, while both Hawken and Planetside 2 have PhysX support, meaning more particle effects and better-looking explosions.
You can learn much more info about this new promotion and what graphics cards vendors sell equipment with special vouchers here.John Dear is a Catholic priest who has chosen an especially haunted place to keep vigil. For the past 12 years, he has lived alongside the Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico, birthplace of the atomic age and the country’s flagship nuclear facility, where he organizes regular protests. He has also written a steady stream of books and spoken widely, making him a troublesome man around town. After years of efforts to rein him in, the Jesuit order ejected Dear in December. His vocation is ever more that of a hermit.
"None of my friends are working on nukes anymore," he says. "This is the most evil place on the planet, and nobody’s talking about it."
One exception is Megan Rice, an 84-year-old nun and another longtime member of the Plowshares antinuclear movement. In 2012, with two fellow activists, Rice broke into the secure nuclear facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., where they splashed blood and hung protest signs. The security breach made headlines and prompted a Congressional investigation—into the breach, not the nuclear weapons themselves. Rice, who is expected to be sentenced this month, may spend the rest of her life in prison for the protest.
Nowadays, if nuclear weapons make a blip on the radar of public discourse, it is in reference to preventing their spread to nations such as Iran, although the United States still holds more than 5,000 warheads of its own. As an undergraduate, Barack Obama once wrote an article calling for nuclear abolition, but when his administration announced plans to build a new generation of such weapons, the outcry was mainly among those at the margins, like Dear and Rice.
"I’m just going to keep at it no matter what," says Dear.
A no-less-remarkable kind of perseverance appears in print this month: the 640-page Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing Between Democracy and Doom, by Elaine Scarry, who holds a professorship in aesthetics and general theory of value at Harvard University. The seed of the book lies in Scarry’s first and best-known work, The Body in Pain, a literary, philosophical, and political analysis that since its publication, in 1985, has been a favorite source for those seeking the prohibition of torture.
"I realized that nuclear war much more closely approximates the model of torture than the model of war because there’s zero consent from the many millions of people affected by it," Scarry recalls, nearly repeating a sentence that appears in the 1985 text. She began working on Thermonuclear Monarchy in earnest the year after The Body in Pain came out—28 years ago, with the Cold War still well under way.
The monarchy in her title denotes the assertion that "out-of-ratio" weapons such as nuclear warheads, like the perversions of torture, are inherently undemocratic. It is the nature of nuclear weapons to place the lives of billions of people in the hands of the minutely few individuals with access to the launch codes. Regarding U.S. presidents since 1945, she writes, "Louis XIV was powerless compared to each of these men"; future generations, as she put it in The Body in Pain, "may look back upon our present situation the way we now look back upon the slaves building the pyramids of Egypt." The new book, published by W.W. Norton, implores its readers to undo this condition, to "reacquire our powers of self-government and dismantle the nuclear arsenal simultaneously."
Those who have been following Scarry’s work the past few decades will find much that is familiar, even redundant. Several of Thermonuclear Monarchy’s arguments appeared in a 1991 University of Pennsylvania Law Review article, while other parts mirror her polemics against George W. Bush-era policies of torture and surveillance. A version of a chunk of it has already come out as a much shorter book with the same publisher. The fastidiousness of her research also resulted in a several-years-long detour more than a decade ago, expressed in a series of New York Review of Books articles, when she proposed electromagnetic interference from military vessels as a possible explanation for the crashes of several civilian airliners, including TWA Flight 800. Though investigators ultimately dismissed it, her theory prompted a federal study and was cited in a NASA report.
Scarry’s assault on the reigning complacency about nuclear weapons rests on her belief in the capacity of an interpretation to reconfigure the world.
To an unusual degree for an English professor, Scarry has gotten into the habit of seeking to have an impact beyond the realm of pure discourse. While John Dear keeps his decade-long vigil and Megan Rice lives out the consequences of her break-in, Scarry’s assault on the reigning complacency about nuclear weapons rests on her belief in the capacity of an interpretation to reconfigure the world.
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From time to time over the years, Scarry has visited the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, at the other end of Boston—in particular to study transcripts of Kennedy’s conversations in the White House for clues about nuclear-authorization procedures. As she browses the museum exhibits scattered across the airy building, her voracity for technical information is apparent; she identifies military airplanes and ships as easily, and with a similar degree of affection, as she recognizes a bush of rose hips shriveled by the cold in the parking lot. But the curve of her eyes and the lilt of her voice also convey a sense of melancholy, of mourning something. She seems just as much at home in the exhibit devoted to mementos of the president’s funeral.
Kennedy’s finest moment is generally thought to be his handling of the Cuban missile crisis, in which the middle course he charted may have saved the world from nuclear holocaust. In an exhibit about the incident, Scarry listens closely to the recordings in which the president talks down his advisers’ proposals for various sorts of aggression. One hears the calm and cool that make Kennedy so lionized. But for Scarry the whole setup is a problem from the outset—that the fate of the world was ever at his mercy in the first place. Or Truman’s, Eisenhower’s, Johnson’s, Nixon’s, Ford’s, Carter’s, Reagan’s, Bush’s, Clinton’s, Bush’s, or Obama’s. Decades after the fact, revelations have emerged that other presidents, too, had close calls.
"We think of the tremendous suffering that presidents have to go through in thinking about this," she says. "It’s not that I don’t think their job is very hard, but it’s just no comparison to being burned and killed along with every other species on earth."
For Scarry, confronting our suicidal tolerance for nuclear weapons begins with reconsidering two features of the Constitution. The first, and the more intuitively relevant, is the requirement for Congressional authorization of war, which the United States government and other nuclear-armed states have tended to relinquish in favor of executive authority. She chronicles, as others have in the past, how the existence of these weapons has systematically undermined the power of the legislature—and those who elect its members—at all levels of military policy. Thus there has not been a formal declaration of war by Congress since World War II, though there has been no lack of wars. The surest way to reclaim the spirit and purpose of this constitutional brake on monarchic executive power, Scarry believes, is to do away with nuclear weapons altogether.
The other constitutional resource she draws upon may be more surprising for one generally thought of as a liberal: the Second Amendment. "The right to bear arms" tends to be understood in public today—and in the Supreme Court—in terms of an individual right to possess whatever guns one pleases. But Scarry, drawing on her assessment of the framers’ intent, argues that the real purpose of the amendment was to spread out across the population the power to wield military force. The amendment’s "well-regulated militia" isn’t a bunch of hobbyists with AR-15s; it is meant as another democratic brake on the presidential power for war-making, and an opportunity for popular refusal.
"I absolutely think you have to have gun laws," she explains. "Trying to understand the right to bear arms the way we usually talk about it is like trying to understand the First Amendment only through pornography." Two hundred years ago, maybe this meant a musket in every household. Today, under the aegis of nuclear weapons that depend on the authorization of very few, holding true to the original intent is no longer feasible.
David A. Koplow, a scholar of national-security law at Georgetown University, finds Scarry’s strategy to be novel. "I’ve not previously seen a Second Amendment argument for nuclear disarmament," he says. He also suspects that decades of precedent—of nuclear weapons existing alongside the Constitution unchallenged—amount to more inertia than legal reasoning like this can overcome on its own. "The fact that we’ve had nuclear weapons for now 60 years," he says, "has become itself an important fact of constitutional life."
Legal arguments about the Constitution are only a particular instance of what Scarry proposes as a much broader way of seeing. The middle third of Thermonuclear Monarchy extends that reasoning to social-contract theory writ large—by means of a lengthy rehabilitation of the extremely pre-nuclear political thinker Thomas Hobbes. During the Cold War, Hobbes was made into a patron saint of the nuclear-arms race by those who, seeking a deterrent against his imagined "war of all against all," justified handing over to a benevolent sovereign enough warheads to end the world many times over. But Scarry reclaims a Hobbes who knows the horrors of arbitrary violence firsthand and whose system, with peace as its goal, is meant to constrain a ruler's ability to injure. Hobbes enjoins allegiance to the sovereign in all circumstances—except when one is in danger of injury or called upon to injure others. Then, consent is required, and dissent may be justified.
Her recovery of Hobbes reminds us how often the object of modern political thought has been to yoke government's destructive capacity to the will of the people—at least until nuclear weapons came around and the launch codes, ensconced in a 45-pound suitcase, started following the president everywhere he goes. For Scarry, the nuclear-ready presidency contradicts the duty of democracy to interfere with executive power—to "clog."
"Clogging is bad if it’s stopping an ambulance or it’s stopping lovemaking or it’s stopping reading," she says. "Clogging is not bad if what you’re trying to stop is injuring."
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If the Constitution’s troubles with nuclear weapons are just a subset of the Enlightenment’s democratic notions more generally, in the last third of the book these weapons come into conflict with something even more basic: autonomy over our own bodies and minds. That we should allow anyone, even a person we elect, to wield something so powerful as a nuclear weapon is, for Scarry, to relinquish our essential integrity. Lost is our capacity to deliberate in an emergency—leave that to Kennedy and company—or to decide whether to expose ourselves to harm. (Fallout will reach the conscientious-objector camps, too.) The subtitle of The Body in Pain is The Making and Unmaking of the World, and this pair of options still guides Scarry’s grand metaphysic; nuclear weapons stand firmly on the side of unmaking, in opposition to creativity and self-rule.
Thermonuclear Monarchy includes detailed considerations of the history of military desertions, the town where Hobbes grew up, a mistranslation of the Iliad, marriage, CPR, the Swiss nuclear-shelter system, mutual-aid societies, and Benjamin Franklin’s ideas about habit. Scarry’s project is not merely legal, or historical, or technical, any more than it is solely about nuclear weapons. It is a testimony of what is worthy of value in human nature and social life, measured against the machines that remain an especially dire threat, however much we keep them out of sight and mind. It’s less an argument that nuclear weapons should be eliminated, or how, than an entire worldview in which they have no rightful place.
One might consider this book, for instance, alongside the recent Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State, by Garry Wills, another professor who knows no disciplinary bounds. Wills raises many similar concerns with executive power and constitutional law, and comes to similar conclusions, yet he leaves it at that. He saves the metaphysics for other books. Wills was simply trying to make a political point, it seems, while over the course of nearly 30 years Scarry spun the topic into an epic. (Neither of them cites the other.)
"Compared to the different avenues I’ve gone down, it’s comparatively stark, believe it or not," Scarry says of Thermonuclear Monarchy. She considers her task, after all, to be intrinsically expansive. "We have to eliminate these weapons and may have to reinvent citizenship to do it."
Jonathan Granoff has spent most of his life trying to pose legal challenges to nuclear weapons, most recently as president of the Global Security Institute. He traces this career |
of a new state of matter in which current flows only through a set of surface channels that resemble an hourglass. These channels are created through the action of a newly theorized particle, dubbed the “hourglass fermion,” which arises due to a special property of the material. The tuning of this property can sequentially create and destroy the hourglass fermions, suggesting a range of potential applications such as efficient transistor switching.
In an article published in the journal Nature this week, the researchers theorize the existence of these hourglass fermions in crystals made of potassium and mercury combined with either antimony, arsenic or bismuth. The crystals are insulators in their interiors and on their top and bottom surfaces, but perfect conductors on two of their sides where the fermions create hourglass-shaped channels that enable electrons to flow.
The research was performed by Princeton University postdoctoral researcher Zhi Jun Wang and former graduate student Aris Alexandradinata, now a postdoctoral researcher at Yale University, working with Robert Cava, Princeton’s Russell Wellman Moore Professor of Chemistry, and Associate Professor of Physics B. Andrei Bernevig.
The new hourglass fermion exists – theoretically for now, until detected experimentally – in a family of materials broadly called topological insulators, which were first observed experimentally in the mid-2000s and have since become one of the most active and interesting branches of quantum physics research. The bulk, or interior, acts as an insulator, which means it prohibits the travel of electrons, but the surface of the material is conducting, allowing electrons to travel through a set of channels created by particles known as Dirac fermions.
Fermions are a family of subatomic particles that include electrons, protons and neutrons, but they also appear in nature in many lesser known forms such as the massless Dirac, Majorana and Weyl fermions. After years of searching for these particles in high-energy accelerators and other large-scale experiments, researchers found that they can detect these elusive fermions in table-top laboratory experiments on crystals. Over the past few years, researchers have used these “condensed matter” systems to first predict and then confirm the existence of Majorana and Weyl fermions in a wide array of materials.
The next frontier in condensed matter physics is the discovery of particles that can exist in the so-called “material universe” inside crystals but not in the universe at large. Such particles come about due to the properties of the materials but cannot exist outside the crystal the way other subatomic particles do. Classifying and discovering all the possible particles that can exist in the material universe is just beginning. The work reported by the Princeton team lays the foundations of one of the most interesting of these systems, according to the researchers.
In the current study, the researchers theorize that the laws of physics prohibit current from flowing in the crystal’s bulk and top and bottom surfaces, but permit electron flow in completely different ways on the side surfaces through the hourglass-shaped channels. This type of channel, known more precisely as a dispersion, was completely unknown before.
The researchers then asked whether this dispersion is a generic feature found in certain materials or just a fluke arising from a specific crystal model.
It turned out to be no fluke.
A long-standing collaboration with Cava, a material science expert, enabled Bernevig, Wang, and Alexandradinata to uncover more materials exhibiting this remarkable behavior.
“Our hourglass fermion is curiously movable but unremovable,” said Bernevig. “It is impossible to remove the hourglass channel from the surface of the crystal.”
Bernevig explained that this robust property arises from the intertwining of spatial symmetries, which are characteristics of the crystal structure, with the modern band theory of crystals. Spatial symmetries in crystals are distinguished by whether a crystal can be rotated or otherwise moved without altering its basic character.
In a paper published in Physical Review X this week to coincide with the Nature paper, the team detailed the theory behind how the crystal structure leads to the existence of the hourglass fermion.
“Our work demonstrates how this basic geometric property gives rise to a new topology in band insulators,” Alexandradinata said. The hourglass is a robust consequence of spatial symmetries that translate the origin by a fraction of the lattice period, he explained. “Surface bands connect one hourglass to the next in an unbreakable zigzag pattern,” he said.
The team found esoteric connections between their system and high-level mathematics. Origin-translating symmetries, also called non-symmorphic symmetries, are described by a field of mathematics called cohomology, which classifies all the possible crystal symmetries in nature. For example, cohomology gives the answer to how many crystal types exist in three spatial dimensions: 230.
In the cohomological perspective, there are 230 ways to combine origin-preserving symmetries with real-space translations, known as the “space groups.” The theoretical framework to understand the crystals in the current study requires a cohomological description with momentum-space translations.
“The hourglass theory is the first of its kind that describes time-reversal-symmetric crystals, and moreover, the crystals in our study are the first topological material class which relies on origin-translating symmetries,” added Wang.
Out of the 230 space groups in which materials can exist in nature, 157 are non-symmorphic, meaning they can potentially host interesting electronic behavior such as the hourglass fermion.
“The exploration of the behavior of these interesting fermions, their mathematical description, and the materials where they can be observed, is poised to create an onslaught of activity in quantum, solid state and material physics,” Cava said. “We are just at the beginning.”
The study was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the W. M. Keck Foundation, and the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Transformative Technology Fund at Princeton University.
The paper, “Hourglass fermions” by,,
The paper, “Topological insulators from group cohomology” by A. Alexandradinata, Zhijun Wang, and B. Andrei Bernevig, was published in the April 15, 2016 issue of Phys. Rev. X 6, 021008.“We have only now, only this single eternal moment opening and unfolding before us, day and night.” ~Jack Kornfield
Almost two years ago, I kept seeing the word “mindfulness” pop up everywhere I was looking, and I had no clue what it was.
I kept seeing blog posts with titles like How Mindfulness can Help You at Work¸ How Mindfulness can Help You in Relationships, and How Mindfulness can Help You in the Bedroom.
Then, I saw a short video explaining mindfulness. It was a monk drinking coffee, and the narrator was talking about how much better the coffee tastes when you think about the beans being grown, the people who harvest the beans, and everything else that goes into making your simple cup of coffee.
Everything I was seeing from pop-culture blogs made it seem like this thing called mindfulness was this snake oil that could solve all of life’s problems. Although I was skeptical and had no clue what I was getting into, I decided that I was going to keep an open mind and see what mindfulness was all about.
For me, it was a quick and easy sell from the moment I started practicing because everything just “clicked” for me.
As someone who tries to encourage everyone to give it a try, I’ve learned that people don’t often have the same experience. So, if you’re someone who is thinking about trying the practice or giving up, I hope this will give you some motivation to keep moving forward.
1. Time is our most valuable currency, and we can’t waste it.
In June of 2012, I was diagnosed with congestive heart failure at the age of twenty-six, and the doctors told me there was a slim chance that I’d live more than another year. Well, here we are five years later; I’m alive, and I’ve been able to watch my son grow into an amazing young man. My heart is almost completely back to normal, and it’s blown my doctor’s mind.
With this second chance at life, I made a commitment to myself that I was going to experience every day to its fullest with a goal to waste as little time as possible, because tomorrow isn’t promised.
I know, my situation is a little bit more extreme than most, but I believe this is something we can all get behind. We’ve all had unexpected tragedy in our life from losing a job, a relationship, or a loved one. Since tomorrow isn’t promised, we need to make the most of today. I thought that this was exactly what I was doing until I discovered mindfulness.
When I took my first course on mindfulness, some questions started to come up that I had never even asked myself because I didn’t realize they were questions that needed to be asked.
When was the last time I sat in awareness of simply noticing gravity keeping me grounded on Earth?
My breath happens twenty-four hours a day, seven days per week, but how often do I notice it?
How many times do I drive from point A to point B without noticing one part of my experience because I’m stuck in my head?
These last five years I thought I was making the most of each day, but there was so much that I was missing. I mindlessly drive to work, eat food, have conversations, and engage mindlessly in many other situations. Mindfulness helps keep me fully present and engaged with as many moments in my life so I don’t miss anything.
2. Mindfulness is backed by science.
I’ve been an extremely skeptical person my entire life. Maybe it stems from the trust issues I developed as a kid. My father always taught me that if it sounds like it’s too good to be true, it usually is.
In order to sell me on trying anything new, I need some very clear-cut evidence and scientifically backed research that this thing is going to work. Like I said, my time is extremely valuable to me, so I’m not going to waste my time trying something that doesn’t have any evidence to back it up.
Around the same time that I discovered mindfulness, I also learned that I’m fascinated by neuroscience. One of the most interesting parts of the brain is the prefrontal cortex. While it’s the youngest part, it also has some of the most important responsibilities, including:
Emotional regulation
Impulse control
Body regulation
Making logical decisions
Empathy
Connectedness to others
Self-awareness
The problem with us as humans is that our limbic system (our primitive instincts to react) often overrides the prefrontal cortex. However, scientific evidence shows that a regular mindfulness practice helps strengthen that part of the brain.
Basically, if I wanted to get stronger biceps, I know which weight-lifting exercises I could do. If I wanted to increase my stamina, I’d probably do some cardio. So, if I want to improve all of the abilities listed above, I should practice mindfulness because it strengthens the prefrontal cortex. I can debate with the best of them, but I’ll never argue against scientific evidence.
3. My mind is a boat without an anchor.
I am one of those people with a mind that never stops. This is something that I’ve dealt with since I was a kid. I don’t think it’s any form of ADD, but I have a brain that’s constantly planning, coming up with new ideas, and trying to find solutions to problems.
This is a gift and a curse. The way my mind works has helped me excel at many different jobs because my brain is wired to always think about how I can improve what I’m doing. The issue is that there’s a time and a place for this, and when I’m in the middle of a conversation or doing an important project with a mind that takes off, it can get me into a bit of trouble.
I also noticed that sometimes my mind would end up in the weirdest places sometimes. I could be sitting at my desk at work, and after zoning out for a few minutes, for some reason I’m thinking about a scene from a 90s TV show, and I’m wondering how I got there. It’s like driving your car to buy groceries and somehow ending up at the park and thinking, “How on earth did I get here?”
I always thought that I was one of the only people this happened to, but it’s extremely common. Our brains have tens of thousands of thoughts per day, and my mindfulness taught me that’s alright. It becomes a problem when we don’t notice where our thoughts are taking us.
By using different anchors like my breath or anchor words like “thinking,” I’m able to catch my thoughts drifting sooner rather than later.
I often say that instead of my mind taking me five hundred miles off of its course, now it only takes me about five miles off course.
This has also allowed me to find humor in my own thoughts, which helps me out incredibly with self-esteem issues.
I have a brain that can quickly turn an anthill into a mountain. For example, maybe I said, “Good morning!” to the receptionist when I arrived at work, and she didn’t reply. My mind used to start over-analyzing that situation immediately with thoughts like “Maybe she’s mad at me,” “I wonder what I did wrong,” and “I wonder if I’m about to get fired because nobody here likes me.”
My mind used to take a hard turn to the off-ramp leading to crazy town, but now I can catch it and simply giggle to myself about where my mind went to.
4. Mindfulness helps you deal with emotions in a new way.
One of my mindfulness instructors discussed how nobody teaches us, when we’re children, that life and emotions can be intense, and I immediately related to him in that aspect. My emotional regulation has been off since I was a child. I don’t just feel things; I FEEL things.
I think of my emotions as being on a line that goes from -10 to +10 with 0 being in the middle. Whenever I felt anything, positive or negative, it was always at a -10 or +10, and both of these can hurt me.
Learning about mindfulness taught me what equanimity means, and that’s something I knew that I needed in my life. I always had issues not just getting sad, but getting depressed. I wouldn’t get worried; I’d get anxiety. I wouldn’t get angry; I’d get furious. And whenever I started to like someone, I’d fall head over heels in love with them.
My other issue was that my expectations would cause me to cling to optimism at a +10, and if the situation didn’t pan out, I’d fall to a -10 because I was up too high.
The Buddhist teaching talks about how grasping can lead to suffering, and it made sense. I would grasp at emotions whether they were positive or negative. In both situations, this was like holding onto a hot coal for far too long.
Maybe I was letting something from earlier in my day ruin the rest of my day. Maybe the exciting plans I had for after work was distracting me from getting my job done. Mindfulness helps me simply notice what my emotion is, and let it be exactly what it is in that moment.
This is easier said than done with good emotions, but what about the bad ones? The practice also teaches me about impermanence and that no negative emotion is going to last forever.
Now, I’m able to sit with my emotion and turn toward it and accept it. I can see my emotion as a leaf that’s gently floating down a stream past me. Knowing that my negative emotion will eventually pass allows me to embrace it without trying to resist what I’m experiencing in that very moment.
5. It helps my son.
As a parent, we’re always looking for something to do with our children, and mindfulness is something that helps me be a parent and helps my son manage his thoughts and emotions. I was practicing for about six months when I realized how beneficial it would be for my son to begin practicing with me.
We were on vacation in Southern California visiting my best friend. On the last day of the trip, we took my son to the boardwalk, which was full of everything that he loved. He could play video games at the arcade, eat some boardwalk junk food, and spend time at the beach. Unfortunately, he was having a very bad day, which started as an attitude problem and evolved into him breaking down in tears.
I had been trying everything to cheer him up on this last day of our vacation, but nothing was working. I thought maybe he was hungry, so we got food. My head told me he was being ungrateful, which can trigger my negative reactions. I thought maybe we were doing too many adult things, so we tried the arcade, but that didn’t work. What was wrong?
He was tired, but he didn’t realize it.
My son was seven at this time, and I have to remember that he doesn’t have the knowledge or experience that I do.
Everything he’s experiencing is new for him, and not only is it difficult for him to communicate his feelings to me, but oftentimes he doesn’t even know what he’s feeling. When we finally sat down and took a minute, he explained that he was extremely tired and he didn’t sleep the night before.
As soon as we returned from that trip, I started teaching him mindfulness, and I’ve seen him change so much over the last nine months. He’s able to identify his emotions much sooner, and he has his own tools to calm himself down.
He realizes when he’s worried about the future, and he uses his breath to come back to the moment. He loves doing loving/kindness practices and sending kind thoughts to his little brother, friends, family and sometimes complete strangers. He even did a presentation on mindfulness for his 2nd grade project!
I thought that I was happy and content with life before, but my life has grown exponentially better with my consistent practice. Each day, I learn more about myself as well as life.
If I ever stopped growing from my practice, I’d probably stop, but my experience as well as the experience of others shows me that we continue to grow each day. So, whether you’re at a lull in your practice or thinking about trying mindfulness, just keep moving forward toward enlightenment.
About Chris Boutté Chris Boutté struggled with depression, anxiety and addiction for most of his life. After getting sober in 2012, he was on a mission to improve his mental health as well as his sobriety when he found mindfulness. Subscribe to Chris on YouTube at The Rewired Soul and follow him on Instagram @TheRewiredSoul. If you’d like to learn more about Chris’ story, check out his book HOPE: How I Overcame Depression, Anxiety and Addiction.by
On October 16, 1946, shortly after the conclusion of the Nuremberg Trials, ten prominent members of the political and military leadership of Nazi Germany were marched to the gallows. Some of the former elite Nazis did not die quickly of an intended broken neck but strangled slowly. Since the trapdoor was too small, several of the condemned suffered bloody head injuries when they hit its sides while falling through.
What sort of grisly sentence shall we impose on the masters of the great capitalist carbon-industrial complex for their efforts to exterminate human (and other forms of) life by the turning the planet into a giant Greenhouse Gas chamber? The Nazis, to be sure, to be sure, killed in the tens of million, including six million Jews murdered with explicit genocidal intent. (The Allies and the U.S. also committed monumental war crimes, including the appalling atom-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki). But anthropogenic – really capitalogenic – global warming threatens to end the human experiment altogether. Exterminist Ecocide is hard to beat when it comes to criminality.
“Oh,” one defense of the corporate Greenhouse Gassers runs, “but nobody really knew about the danger to life posed by the rapacious drilling and burning of fossil fuels until quite recently.”
Wrong. The story of climate change and the oil corporations is very much like the story of lung cancer and the big tobacco firms. Millions of Americans – including both of my parents – grew up convinced that it was okay to smoke cigarettes for years only to learn later that tobacco products were highly lethal. Their understanding of that terrible fact was tragically set back by a tobacco industry that worked for decades to knowingly obstruct the truth with a spurious message of scientific uncertainty and by advertisements that presented cigarettes as a sign and even source of healthy vitality. The tobacco companies made these commercials with full knowledge of the medical research showing that science showed that cigarettes were sending millions to early graves
Inside Climate News (ICN), a Pulitzer Prize-winning nonprofit news agency, has recently showed that the same basic thing has occurred with global warming. In a series of articles based on internal documents from Exxon Mobil going back to the 1970s and on interviews with former company scientists and employees, ICN shows that Exxon’s “own research confirmed fossil fuels’ role in global warming decades ago.” Yes, decades ago – during the late 1970s to be precise. Here is a key passage from ICN’s investigative reporting:
“At a meeting in Exxon Corporation’s headquarters, a senior company scientist named James F. Black addressed an audience of powerful oilmen. Speaking without a text as he flipped through detailed slides, Black delivered a sobering message: carbon dioxide from the world’s use of fossil fuels would warm the planet and could eventually endanger humanity. ‘In the first place, there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels,’ Black told Exxon’s Management Committee, according to a written version he recorded later. It was July 1977 when Exxon’s leaders received this blunt assessment, well before most of the world had heard of the looming climate crisis.” “A year later, Black, a top technical expert in Exxon’s Research & Engineering division, took an updated version of his presentation to a broader audience. He warned Exxon scientists and managers that independent researchers estimated a doubling of the carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) concentration in the atmosphere would increase average global temperatures by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit), and as much as 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) at the poles. Rainfall might get heavier in some regions, and other places might turn to desert. ‘Some countries would benefit but others would have their agricultural output reduced or destroyed,’ Black said, in the written summary of his 1978 talk…. Still, Black estimated quick action was needed. ‘Present thinking,’ he wrote in the 1978 summary, ‘holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.’”
In the 1980s, Exxon scientists worked with academic and government scientists to construct and interpret advanced climate models. Reviewing the resulting projections, the director of Exxon’s Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences Laboratory concluded that it was “distinctly possible” that a warming trend after 2030 “will indeed be catastrophic (at least for a substantial fraction of the earth’s population).”
A “time window of five to ten years,” Black wrote – in 1978! More than a generation later, the climate change that Black and other scientists warned Exxon officials about during the Carter administration has brought humanity to the cliffs of ecological calamity. A recent report from the prestigious and normally restrained Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggest very strongly that the Earth is approaching terrible “tipping points” – the melting of polar ice and Arctic permafrost, the acid-bleaching of global coral reefs, and the drying out of the Amazonian rain forest – at a pace and in ways that had not been anticipated, thanks to anthro-/capitalo-genic global warming.
This did not have to happen. Had Exxon been honest and forthright about the dangers inherent in the mass drilling and burning of fossil fuels, humanity might have started decades ago to develop a less carbon-intensive energy system and thereby to avert the multiple catastrophes that beckon today. Shockingly enough, politicians today are still debating the reality and causes of climate change. And we can thank Exxon for that, to no small extent. By the late 1980s, when global warming (something that academic and government and academic scientists started warning policymakers about in the 1960s) became an observed fact, Exxon falsely claimed that science on the causes of climate change was highly uncertain. Nobody really knew if the climate was really changing or what was causing the change if such change was in fact occurring, Exxon insisted. Never mind that its own internally generated scientific evidence showed otherwise.
Exxon did not merely understand the science that contradicted its propaganda, it contributed to that science. Ever since the waning days of the Reagan administration Exxon has been actively undermining its own findings – this even as the data has mounted on climate change’s anthropogenic (capitalogenic) nature and lethality and while the scientific community has started speaking out on the supreme danger with rising urgency and even desperation. Along the way, it has set the climate-denial tone for the rest of the leading oil corporations and portrayed itself as a friend of the environment.
The evil involved in all this is almost beyond belief. As the Harvard science historian Naomi Oreskes recently wrote in The New York Times, the rich and powerful firm Exxon not only denied its own findings but also set the deadly propaganda tone for the broader industry
“Exxon had a choice. As one of the most profitable companies in the world, Exxon could have acted as a corporate leader, helping to explain to political leaders, to shareholders and institutional investors, and to the public what it knew about climate change. It could have begun to shift its business model, investing in renewables and biofuels or introducing a major research and development initiative in carbon capture. It could have endorsed sensible policies to foster a profitable transition to a 21st-century energy economy….Instead — like the tobacco industry — Exxon chose the path of disinformation, denial and delay. More damagingly, the company set a model for the rest of the industry. More than 30 years ago, Exxon scientists acknowledged in internal company memos that climate change could be catastrophic. Today, scientists who say the exact same thing are ridiculed in the business community and on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal.”
Is there still time to avert the worst consequences of world capitalist Greenhouse Gassing? Perhaps. The ultimate culprit is the accumulation-, “growth”-, “productivity”-mad and imperial profits system. Clearly, though, we have lost precious time, precious species, precious glaciers, precious rain forest, precious coral reef, and precious permafrost thanks to the Orwellian, and eco-cidal machinations of Exxon’s executives and other elite managers atop the unelected corporate and financial carbon-industrial-complex. As Oreskes notes, “We have lost …decades during which we could have built a smart electricity grid, fostered efficiency and renewables and generated thousands of jobs in a cleaner, greener economy.”
And that’s why I cannot completely escape the dream-like image of Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson (a leading force behind Exxon’s climate denial efforts since the 1990s) and other top oil executives being marched up to the gallows in the wake of a world Ecocide Trial. Let the ropes be short and the trapdoor narrow. And then let us return to the bigger and technically feasible task at hand: a comprehensive conversion to renewable energy and a sustainable economy and society before it’s too late.The following is a guest post by Kevin Foley. Kevin is a developer at Squarespace doing cool stuff with their developer platform, among other things. He was recently working on a swipeable image gallery and he agreed to share some of that work here!
A few weeks ago Chris posted a tutorial for creating a Slider with Sliding Background Images. Around the same time I was working on some new swipeable galleries, so Chris suggested I write up a tutorial for how to add swipe support to his slider. Here it is!
When creating a swipeable gallery there are two techniques — that I know of — you can choose from. You can animate the scroll position, or move the element using translate. There are pros and cons to each.
Using Translate
Moving the slider with translate gives you the advantage of hardware acceleration and subpixel animation. However, on the initial touch event you might notice a small delay — only a few tens of milliseconds — before the slider starts moving. This isn’t very well documented, I’ve just noticed it in my experience.
Using Overflow Scroll
Overflow scroll is extremely responsive to the initial touch because it’s native to the browser. You don’t have to wait for the event listener in JavaScript. But you lose out on all the smoothness of moving elements with translate.
For this tutorial we’re going to use translate because I think it looks better.
The HTML
The HTML in this example is going to differ from Chris’s original example. Instead of setting the image as a background image, we’re going to set it as an element. That will allow us to move the image to gain that cool panning effect using translate instead of animating the background position.
<div class="slider-wrap"> <div class="slider" id="slider"> <div class="holder"> <div class="slide-wrapper"> <div class="slide"><img class="slide-image" src="//farm8.staticflickr.com/7347/8731666710_34d07e709e_z.jpg" /></div> 74 </div> <div class="slide-wrapper"> <div class="slide"><img class="slide-image" src="//farm8.staticflickr.com/7384/8730654121_05bca33388_z.jpg" /></div> 64 </div> <div class="slide-wrapper"> <div class="slide"><img class="slide-image" src="//farm8.staticflickr.com/7382/8732044638_9337082fc6_z.jpg" /></div> 82 </div> </div> </div> </div>
The CSS
For the most part the CSS is the same as Chris’ so I won’t rehash how to set up the layout. But there are a few key differences.
Instead of simply adding overflow scroll, we need to animate the slides. So for that we’re going to use a class to set up the transition and add it with JavaScript when we need it.
.animate { transition: transform 0.3s ease-out; }
IE 10 handles touch events differently than mobile Webkit browsers, like Chrome and Safari. We’ll address the Webkit touch events in JavaScript, but in IE10 we can create this entire slider (almost) with nothing but CSS.
.ms-touch.slider { overflow-x: scroll; overflow-y: hidden; -ms-overflow-style: none; /* Hides the scrollbar. */ -ms-scroll-chaining: none; /* Prevents Metro from swiping to the next tab or app. */ -ms-scroll-snap-type: mandatory; /* Forces a snap scroll behavior on your images. */ -ms-scroll-snap-points-x: snapInterval(0%, 100%); /* Defines the y and x intervals to snap to when scrolling. */ }
Since these properties are probably new to most people (they were to me, too) I’ll walk through each one and what it does.
-ms-scroll-chaining
The Surface tablet switches browser tabs when you swipe across the page, rendering all swipe events useless for developers. Luckily it’s really easy to override that behavior by setting scroll chaining to none on any given element.
-ms-scroll-snap-type
When set to mandatory, this property overrides the browser’s default scrolling behavior and forces a scrollable element to snap to a certain interval.
-ms-scroll-snap-points-x
This property sets the intervals the scrollable element will snap to. It accepts two numbers: the first number is the starting point; the second is the snap interval. In this example, each slide is the full width of the parent element, which means the interval should be 100% — i.e. the element will snap to 100%, 200%, 300%, and so on.
-ms-overflow-style
This property lets you hide the scrollbar when you set it to none.
The JavaScript
The first thing we have to do in JavaScript is detect what kind of touch device we’re using. IE 10 uses pointer events while Webkit has “touchstart,” “touchmove,” and “touchend.” Since the IE 10 slider is (almost) all in CSS we need to detect that and add a class to the wrapper.
if (navigator.msMaxTouchPoints) { $('#slider').addClass('ms-touch'); }
Pretty simple. If you tested the slider at this point it would be a functioning swipeable slideshow. But we still need to add the panning effect on the images.
if (navigator.msMaxTouchPoints) { $('#slider').addClass('ms-touch'); // Listed for the scroll event and move the image with translate. $('#slider').on('scroll', function() { $('.slide-image').css('transform','translate3d(-' + (100-$(this).scrollLeft()/6) + 'px,0,0)'); }); }
And that’s it for IE 10.
Now for the webkit way. This will all be wrapped in the else statement. First we’ve just got to define a few variables.
else { var slider = { // The elements. el: { slider: $("#slider"), holder: $(".holder"), imgSlide: $(".slide-image") }, // The stuff that makes the slider work. slideWidth: $('#slider').width(), // Calculate the slider width. // Define these as global variables so we can use them across the entire script. touchstartx: undefined, touchmovex: undefined, movex: undefined, index: 0, longTouch: undefined, // etc
Then we need to initialize the function and define the events.
// continued init: function() { this.bindUIEvents(); }, bindUIEvents: function() { this.el.holder.on("touchstart", function(event) { slider.start(event); }); this.el.holder.on("touchmove", function(event) { slider.move(event); }); this.el.holder.on("touchend", function(event) { slider.end(event); }); },
Now for the fun stuff that actually makes stuff happen when you swipe the slider.
Touchstart
On the iPhone (and most other touch sliders) if you move the slider slowly, just a little bit, it will snap back into its original position. But if you do it quickly it will increment to the next slide. That fast movement is called a flick. And there isn’t any native way to test for a flick so we’ve got to use a little hack. On touchstart we intitialize a setTimeout function and set a variable after a certain amount of time.
this.longTouch = false; setTimeout(function() { // Since the root of setTimout is window we can’t reference this. That’s why this variable says window.slider in front of it. window.slider.longTouch = true; }, 250);
We’ve also got to get the original position of the touch to make out animation work. If you’ve never done this before, it’s a little strange. JavaScript lets you define multitouch events, so you can pass the touches event a number that represents the amount of fingers you’re listening for. For this example I’m really only interested in one finger/thumb so in the code sample below that’s what the [0] is for.
// Get the original touch position. this.touchstartx = event.originalEvent.touches[0].pageX;
Before we start moving the slider I’m going to remove the animate class. I know there is no animate class on the elements right now, but we need this for the subsequent slides. We’ll add it back to an element on touchend.
$('.animate').removeClass('animate');
Touchmove
The touchmove event behaves similarly to scroll events in JavaScript. That is, if you do something on scroll it’s going to execute a bunch of times while the scroll is occuring. So we’re going to get the touchmove position continuously while the finger/thumb is moving.
// Continuously return touch position. this.touchmovex = event.originalEvent.touches[0].pageX;
Then we’ll do a quick calculation using the touchstart position we got in the last event and the touchmove position to figure out how to translate the slide.
// Calculate distance to translate holder. this.movex = this.index*this.slideWidth + (this.touchstartx - this.touchmovex);
Then we need to pan the image, like Chris did in the original example. We’re going to use the same magic numbers he did.
// Defines the speed the images should move at. var panx = 100-this.movex/6;
Now we need to add in some logic to handle edge cases. If you’re on the first slide or the last slide this logic will stop the image panning if you’re scrolling in the wrong direction (i.e. toward no content). This might not be the best way to handle this, but it works for me right now.
if (this.movex < 600) { // Makes the holder stop moving when there is no more content. this.el.holder.css('transform','translate3d(-' + this.movex + 'px,0,0)'); } if (panx < 100) { // Corrects an edge-case problem where the background image moves without the container moving. this.el.imgSlide.css('transform','translate3d(-' + panx + 'px,0,0)'); }
Touchend
In the touchend event we’ve got to figure out how far the user moved the slide, at what speed, and whether or not that action should increment to the next slide.
First we need to see exactly how far the distance of the swipe was. We’re going to calculate the absolute value of the distance moved to see if the user swiped.
// Calculate the distance swiped. var absMove = Math.abs(this.index*this.slideWidth - this.movex);
Now we’re going to figure out if the slider should increment. All the other calculations in this example are based on the index variable, so this is the real logic behind the script. It checks if the user swiped the minimum distance to increment the slider, or if the movement was a flick. And if it meets either of those two criteria, which direction did the swipe go in.
// Calculate the index. All other calculations are based on the index. if (absMove > this.slideWidth/2 || this.longTouch === false) { if (this.movex > this.index*this.slideWidth && this.index < 2) { this.index++; } else if (this.movex < this.index*this.slideWidth && this.index > 0) { this.index--; } }
Now we add the animate class and set the new translate position.
// Move and animate the elements. this.el.holder.addClass('animate').css('transform', 'translate3d(-' + this.index*this.slideWidth + 'px,0,0)'); this.el.imgSlide.addClass('animate').css('transform', 'translate3d(-' + 100-this.index*50 + 'px,0,0 |
I'm not going to make it easy for them. If they want to follow me, they are going to have to do that. I am not going to ping into any G.P.S. My location matters to me. It matters to me in a new way that I didn't feel before.''
There are lots of people angry with them and lots of governments, as well as private entities, that would not mind taking possession of the thousands of N.S.A. documents they still control. They have published only a handful '-- a top-secret, headline-grabbing, Congressional-hearing-inciting handful '-- and seem unlikely to publish everything, in the style of WikiLeaks. They are holding onto more secrets than they are exposing, at least for now.
''We have this window into this world, and we're still trying to understand it,'' Poitras said in one of our last conversations. ''We're not trying to keep it a secret, but piece the puzzle together. That's a project that is going to take time. Our intention is to release what's in the public interest but also to try to get a handle on what this world is, and then try to communicate that.''
The deepest paradox, of course, is that their effort to understand and expose government surveillance may have condemned them to a lifetime of it.
''Our lives will never be the same,'' Poitras said. ''I don't know if I'll ever be able to live someplace and feel like I have my privacy. That might be just completely gone.''
Peter Maass is an investigative reporter working on a book about surveillance and privacy. Editor: Joel LovellAs finance chief of Netflix, David Wells can occasionally be counted on to sound a note of fiscal discipline at a company where CEO Reed Hastings is unafraid to bet big. But even as he preaches managing the margins at a Goldman Sachs investor conference earlier this month, Wells echoes his boss’s bullish projection for what Netflix could be spending on an episode five years from now.
“Is $20 million-an-hour television possible? Certainly,” Wells says. “If you have the numbers of people watching it, we certainly can support that level of quality in terms of TV.”
There was a time not too long ago when the suggestion of forking over that much money for 60 minutes of scripted content might have gotten Wells laughed out of the room. But now $20 million seems the logical extension of where Netflix and its many competitors are headed; HBO isn’t that far away with its budget-busting hit “Game of Thrones,” which will see the price of its final episodes run $15 million apiece.
At a moment when the television industry is grappling with a massive increase in the number of shows being produced, the ripple effects of Peak TV are surfacing in virtually every line item in a typical TV series budget.
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Fueled by the rise of streaming heavyweights that don’t play by the same financial rules as traditional TV players, costs are soaring for everything from location scouting to renting equipment to securing post-production facilities. A wide range of services takes longer to secure and costs more even when it’s in hand — particularly transportation-related expenses.
These kinds of increases are exacerbated by a sense of panic that has set in for more than a dozen executives steering networks and studios, many of whom requested anonymity in exchange for discussing sensitive financial figures with Variety for this story.
The estimates on the cost of content that emerged from these interviews peg the typical range of the production budget for high-end cable and streaming dramas at $5 million-$7 million an hour, while single-camera half hours on broadcast and cable run from $1.5 million to more than $3 million. With the exception of HBO, which made its mark with lavish productions, that’s a significant increase, during just the past five years, over what had been $3 million-$4 million for cable dramas and around $1 million-$1.5 million for single-camera half hours.
And Netflix often exceeds the new, higher averages. The first season of its supernatural sensation “Stranger Things” was shot to look like a 1980s Steven Spielberg movie and came with a price tag of $6 million an episode for season one, rising to $8 million in season two. Netflix’s sumptuous period drama “The Crown” cost an estimated $10 million an episode.
Bigger, bolder production values aren’t the only expense; talent also costs a pretty penny.
Netflix raised eyebrows with a $2 million-per-episode guarantee to lure David Letterman back to TV for a six-episode interview series that’s expected to bow next year.
Clockwise from left: “The Get Down” – $11m per episode; “Legion” – $4m per episode; “Timeless” – $4.5m per episode.
There’s a pervasive fear among traditional TV players that Netflix’s spending binge on content is an effort to vacuum up market share and put a lot of old-school competitors out of business. That, industry veterans say, is the only explanation for the streaming giant paying $20 million to Chris Rock and Ellen DeGeneres for comedy specials — fees that are more than double the high end for that programming on HBO just a few years ago.
But Netflix is far from alone in its aggressive spending. All the streaming services are ponying up bigger upfront commitments and budgets, raising floor prices for all networks. Amazon is laying out $8 million on action drama “Jack Ryan” and $5 million per half hour for “The Tick,” the superhero comedy with lots of visual-effects shots that also films largely on location in pricey New York. Robert De Niro is getting approximately $775,000 an episode to star in a David O. Russell crime drama for Amazon.
It’s not just the cost of scripted TV that’s blowing up. Apple is paying $2 million an episode for the CBS-produced “Carpool Karaoke” series, even for episodes that run far less than 30 minutes.
Cable networks are stretching their wallets too. HBO’s VFX-heavy “Westworld” is in the same lofty budgetary stratum as “The Crown.” Season one of Starz’s “American Gods” came in at more than $8 million per episode. TNT’s one-and-done period drama “Will” required $5 million-$6 million an episode, even though it was shot in Wales with mostly up-and-coming actors.
FX usually spends about $3.5 million-$4 million per hour on its dramas. Ryan Murphy’s “American Crime Story” franchise is closer to $6 million.
For broadcast networks, the high end is roughly $4.5 million (with most shows coming in about $1 million below that). ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox are still struggling to adjust to an environment in which they’re not the first stop (or even the second) for hot new projects. Past seasons would typically feature one or two big bets on expensive broadcast pilots (think “Smash,” “Last Resort,” “Terra Nova”); the crop that’s coming to this year’s fall schedule is more modestly budgeted. That’s a cautionary sign of the cost-consciousness seeping into broadcasters as monetization of content becomes harder amid the steady erosion of live TV ratings and advertising revenue.
And then there’s “Game of Thrones,” the reigning king of big-budget dramas. The $15 million-plus price tag is due in part to a shooting schedule that more resembles that of a feature film than an episodic series. But “Thrones” is an anomaly. When it debuted, its price tag was in line with what HBO typically spends on dramas, around $6 million or so. But as the program grew into a four-continent behemoth with multiple production units shooting at once, it also began to generate dozens of healthy revenue streams for HBO. Its merchandising lines and foreign sales have brought plenty of gold to the network, and it’s been an effective branding flagship as the premium cabler transitions into the nonlinear age with HBO Now. (Related column: Taking the Wrong Lessons from the Success of “Game of Thrones”)
Within the creative community, there’s been a great deal of talk about the current boom in series production fueling a financial windfall for in-demand talent and sparking a vast expansion of the storytelling palette. But worries of an overheated market that’s heading for a crash are palpable. (Related column: Will Out-of-Control Episode Costs Kill Peak TV?)
“It’s an arms race, and it’s going to be that way until somebody realizes they’re just beating their head against the wall and not getting anywhere,” says Michael Pachter, a research analyst for Wedbush Securities who covers Netflix.
Cindy Holland, vice president of original content for Netflix, acknowledges that more ambitious, longer and VFX-heavy shows can drive cost increases. But she sees those kinds of series coexisting with more modest efforts that shouldn’t be overlooked.
“The analogy I think about is the move from mass-produced beer to artisanal breweries or small-batch liquor,” Holland notes. “Every project is different now; they’re not fitting into the cookie cutter. HBO has been doing that for a long time. But we now have a bunch more players doing it.”
Nevertheless, industry veterans complain that some shows are produced at a pointlessly overinflated price throughout the lensing and post-production process.
“I look at a show like ‘13 Reasons Why,’” said Susanne Daniels, global head of content for YouTube, at a Variety summit earlier this month. “On Netflix, [it costs] $5 million an episode. I made shows like that for years at the WB [Network] for $2 million an episode. It’s ‘interior high school,’ ‘interior home.’ There’s no rhyme or reason to what they’re paying.”
That said, there are some fundamental economic changes in the dynamics of the TV industry that do go some way toward explaining the sticker shock: VOD platforms are extending the shelf life of shows, which means that budget expenditures can be amortized over a longer period than the initial run, helping networks absorb higher costs. Nevertheless, there’s considerable anxiety among network and studio execs over not just the steady growth in production costs but key shifts in the long-term profit models for series TV. One executive sighs when recalling how he was told he would have to agree to a monster budget to even book a pitch meeting (he passed). Also adding to the agita in the executive suite: the frenzied competition for high-wattage new packages that are trotted out with regularity by savvy producers and talent agencies.
“It seems like every other day it’s ‘Cancel all your meetings — we have to get this,’ ” says another studio veteran. “The agencies are good at trying to get everyone all hot and bothered.”
“It’s an arms race, and it’s going to be that way until somebody realizes they’re just beating their head against the wall and not getting anywhere.” Michael Pachter, Wedbush Securities
There’s also a greater focus among talent to secure bigger fees up front in their negotiations with networks and streaming services: It’s hard to bank on the value of profit-participation points down the road when the streaming giants are increasingly focused on holding global distribution rights over 10- and 20-year periods.
That same business model is another reason why budgets at Netflix and Amazon have gone sky high. Most outside studios receive a predetermined percentage of a show’s license fee as a profit margin, to compensate for the lack of international and domestic syndication licensing. The bigger the production budget, the bigger the license fee — hence the bigger the studio’s margin.
In this scenario, studios have every incentive to push for the biggest budgets, unlike the traditional model in which the network license fee for new shows typically doesn’t cover the entire cost of production. Under the old model, when studios absorb deficits at the outset, there’s every incentive to keep budgets tight in order to minimize the red ink that has to be made up through international sales and domestic syndication.
Another reason production costs are rising: a lack of experience on the part of showrunners and crews in making the most of every hour of production time. Industry insiders privately speculate that the strain on the talent pool of line producers and technical, craft and stunt crew members has been a factor in what seems to be a jump in the number of on-set accidents in recent months.
Simply put, it’s impossible to have seasoned people at the helm of every show when the volume of scripted series production spiked 71% between 2011 and 2016 — or from 266 series in 2011 to 455 in 2016, according to FX Networks Research. The 2017 tally is projected to top 500.
The inflationary effect of this growth bleeds into virtually every aspect of production. The below-the-line increases can be eye-popping. Yet the biggest driver of costs remains the seller’s market for creative talent. Jeff Wachtel, chief content officer for NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment, likens the current employment dynamic to that of athletes when sports leagues decide to add teams.
“Peak TV has created an expansion-league environment,” Wachtel says. “Actors and writers and directors who used to compete for jobs are now having studios compete over them.”
Industry sources say writers and producers who might have been making less than $20,000 an episode a few years ago are now able to command loftier job titles and fees closer to $40,000-$50,000 or more.
Wachtel emphasizes that the investment in original series production can pay off handsomely with global sales and streaming licensing deals. But the climbing cost of production and even development makes the losses greater when projects fizzle.
“You have to be willing to take on more risk — not just in production but during development,” Wachtel says. “That’s part of the expansion-league mentality. There’s more competition earlier on in the process.”
The influx of film-trained directors in the episodic TV world has surely had an impact on expectations and shooting schedules. There’s a different mind-set when film producers come into the television industry, says one experienced executive. “We used to say, in TV, if you go $10,000 or $20,000 over budget, you get noticed. On the film side, you’ve got to go $10 million [over] to get noticed.”
FX CEO John Landgraf sees a brighter side to the crossover of talent from big screen to small. “Television has evolved from being more of a writers’ medium to being a filmmakers’ medium as well,” he tells Variety. “Frankly, what passes for great television today is just much more visually ambitious and expensive to make than it was even a short time ago.”
TV’s filmmaker invasion might partly explain the increase in location shoots in television production. But the cost of moving actors, crews and equipment from point A to point B on location has skyrocketed. The number of series regulars on many shows has grown, creating a need for more cars and more trailers. And Hollywood productions use union drivers, meaning that overtime is incurred when the workday runs long.
In heavily trafficked shooting locations like Vancouver or Atlanta or New York, there’s so much production going on at any given time that shows have to travel farther afield to find desirable spots. And the locals have gotten more sophisticated about asking for high fees for the use of home exteriors and driveways and such when location managers come knocking on the door.
Clockwise from top: “Insecure” – $3.5m per episode; “The People v. O.J. Simpson” – $6.5m per episode; “Kevin (Probably) Saves the World” – $3m per episode.
Now that TV dramas routinely deliver cinematic visuals, the volume of equipment needed for a typical location shoot has grown considerably. A decade ago, the gear to produce a network TV drama would typically fit into one good-sized semitrailer. Today, it’s not unusual to have three trucks full of equipment on location. And those trucks often have to find a place outside the location to park because cities won’t issue street-parking permits for that many big vehicles.
Producers will defend the added expense as the cost of doing business to create the kind of high-quality entertainment that stands out amid a cluttered marketplace. But even for buzzy or well-regarded shows, industry insiders simply can’t wrap their heads around some of the numbers they’re hearing.
“There’s a fair amount of money that’s used for simply chasing after Emmys,” one executive says. “If the money is spent in a way that supports the creator’s vision and makes for better storytelling and better television, great. But sometimes you do see shows that are kind of bloated and overblown.”
Not every network has taken to dropping vast sums of money on questionable, barely covered or poorly received shows. And plenty of responsible writers, producers and executives are still making shows on reasonable budgets.
“I always feel like you work best with some kind of restriction somewhere,” says Jennie Snyder Urman, showrunner of the CW drama series “Jane the Virgin.” “It forces you to be creative. You have to be as efficient as you can.”
But Netflix’s Holland notes that the pace of change in the industry is accelerating to a point when it’s time for everyone to update their preconceptions of acceptable industry practices.
“TV is no longer like we knew it, but we’re seeing a lot of really interesting evolution happening,” she says. “It’s opening the door to more diversity and progress. And yes, there are going to be some failures here and there. But more often than not, the long-term trend is going to [be toward] really exciting changes in the industry and a flowering of creative energy.”This spring most Canadian corn and soybean growers will be planting another crop of pesticide-coated seeds, even as researchers raise new warnings that the practice may have deadly side effects for bees and other wildlife.
The heated debate around the use of the neonicotinoid-coated seeds, developed by Bayer CropScience and introduced here about a decade ago, has divided farmers, beekeepers and scientists, and turned Canada into a kind of environmental battlefront.
To protect its bees, Europe banned the use of neonic pesticides last year, while U.S. authorities have so far taken a more cautious approach, saying these pesticides are just one possible factor in the collapse of so many bee colonies. Bayer filed a court challenge against the EU ban in August last year, saying the EU has wrongly linked the pesticide to bee deaths.
Bayer and Health Canada maintain that proper planting practices minimize the risk to bees, while others say use of neonics should be suspended until the questions being raised by researchers and beekeepers have been answered.
Over the past few years, neonicotinoids have become the dominant insecticide in everything from corn and canola to flea collars for pets.
But some believe this insecticide, particularly the version that coats the seeds and protects the plant as it matures, is responsible for the decline in honey bees.
When Health Canada tested dead bees last spring it found neonicotinoid on 70 per cent of them. At the time, it was thought the bees had become exposed to the dust that's kicked up during the planting process.
"Current agricultural practices related to the use of neonicotinoid-treated corn and soybean seed are not sustainable due to their impacts on bees and other pollinators," Health Canada then declared in a statement dated Sept. 13, 2013.
To address the dust concern, Health Canada's pesticide regulatory agency and the makers of the insecticide developed new best practices guidelines for farmers to go into effect this spring.
As part of the initiative, Bayer introduced a new lubricant that its lab tests suggest will help the treated corn seed flow through the planter, reducing total dust by 90 per cent and the active ingredient by 40 to 70 per cent.
Bayer told the CBC: "The new fluency agent has been shown to dramatically reduce dust when compared to the current industry standard lubricants."
But when the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food tested the new lubricant under field conditions, it found dust was still problematic. OMAF field crop entomologist Tracey Baute says, "the lubricant, the fluency agency, does reduce the amount of active ingredient in the dust by 21 per cent."
"We're still trying to determine if a balance can be made in the use of these products and protecting the pollinators," Baute adds.
Veteran Ontario beekeeper Tibor Szabo Jr. is not impressed. "A 21 per cent reduction of something that's very, very toxic isn't going to make me feel better," he says. "Do I think it's going to save the bees? Heck no.
"There's a heck of a lot more to this than dust."
New research
Indeed now some researchers are saying that dust from planting could be just part of a bigger issue with neonics.
Canadian environmental scientist Madeleine Chagnon has spent the past 20 years studying honey bees.
When she analyzed dead bees she discovered a bio-marker that suggested the bees had come into contact with neonicotinoids whether they had been exposed to planting dust or not. This suggests that they were exposed to the pesticide while collecting pollen from maturing plants, says Chagnon.
University of Quebec environmental scientist Madeleine Chagnon has been studying the problems facing bee colonies for 20 years. (CBC)
"They're taking in something that they will ultimately die from, and they're taking this into the hive and feeding on it all winter, then we wonder why we have winter mortality."
For Chagnon, this means no amount of dust-reducing agents, better communication or labelling will prevent what is happening to honey bees. She's pushing for neonic products to be banned.
Other bee researchers have reached the same conclusion. Dutch toxicology consultant HenkTennekes told the CBC, "there is little doubt that neonicotinoids are implicated in bee decline."
And a new study by a Harvard University researcher and two Massachusetts' beekeepers, published earlier this month in the journal Bulletin of Insectology, also put the blame squarely on neonicotinoids for what has been called colony collapse disorder.
Tennekes's book The Systemic Insecticides: A Disaster in the Making has been compared to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which warned of the impending disaster of DDT in the environment in the 1960s.
"Even if Bayer were to succeed in reducing one route of exposure to virtually zero, many other routes of exposure are not affected," he said.
He suggests that the continued use of neonics will "cause a collapse of the ecosystem" because they create breaks in the natural food chain.
Not everyone agrees with these dire assessments.
Ernesto Guzman is one of the most respected bee researchers in Canada, and a world expert on pathology in honey bees. As head of the Honey Bee Research Centre at the University of Guelph, Guzman does not see pesticides as the main culprit.
Guzman says that bee mortality in the spring is caused in part by pesticides, as evidenced by Health Canada's spring mortality results of 2013. But he insists that whether or not systemic insecticides are the main threat to honey bee health is still debatable.
Ernesto Guzman, head of the Honey Bee Research Centre at Guelph University, says pesticides are not the main culprit when it comes to the mass deaths of honey bees. (CBC)
"Certainly pesticides are in fashion now and we hear a lot about them, but other factors also have to do with colony mortality, such as parasites like the Varroa mite," he says.
Guzman is not alone, either, in this assessment. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency said last May, following a long study, that pesticides are just one of the many stressors contributing to the declining health of honey bees.
And there are scores of scientists who say neonics, when used properly, are safe for all non-target wildlife.
Groundwater
It was thought that insecticide-treated seeds were less harmful to the environment because the pesticide is planted underground along with the seed.
Seed supplier Steve Denys, a grain farmer and vice-president at Pride Seeds in Chatham, Ont., says that is one of the selling features: "Once the insecticide is in the ground there's no impact on the honey bees, and less impact on the environment than insecticides that are sprayed on crops."
Steve Denys, a corn farmer and vice-president of Pride Seeds in Chatham, Ont., says coated seeds are a huge improvement for the environment over previous spraying practices. (Courtesy Steve Denys)
But there is new research that indicates the insecticide may stay active in the soil and the groundwater.
During and shortly after spring planting last year, Laval University entomologist Valerie Fournier tested rainwater in cornfields. "Water samples, collected either in May or in June [2013], were shown to contain neonics in concentrations that are concerning for the bees," Fournier says.
She adds that insecticides in the water could cause "multiple sublethal effects" for bees, such as "impaired foraging behaviour, reduced food consumption, increased viral load and reduced fecundity and queen production."
A 2013 Dutch study from Utrecht University found that surface water collected from neonicotinoid-treated potato, horticultural and chicory fields "contained so much insecticide that it could actually be used directly as a lice-control pesticide."
Dutch researcher Jeroen Van der Sluijs says a bee drinking that water would die within a day.
Fournier notes that once a bee comes into contact with the insecticides, no matter the concentration, the effect is irreversible. The neonics bind with nerve cells and block their ability to function, which explains why some bees cannot find their way back into the hive.
Systemic behaviour
Last July, in a study funded partially by the Grain Farmers of Ontario association, Baute took samples of pollen from foraging bees as they returned to their hives and as Ontario corn was starting to tassel.
Laval University entomologist Valerie Fournier is finding high concentrations of neonics in groundwater. (CBC)
She found that the pollen had been primarily collected from corn and soy beans.
When she tested the neonicotinoid levels in the pollen she found an average above five parts per billion.
While that is well below Health Canada's lethal dose benchmark of 38 pbb, beekeeper Tibor Szabo suggests that it is enough to contribute to chronic poisoning in honey bees.
Knowing that the corn pollen continues to express active pesticide well into the late summer shows the systemic nature of the neonicotinoids, Szabo says.
As the bees feed on the stored pollen all winter long, the pesticide causes a "delayed toxic effect in the beehives," he suggests.
"We're all still trying to learn more about the sublethal side of this", says Baute. "Chronic or sublethal, it's very hard to separate the two."
Trace amounts
University of Saskatchewan biologist Christy Morrissey studied the levels of neonics in Prairie wetlands and concluded that "upwards of 80 to 90 per cent of the wetlands adjacent to tens of millions of acres of neonicotinoid-treated canola are contaminated."
Though the concentrations are only in the parts per trillion range, under chronic exposure that would have toxic effects on sensitive aquatic invertebrates, she says.
N.S. apiary Scotian Bee Honey lost over 50 per cent of its hives this past winter, 2013-14, primarily because of the cold, it said. (CBC)
"You should be aware that these compounds are much more toxic and are in the water far longer than other insecticides used on the market," Morrissey says. "So they [bees] basically are being hit continuously with the chemical."
However, Steve Denys, the Ontario seed supplier and corn farmer, says if researchers go looking for minute traces of just about anything they could find it. "I could probably find coffee residue from a Tim Horton's cup in the field if I looked hard enough for it", he says.
Virtually all of the 21 million acres of canola planted in Canada is neonicotinoid-treated, says Canola Council of Canada market access manager Brian Innes. But he says "there have been no reported problems of harm from neonics on pollinators in any of the fields."
Barry Brown, a Saskatchewan beekeeper whose hives are in a "sea of yellow" — meaning they are surrounded by canola fields — says he lost 23 per cent of his hives over the winter.
"We don't have the smoking gun, but I don't think he could actually say no bees have been harmed by neonics in Saskatchewan," Brown says about Innes's assertion.
Meanwhile, in a 32-square-kilometre area in central-east Saskatchewan, Morrissey says she found concentrations of the chemical three to four times higher than what has been deemed habitable for insects. Morrissey's water and sediment samples were collected from wetlands in agricultural fields.
"We're not talking about a little regional problem. We're talking about something that's happening over tens of millions of acres," she told CBC News. "The longer that the chemical is in the water, the longer the exposure time for the bugs."
Birds and amphibians
Based on her findings, Morrissey says she also suspects that further up the food chain there's an impact on birds. She concludes that there are potential consequences for wetland-dependent species such as amphibians, waterfowl and aerial insectivorous birds.
She's not alone. In March 2013, former Environment Canada senior researcher Pierre Mineau, whose specialty is pesticide ecotoxicology, co-authored a paper for the American Bird Conservancy called, The Impact of the Nation's Most Widely Used Insecticides on Birds.
The main chemical compounds used in neonics are imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam, and Mineau's findings show the chemicals stay on the seeds that are then eaten by birds.
The study found that a single kernel of imidacloprid-treated corn can kill small and "blue jay-sized birds," and sicken larger ones. It concluded that "imidacloprid is too acutely toxic to be used as a seed treatment insecticide on any seed type."
Ontario bee keeper Jim Coneybeare, one of the people calling for a ban on pesticides. (cbc)
Third generation Ontario beekeeper Jim Coneybeare is among those calling for a ban on the insecticides "as soon as possible, because [otherwise] we are going to lose the bee-keeping industry."
But he is not optimistic this is going to happen.
"I think we're into neonics so deep … because chemical companies are making billions of dollars on the usage of these products."
Denys insists that the new seed technology is an improvement not only for farmers, but for the environment. "On my bean crop, before neonics, I used 100 times the amount of active ingredient to provide protection."
What's more, he says because farmers spend less time tilling their fields they burn fewer fossil fuels than before.
Health Canada shows no signs of pursuing a ban, and instead is working with the industry to try and find better ways to reduce the chances of exposing non-target insects to the pesticide.
A spokesperson recently told the CBC, "The [regulatory] agency is currently re-evaluating the neonicotinoid insecticides, which will include an examination of residues in the environment."
Bayer CropScience, the makers of the controversial seed coating, told the CBC that the company "will continue to promote better collaboration between farmers and beekeepers to improve bee health and ensure the adoption of best management practices."
Bayer adds that it is "committed to meaningful stewardship efforts to safeguard honey bee health and maintain sustainable agricultural practices."BEAVERCREEK, Ohio (WDTN) - Fairborn Municipal Court Judge Beth Root has decided that there is probable cause to prosecute Ronald T. Ritchie in relation to the shooting death of John Crawford III.
Crawford was shot by police in an aisle of the Beavercreek Walmart on August 5, 2014. He was holding a BB gun at the time. Ritchie was the 911 caller that night.
Nine citizens filled out affidavits -- that were delivered to the court on March 25. Judge Root found in those affidavits that probable cause does exist to prosecute Ritchie for the accusation of making false alarms -- a first-degree misdemeanor.
The names of the nine people who filed the affidavits are a matter of public record and can be accessed by the public at any time on the court's website.
The nine are: Roy Qualls; Matthew Raska; Alice Diebel, Kevin Jackson, Lynn Buffington; Jessica Thomas; Mary Gentile; Enoch Fannin and Michael Casselli Jr. All but one of those who filed the affidavits live in Yellow Springs. The other lives in Fairborn.
The affidavits that were submitted questioned whether or not there was enough to prosecute him on charges related to inducing violence, inducing panic, involuntary manslaughter and reckless homicide -- all of which were dismissed as not having enough probable cause.
Michael Wright, the attorney for the Crawford family, said the judge's ruling brought some comfort. However, he said it was not Ritchie's fault police opened fire.
"Ultimately, we believe that it was the police department's responsibility to come and assess the situation," said Wright.
Wright's office is continuing it's lawsuit against Walmart, the Beavercreek Police Department, and officers David Darkow and Sean Williams.
The following call came into Beavercreek's 911 dispatch center.
"…there is a man walking around in the store with a gun waving and pointing at people." The dispatcher asked, "What does he look like?" To which the caller answers, "Black male about 6 feet tall…"
Ronald Ritchie was inside the Beavercreek Walmart. He made this call to 911 after seeing Crawford. Attempts to contact Ronald Ritchie for comment were unsuccessful.Texas Insider Report: Washington, DC – In his State of the Union speech, Barack Obama lectured those whom he hadn’t already bored to stupor with his usual onslaught of platitudes – you probably had no idea that “teachers matter” until he said so – that anyone earning over $1 million should pay at least 30% to government. Oh, and another thing – no deductions allowed:
“If you make more than one million dollars a year, you should not pay less than thirty percent in taxes… In fact, if you’re earning a million dollars a year, you shouldn’t get special tax subsidies or deductions.”
But guess what, those of you among the servile class. Obama unsurprisingly doesn’t practice the same class warfare that he preaches.
In the most recent year available, Obama’s income totaled $1,795,614. So unlike Americans earning as little as $200,000 whom he habitually defines as “millionaires and billionaires,” he actually is one. But what did Obama himself pay in taxes? Approximately $454,000, which amounts to about 25% of his income.
As for deductions that he says millionaires shouldn’t get, Obama certainly took his share. In fact, he claimed almost $400,000 worth, which is almost as much as his total tax payment.
But hey, at least Obama carries his “fair share” better than that miserly Mitt Romney, right?
Not necessarily.
Amid the curious media feeding frenzy over Romney’s 15% effective tax rate – “curious” because the same media refrained from obsessing over John Kerry’s 13.1% rate in 2004 – the fact that his investment income is double taxed was ignored. Namely, before dividend or capital gain income is taxed at the current 15% rate, those dollars are first taxed under our current tax regime at the prevailing 35% corporate rate.
Accordingly, since the federal government first taxes such income at the 35% corporate rate, and then again upon receipt at 15%, the top marginal rate actually reaches 44.75%.
Making matters worse, America’s 35% corporate tax rate remains the second-highest in the world among developed countries. Not only does that punish investment in the double-taxation manner described above, it significantly disadvantages U.S.-based companies vis-à-vis foreign competitors. When we last reformed our tax system 25 years ago, our corporate rate was actually among the lowest in the industrialized world. Since that date, however, we have fallen to next-to-worst.
Moreover, businesses and “millionaires and billionaires” aren’t the only ones suffering under excessive corporate tax rate.
According to Ernst & Young, America’s high corporate rate reduced wages and benefits for U.S. employees by some $100-$200 billion over the past decade alone. And according to the Heritage Foundation and Milken Institute, reducing that rate even to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average of 25% would create 500,000 to 2.2 million jobs and add $2,484 in additional income for the average family of four each year.
Fortunately, there is some good news to report from Obama’s State of the Union. Amid his assault, he actually suggested a willingness to pursue corporate tax reform:
“We should start with our tax code. Right now, companies get tax breaks for moving jobs and profits overseas. Meanwhile, companies that choose to stay in America get hit with one of the highest tax rates in the world. It makes no sense, and everyone knows it. So let’s change it.”
Americans agree. According to Gallup, Americans favor corporate tax reform that would help stem the outflow of businesses and jobs by an 82% to 15% margin.
The question now is whether we act quickly while a rare political consensus exists.
More divisive rhetoric and class warfare from Obama won’t accomplish anything. He has exposed himself as a hypocrite by not conducting his own affairs in the manner that he demands from the rest of America, but he can make amends by converting his more positive words to action.
It’s up to us to ensure that Congress and the White House make this happen, to achieve a rare convergence between their own political interests and the nation’s actual welfare.This cardiopulmonary support device applies chest compressions to circulate the blood and maintain respiration. (Photo: Charles Platt, courtesy of Alcor Life Extension Foundation www.alcor.org.)
Freezing the human body for future resurrection hundreds of years from now may seem like an impossibility, but for some believers in Scottsdale, death is a new beginning.
The process is called cryonics, and it is operated by Alcor, a Scottsdale company that cools a person's body to below-freezing temperatures after death in the hopes that he or she will be revived in the future. Alcor stores 128 patients in the facility and boasts 997 living members from around the country.
When a member dies, he or she is immediately transported to the company's facility for rapid cooling at -120 degrees Celsius to prevent brain-cell damage caused by lack of oxygen. Theoretically, this process will retain the "original state" of the person's brain.
However, Alcor says no human being has ever been revived from these temperatures before.
John De Goes, a 10-year member of Alcor, said technological advances in the last 15 years suggest human beings will eventually |
the number of DL spots to whatever is appropriate for that format. Most good LM’s won’t change rules or settings once the season starts, and rightly so, but at least it will be in place for 2018. As someone great once said, “We have plenty of problem identifiers. What we need are problem solvers”. I have no idea who said that aside from most of my bosses, but don’t feel victimized by the new rule. Fix it.
WEEK SEVEN – May 15 through MAY 21, 2017: Last week I said, “Every fantasy player knows that the moment you think your team, or in this case starting rotation, is set for the long haul it is time to worry. Actually, it is or was time to prepare.” The first big wave of injuries recently kicked us right where it hurts: Noah Syndergaard, Madison Bumgarner, Corey Kluber, Cole Hamels, Aaron Sanchez, Ian Kennedy, James Paxton, Sean Manaea, King Felix & Jeurys Familia. More are bound to fall so start watching the wire, keep an eye out for call-ups, and keep track of returning rehabbers like David Price, Rich Hill, Aaron Sanchez, Sean Manaea, and Brandon McCarthy.
What to expect in 2017: (If you read this part in last week’s article, skip down to week 6.)
Criteria Used: Platoon splits, LH/RH, Day/Night, Month, Half, stadium splits, team batting against splits, metrics like GB/FB rate, K & BB rates, Babip, wOBA, FIP, Trends, etc. Sources are Fan Graphs, Baseball Reference, Fantrax, ESPN and more.
Pitchers from the under 50% ownership group – I’ll list three or four pitchers, less than 50% owned who I believe are primed for a good start the following week, or better yet two good starts. I will make my decisions based on matchups, splits, recent trends and my own gut, which is not a measurable stat but gets me by pretty well.
Not for the faint of heart, pitchers from the abyss- I’ll list two or so pitchers that are less than 20% owned and look like a good choice based on the above criterion.
DFS Ace to avoid – This is great for both DFS, Roto, and to some extent H2H leagues and points leagues. Just because a pitcher is on your roster does not mean you are required to put him out there in a bad match-up. I’ll bet the guy who won your league last season knew when to sit down his Ace. If you are a DFS fan, I don’t have to tell you what happens when the Ace you spent 20% of your budget on gets bombed in the 2nd inning.
Match-up of the Week: If I see a match up that is too good to pass up, I’ll present the starter and explain why he should be in your lineup.
WEEK SEVEN: If the pitcher is a repeat from last week, and there are a few, you will see two Fantrax ownership percentages. The first is his current ownership and the second is what it was last week. A few good starts can take a guy from waiver wire spotter to rostered rotation member, especially with younger pitchers, which is why one has to think before dropping every spotter, and keep scouring for new spotters.
Trivia Question: Which two teams, one NL and one AL have lost four of the original five SP penciled in to be the teams 2017 rotation? Answer below.
Spotters from the <50% owned crowd:
Matt Andriese, RHSP, TBR (3.1% owned ESPN, 70% 54% owned Fantrax, 16 point increase) vs. NYY SAT 5/20: Matt has his 2nd start from last week today in Fenway which is why I said last week: “The Red Sox will likely be a little tougher matchup and if you don’t need the 2nd start for the week feel free to pass.” This is his fourth, and likely last, consecutive week on my short list as he is now at 70% ownership and I’ve run out of reasons to talk about him or drop him back to the pool at this point. Last week he rewarded any of us who spotted him against the Royals at home going 5.1 IP with 7 K’s and only two runs on 5 hits and 2 walks. He did not get the decision and only missed another QS by 2 batters. The Yanks are not a great match up either as they hit 20 points higher vs righties but have half as many HR on the road where they are also hitting 20 points lower. The offense has come back to earth a bit the past week. He is 27 now and I still say we could see his best season if he stays in the rotation. Red Sox, then Yanks. I guess we’ll know by then.
***TWO START PITCHER***Jimmy Nelson, RHP, MIL (33% owned in Fantrax) @SD TUE 05/16 & @CHC SUN 5/21: This is the first time in this series I’ve added Nelson to the list, but this matchup is tough to ignore. Nelson gets the Padres in SD which of course is a no-brainer. The Padres are hitting.229 vs righties, and only.208 at home. They have hit.219 the past two weeks. They are 13th in the NL in runs and OPS (the dreaded.666). The Cubbies may be tougher but have certainly not hit their stride yet. If you want to use him in SD and skip the Cubs I won’t argue, but the Cubs are hitting only.233 vs righties and.236 at Wrigley. They are 12th in the NL, just ahead of the Padres in both BA and OPS, and worse yet have hit.187 the past week scoring less than 4 runs per game in that stretch.
JC Ramirez, RHSP, LAA (7.2% owned in ESPN, 55% 44% FANTRAX) Vs CHW TUE 5/16: Two weeks ago I said: “If you are in a deep league and need to really search for a starter, how about a reliever who is only 8% owned in Fantrax.” After 3 or 4 starts his ownership rate has jumped to 55% from 8%, and if he handles the Sox this week you’ll have trouble finding him at all after that. If your league has roster limits by primary position, a reliever primary who is tossing QS is quite valuable. Last week I recommended him against the Tigers and they were a little tough on him scoring 5 earned runs on 8 hits (2 HR) though he only walked 1 to 4 K’s. He is starting to go deeper into games as he gets stretched out, as he went 7 full innings against the Tigers last week. This week, his third on my short list, he gets to face the White Sox at home. The Sox are only hitting.229 on the road and only.222 vs righties plus.229 over the past week. They are 13th in the AL in R, HR and OPS and dead last in walks.
***TWO START PITCHER***Luis Perdomo, RHSP, SDP (2.1% owned ESPN, 37% 27% owned Fantrax) vs. MIL MON 5/15 & Vs AZ SUN 5/21: Perdomo has a 4.13 ERA but a 2.96 FIP, which suggests the ERA may have some room to come down. He doesn’t get a ton of strikeouts but his 2.50 BB/9 and low HR rate keep him out of trouble. The HR rate is partially fueled by a whopping 69.17 GB% thanks to his heavy sinker that comes in with good velocity. Last week he pitched his 3rd QS in a row giving up 3 runs in 6 innings to the Rangers. Walks killed him in that game but he gave up no HR, in fact he has given up only 1 in 5 starts in 2017. He gets a couple of quality matchups this week. First is at home vs MIL, then at home vs Arizona. Neither team is a slouch on offense, with MIL 2nd in the NL in R & OPS while Arizona is 3rd in the NL in runs. On his side is that MIL is hitting 20 points lower on the road and 20 points lower vs righties than lefties. Arizona is.205 on the road vs.298 at home and are hitting.240 over the past two weeks. San Diego is one of the best pitching parks in the MLB.
Nate Karns, RHSP, KC (23.9% owned ESPN, 54% 31% Fantrax) @ MIN FRI 5/19: I picked up Karns last week in three of my leagues and may not drop him anytime soon. You can see his Fantrax ownership jumped from 31% to 54% in one week. Karns made me proud the last 2 weeks with six shutout innings vs the White Sox in KC. He gave up one hit, one walk and struck out seven in the winning effort. The following week he topped all that twice racking up 22 strikeouts in 11.01 innings. That is not a misprint. He also only gave up 3 walks and 2 HR on his way to 4 total ER and another QS. This gives him a 4.46 ERA and 1.215 WHIP for the season. His overall 4.46 ERA is inflated by a four-run one inning relief appearance in his first game of the season, and four of his eight HR allowed also came in that one game. His 61.4% ground-ball rate demonstrates his effectiveness when he keeps the ball down, but unfortunately if he drifts up in the zone at all he gets punished as evidenced by his 30% HR/FB rate. He’s facing the Twins who are hitting.225 and scoring less than 4 runs per game over the last week.
Not for the faint of heart. Pitchers from the abyss:
Joe Biagini, RHSP, TOR (5% owned ESPN, 35% owned Fantrax) @ ATL WED 5/17: Toronto took Biagini from the Giants in the Rule 5 draft two years ago hoping to get a good bullpen addition. That is what they got in 2016 when he pitched in 60 games to a 3.06 ERA. This season he was on his way to a repeat with 14 good relief appearances when injuries opened up a spot for him in the rotation. In his first two MLB starts he’s gone a total of nine IP giving up only six hits, no runs, and a 7-0 K/BB. He was a full-time SP in four minor league seasons but only blossomed in 2015 at the AA level going 10-7 with a 2.42 ERA, but the Giants had no room on the 40 man roster. He gets an Atlanta team that is 12th in the NL in runs scored. He and his wife are both natives of the San Francisco area meeting at UC Davis, so they had to leave home for the wilds of Toronto Canada. Looking at their faces, getting a spot in an MLB starting rotation is well worth it.
Jordan Montgomery, LHSP, NYY (5% owned ESPN, 34% owned Fantrax) @ KC THU 5/18: Monty was one mistake pitch away from his 4th Quality Start on the young season last week against the Astros. He was leaving it up all night, 11 fly balls to 5 grounders and one of them ex-teammate Brian McCann took out for a three-run HR. Overall he is 2-2, 4.19 ERA and 1.39 WHIP with a nice 33k/34.1 IP. Walks have hurt him so it was nice to see the one walk vs the Stros. Next week he gets the Royals allowing him to make his first 65 Mustangs spot start list. The Royals are dead last in the AL in R, BA, and OPS and hit.206 vs lefties. They are better at home than on the road but not significantly with a.232 BA in KC.
***TWO START PITCHER***Zack Godley, RHSP, AZ (5% owned ESPN, 24% owned Fantrax) Vs NYM MON 5/15 & @ SD SUN 5/21: Remember him? He may be back to stay this time. Godley struck out six and allowed just one earned run in seven innings against a tough Detroit lineup in his last start. He has 12 strikeouts in 12 innings, with a 2.25 ERA, and gets to face the Cespedes-less Mets in his first start. Godley then gets to travel to San Diego to face the Padres. The Mets are hitting.238 on the season with and without Yoenis. SD is hitting.208 at home and.229 vs righties as well as.229 for the past two weeks. They are 13th in runs and OPS (.666) and their.295 wOBA versus righties ranks 24th in the majors. San Diego is nice this time of year and Petco Park is a nice place to pitch. Speaking of nice, he proposed to his girlfriend this season and she said yes, in spite of the bright orange shirt.
DFS PLAYERS: You may want to rethink starting him:
Matt Harvey, RHSP, NYM @ AZ WED 5/17: Harvey burned me in DFS Friday night. I know, shame on me, but it looked like he had a cake matchup facing the Braun-less Brewers in Milwaukee. He gave me a 5/5/5, as in IP, ER, BB. I finished 11 points outside the money, and the difference was the 12 point spread between Harvey and Ervin Santana who was the same price pre-game. The D’Backs are far more formidable and Arizona is a better hitters ballpark than Milwaukee where they are hitting.298, plus they are hitting.271 vs righties. More importantly, Harvey is just not right. And I am a slow learner. Last week I said to leave Arrieta on the bench against the Rockies and he delivered 3.2 IP, 9 hits, 5 earned runs, and 3/3 walks to strikeouts in a loss in the mountains. My advice was better than my own game. Now we know that part of our research should be done in the tabloids and entertainment websites. It is reported (outside of baseball) that Harvey was out all night last weekend when he got suspended for three games because he was distraught over his girlfriend, Supermodel and Victoria Secret Angel Adriana Lima, being spotted with her ex, Julian Edelman of the Patriots at a party recently. C’mon Harvey, concentrate on pitching, not your “life in the fast lane” before your star fades to black. Besides, Edelman has a lot more rings than you. We know chicks dig the long ball Matt, but that means hitting or catching them, not giving them up. HaHa. And I thought I got a bargain drafting him around the 12th round in my leagues.
DFS PLAYERS: Match-ups of the week: I have two for you this week:
Zack Greinke, RHSP AZ vs. NYM TUE 5/16 & Possible @ SD SUN 05/21: It does not take deep analysis to understand how limp the Mets lineup is without
Yoenis Cespedes and they are hitting.238 on the season either way. I spoke enough about that offense already so I’ll save the stats. Last week I had Chris Archer in this spot and he added to his already significant K/BB ratio by striking out 11 and walking none against the Royals in KC. I said they seldom strikeout but haven’t faced Archer yet this season. He gave up no runs on 5 hits in 8 dominant innings.
Jason Vargas, LHSP KC vs. NYY WEDS 5/17: If you want to go contrarian next week, here is an interesting gamble. I’ll admit it is more about how dominating Vargas has been this season and how poorly the Yanks have hit over the last several games than it is about Vargas’ history against them. Vargas is pitching filthy right now sporting a 1.01 ERA and.918 WHIP. He is 5-1 with a 39/8 K/BB in 44.7 IP. He even has amassed a 2.3 WAR already this season if you like WAR. Is he the latest TJ surgery survivor to come back stronger than ever. Including his 3 starts last season, Vargas has the best K and Walk rates of his career. Split wise over his career May has always been his best month and his home ERA is a full run and a quarter lower than his away since he’s been in KC. Yeah, Sell High before June 1! The Yanks have hit.250 the past week scoring 4 runs per game, not bad but far below April’s numbers, and they hit 20 points lower away and against lefties. We may have a guy at his peak performance pitching against a team possibly coming back to earth. Last week I listed Jose Quintana here against the Padres. He was pushed back a day due to rain so we’ll see how he did later today.
Trivia Question Answer: In the AL, Seattle originally penciled in a rotation of Felix, Paxton, Iwakuma, Gallardo and Smyly. Gallardo is the only one pitching now. I can’t even name the rest of their rotation right now. In the NL, the Dodgers originally penciled a rotation of Kershaw, Maeda, Hill, Kazmir and McCarthy. Kershaw is the only one still standing of that bunch. Amazingly their record is 22-15 even with the patchwork rotation, though it helps to have guys like Ryu, Wood, and Urias to step in. Hopefully, your rotations look better than these.
Thanks for reading and good luck in week seven, especially with your pitching. If you have a question about these or any other SP match-ups next week don’t hesitate to leave a message in the comments, write me, or check out my “Pick Your Spots” thread every Sunday on the /r/fantasybaseball Sub-Reddit where I’ll talk starting pitching all day.
joseph.iannone021@gmail.com @JoeIannone2 Twitter
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Major League Fantasy Baseball Radio Show: Join Corey D Roberts, and Kyle Amore live on Sunday May 7th, 2017 from 7-9pm EST for episode #86 of Major League Fantasy Baseball Radio. We are a live broadcast that will take callers at 323-870-4395. Press 1 to speak with the host. We will be previewing the coming week’s key matchups and discussing key fantasy information.
Our guest this week is Bryan Luhrs. Bryan is a writer with majorleaguefantasysports.com, and the owner of Real Deal Dynasty Sports.
You can find our shows on I-Tunes. Just search for Major League Fantasy Sports in the podcasts section. For Android users go to “Podcast Republic,” then download that app, and search for “Major League Fantasy Sports Show”
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Major League Fantasy Baseball Radio Show: Join guest host Andrea Lamont, and Kyle Amore live on Monday May 15th, 2017 from 7-9pm EST for episode #87 of Major League Fantasy Baseball Radio. We are a live broadcast that will take callers at 323-870-4395. Press 1 to speak with the host. We will be previewing the coming week’s key matchups and discussing key fantasy information.
Our guest this week is Lenny Melnick. Lenny is fantasy baseball pioneer, current FSWA Hall of Famer, and the host of his daily podcasts on lennymelnickfantasysports.com Mon-Fri at 9am EST. He also co-hosts a show every Sunday morning from 7-10am EST with Craig Mish on the fantasy sports station on Sirius.
You can find our shows on I-Tunes. Just search for Major League Fantasy Sports in the podcasts section. For Android users go to “Podcast Republic,” then download that app, and search for “Major League Fantasy Sports Show”
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WhatsAppStory highlights Kelsey Grammer says "parting gift" to third wife was "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills"
Grammer on politics: "I'm afraid I was destined to be a Republican"
Actor attributes TV longevity to "a kind of affability and vulnerability"
When Piers Morgan asked Kelsey Grammer whether he thought his ex-wife, Camille, married him because he was a TV icon, the actor said, "no, I think she married me because I was Frasier."
The veteran actor is a guest on Monday's "Piers Morgan Tonight."
Grammer also told the CNN host that his "parting gift" to his third wife was her role in the reality series "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills."
"Whether or not it worked well for her doesn't matter," Grammer said. "It was my way of saying, 'Look, you always wanted to be famous. Here you go.' "
Grammer told Morgan that while reality shows are not particularly a great way to become famous, "you still get attention; you still get all those things that come along for the ride, which I think is what she was most interested in."
JUST WATCHED Kelsey Grammer on finding love again Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Kelsey Grammer on finding love again 01:37
After three tumultuous marriages in as many decades, the actor says he has at last found happiness and true love with his fourth wife, Kayte, whom he met on a flight from Los Angeles to London. She was a flight attendant for Virgin Atlantic, and Grammer described spotting her at LAX.
"There was a warmth, a glow about her that I was drawn to. And I thought, 'Boy, I hope she's on my flight.' "
The pair arranged to meet up for a first date on Christmas in London.
"It was magnificent," Grammer said. "There were lights everywhere."
When Morgan asked Grammer the secret to his long career in television -- particularly the long-running "Frasier" role -- the actor called it "a characteristic that can help you survive in television, which is a kind of affability and vulnerability. You allow yourself to be human."
When Morgan pointed out that the "odd thing" about Grammer is that so few American television stars openly admit to being Republican, Grammer said, "I'm a bit of a rebel. I don't tend to warm too well to people that tell me how I'm supposed to think. So, my life in Hollywood -- I'm afraid I was destined to be a Republican."
Grammer added that his Hollywood friends "tolerate me somehow, because I can at least state myself eloquently."
"The tone of political assessment has changed," continued Grammer. "And honestly, the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people has taken on a bit more of a violent and narrow approach."
When Morgan asked Grammer whether he is sympathetic to the tea party, the actor answered, "I'm sympathetic to some of the principles, but I'm not sure that the tea party has behavioral problems, other than the ones that can be identified by people who are inimical to them."
The actor pointed out that, like the tea party, he believes "smaller government's a good idea. Always have. I think lower taxes are a good idea. Always have."
Grammer does, however, fully support gay marriage, which many tea partiers oppose.
"I guess I'm more libertarian in that way," Grammer said. "I think marriage is up to two people that love each other, and if you find a church that you want to get married in, you go right ahead." Grammer added that he doesn't believe the government should be involved in marriage.
Morgan asked Grammer, despite his conservative leanings, what he thinks of President Obama.
"I think Barack Obama's election is a milestone for this country and a wonderful thing," Grammer said. "The 'hope' thing, I don't think hope can be given by a politician or by a vote. I think that comes from God."
Grammer also pointed out that "hope itself is not a policy. It never has been. There's no policy in hope. We can all hope. We can hope for free."
When Morgan asked Grammer why he thinks America is "tanking economically," the actor answered, "I would say greed. Greed that is at a profound level."
Grammer also stated that there isn't one Republican candidate that he's gravitating toward just yet, telling the CNN host that Republican contenders "must inspire people to assume that they have a right to make their own decisions about what dreams they wish to dream. And dream as big as they possibly can."Jeremy Corbyn has been accused of "rewriting history" after deleting hundreds of outspoken articles and speeches from his website including a number of pieces critical of the EU.
One of the articles sets out the Labour leader's true feelings on the European Union in a damning attack about the influence the bloc has over the British Government.
Mr Corbyn has wiped his entire archive of writing from his personal blog meaning that none of the articles can be accessed.
In one article, he says: "The creation of the post of president is a triumph for the tenacity of the European long-sighters.
"The project has always been to create a huge free-market Europe, with ever-limiting powers for national parliaments and an increasingly powerful common foreign and security policy."
And in another, which The Telegraph has tracked down in internet archives, bemoaned the Lisbon Treaty and the unaccountable nature of the deal struck with the EU.
Mr Corbyn wrote: "There is a strong socialist argument against the Lisbon Treaty and the economic consequences that flow from it.
"What is also explicit in both the Maastricht Treaty and the Lisbon Treaty is the imposition of a market economy on Europe, a control on borrowing made by any member states’ government and serious control on the political choices open to any one member state.
"Thus, the British government had to explain to the European Union why it proposed to take Northern Rock into public ownership, for how long it intended that to be the case and give assurances about the bank’s future."
He added that EU law makes it "impossible" for a Government to take a bank into public ownership and criticised the intrusion of EU law into British state affairs.
The article, which belies Mr Corbyn's true feelings about the UK's relationship with the EU, follows weeks of speculation that the Labour leader could come out in support of Brexit.
Julian Knight, a Conservative MP, said: "It's absolutely laughable that a man who is the leader of the opposition is scurrying around deleting his website like some sort of sixth former, he's trying to rewrite history.
"It just shows that the labour leadership now is at best amateurish. The fact is, Mr Corbyn is clearly against his own party when it comes to the EU and if he wasn't leader he would almost certainly be speaking out for the UK to leave.
"It is just laughable, does he really think that nobody will notice? He's been making the same speeches for 30 years."
Tensions between Mr Corbyn and Labour's official campaign to remain in the European Union have boiled over in recent days, amid a row over the amount of funding the campaign will receive from the party.
A number of Labour MPs have expressed private concerns that Mr Corbyn's lack of vocal support for the In campaign may persuade some Labour voters to back a Brexit instead.
Jeremy Corbyn profile
One senior Labour MP said: "Jeremy's problem is that he tells the truth all the time, that gets him into trouble with the party in general, but it also makes it easy to tell when he doesn't believe what he's saying, that's where he is with Europe.
"He is anti-EU, he hates the free market, and he is struggling to hide that."
A spokesman for the Labour leader said the site is being overhauled to reflect his new position as head of the party.
They added: "The website has been updated, it now contains things Jeremy has written since he has been leader of the Labour party.
"That was Jeremy's website when he was a back bench MP, we are now converting it to reflect his work as leader and afterwards other material will be archived."
The oldest article on the site now dates back to June 2015, when Mr Corbyn was running for leader of the party. An archive of videos and speeches has also been taken down from the website.
In a series of other articles Mr Corbyn dubs his colleagues in the House of Commons "tin pot generals" and accuses them of "using the opportunity of the Ukrainian crisis to insist that Britain should rapidly and exponentially increase military expenditure".
In the same article about Ukraine, he writes: "The self-satisfied pomposity of Western leaders in lecturing the world about morality and international law has to be challenged".
He also speaks out strongly against Israel in a number of articles which are highly critical of the middle-eastern state.
In one article, now deleted, he writes: "Just what more illegal acts does Israel have to commit before it is condemned?
"Israel’s argument about living space convinces some that they have the “right” to continue to take Palestinian land and water."
His past writing and their apparent deletion follows controversy at Oxford University Labour club after an investigation was launched into anti-Semitism allegations following the group's support for a Israeli Aparteid week.This outsize success has placed Mr. Ailes, an aggressive former Republican political strategist, at the pinnacle of power in three corridors of American life: business, media and politics. In addition to being the best-paid person in the News Corporation last year, he is the most successful news executive of the last 10 years, and his network exerts a strong influence on the fractured conservative movement.
Mr. Obama told The New York Times Magazine in October 2008 that the “Fox effect” had cost him two to three points in the polls. Since that election, Mr. Ailes and his cohort of conservative anchors like Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity have been riding a wave of discontent that sometimes puts them at odds with the Republican Party’s establishment, most recently with Fox News’s advocacy of an independent candidate in the 23rd Congressional District in upstate New York. The Republican candidate eventually withdrew.
“When you think about that, it’s the equivalent of the endorsement major newspapers used to provide,” said David Gergen, an analyst on CNN who has been an aide in Democratic and Republican administrations.
He went on: “Regardless of whether you like what he is doing, Roger Ailes is one of the most creative talents of his generation. He has built a media empire that is capable of driving the conversation, and, at times, the political process.”
Mr. Murdoch, in a statement relayed by a spokesman, said: “I’m proud of Fox News and what it is accomplishing, and I am grateful to Roger and his team for creating such a great asset for News Corporation.”
Mr. Ailes’s approach has put him at odds not just with the Democrats but also with the more liberal members of his boss’s family.
He played a well-chronicled role in the decision in 2004 by Lachlan Murdoch, Mr. Murdoch’s eldest son, to leave the company; he thought Mr. Ailes was intruding on his corporate turf. Two other Murdoch children, Elisabeth, a television producer in London, and James, the only Murdoch scion employed at the company, are sympathetic to Democratic causes and frequently voiced concerns to their father during last year’s presidential campaign about Fox News’s coverage of Mr. Obama.
Photo
And those concerns have only grown.
“I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes’s horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to,” said Matthew Freud, who is married to Ms. Murdoch and whom PR Week magazine says is the most influential public relations executive in London.
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In the interview, Mr. Ailes said that both Mr. Murdoch and the News Corporation had been consistently supportive of Fox News and its approach.
Mr. Ailes, the son of a foreman at the Packard Electric plant in Warren, Ohio, described his upbringing with three words: “God, country, family” and said that credo was responsible for the success of Fox News.
“I built this channel from my life experience,” Mr. Ailes, 69, said. “My first qualification is I didn’t go to Columbia Journalism School. There are no parties in this town that I want to go to.”
Mr. Ailes majored in radio and television at Ohio University and worked for “The Mike Douglas Show,” where at age 27 he met then-presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon in 1968.
“The camera doesn’t like you,” he told Mr. Nixon, according to “Crazy Like a Fox,” a book by Scott Collins about Fox News.
“It’s a shame a man has to use gimmicks like this to get elected,” Mr. Nixon said.
“Television is not a gimmick, and if you think it is, you’ll lose again,” Mr. Ailes said. The Nixon campaign hired him a few days later.
The night in 1969 when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, Mr. Ailes was inside the Oval Office setting up a screen on the president’s desk. The next year, Mr. Ailes was sent to Hawaii in advance of the attempt by the troubled Apollo 13 mission to return to earth. He prepared for two events in adjacent hangars: a funeral and a welcome home ceremony. Apollo 13 made it home safely.
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Joe McGinniss, who wrote about Mr. Ailes in his 1969 book, “The Selling of the President 1968,” keeps in touch with him. “Success never made that chip on his shoulder go away,” Mr. McGinniss said. “He holds onto what he envisions to be the values of the heartland and is suspicious of people on either coast.”
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After serving as a communications consultant for politicians and executives, Mr. Ailes ran CNBC, the business network, in the early 1990s under Bob Wright, then the chief of NBC.
“He’s got a very good sense of simplicity on air,” Mr. Wright said. “Because he had that background of being involved in political campaigns, he could develop a message and deliver it, and test it quickly to see if it’s effective.”
Mr. Ailes started Fox News in 1996 and faced skepticism that it ever could be a rival to CNN, much less the ratings and profits leader it is today. As recently as 2002, the network made very little money, said Michael Nathanson, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. Today, its vast profits secured by ever-rising fees from cable companies make it “probably the single most important asset at News Corporation,” he said.
“I built this business to throw off a billion dollars in profit,” Mr. Ailes said. “That was the goal from Day 1. In my own mind.”
Photo
Rick Perlstein, author of “Nixonland,” sees a strong resemblance between Mr. Ailes’s political experience and his approach to television.
“Like Richard Nixon, like Spiro Agnew, Fox News can never see itself as the attacker,” he said. “They are always playing defense because they believe they are always under attack, which attracts people that have the same personality formation. By bringing that mind-set, plus the high energy seamless stream of the aggression of talk radio, he has found an audience.”
Not all of Mr. Ailes’s political interests are national in scope. In 2002, after buying a weekend home in Putnam County, N.Y., an area rich in American history (a passion of Mr. Ailes’s) about 60 miles north of Manhattan, he became keenly interested in local issues. In 2008, he bought two local newspapers and installed his wife, Elizabeth, as publisher of both. He also has a young son.
There, he has engaged in a more direct version of politics. He is extremely concerned about zoning, among other local issues.
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At a town hall forum on Oct. 26 sponsored by one of his newspapers, he had a heated exchange with Richard Shea, a Democratic councilman who was running for town supervisor. “I turn around, and there he is,” said Mr. Shea, who won the election. “He starts right in on the zoning. He says, ‘What are you trying to hide from me in the zoning?’ He said, ‘I own the newspaper.’ ”
Mr. Shea continued, “My takeaway was that this guy is pretty much threatening me.”
Mr. Ailes said he simply asked for Mr. Shea’s phone number and complained about “environmental zealots” in the town. “I am a conservationist,” he said. “I try to put the bottle in the right can.”
As powerful as he is within the News Corporation, Mr. Ailes remains a spectral presence outside the Fox News offices. National security had long been a preoccupation of Fox News, and it was clear in the interview that the 9/11 attacks had a profound effect on Mr. Ailes. They convinced him that he and his network could be terrorist targets.
On the day of the attacks, Mr. Ailes asked his chief engineer the minimum number of workers needed to keep the channel on the air. The answer: 42. “I am one of them,” he said. “I’ve got a bad leg, I’m a little overweight, so I can’t run fast, but I will fight.
“We had 3,000 dead people a couple miles from here. I knew that any communications company could be a target.”
His movements now are shadowed by a phalanx of corporate-provided security. He |
Sports Med. 2000;28(1):28-31
This displays:
The interconnectivity of the tendons and ligaments more accurately than the previous image. The sharp angulation the LHB tendon makes when entering the bicipital groove.
According to several retrospective analyses, damage of the supraspinatus and/or subscapularis tendon(s) is strongly correlated to biceps pulley tears as well as subsequent LHB tendon pathologies. Rates as high as 75%-85% of cases with partial or full thickness subscapularis tears exhibit evidence of biceps pulley damage, and in such instances, it has been reported that as large as 75-90% of the biceps tendons have been shown to be either subluxed, dislocated, or completely torn.7,9,11,25,27
Furthermore, in a study conducted by Walch et al. they found even stronger correlations between the tissues of interest. In non-traumatic conditions, the patients with subluxing biceps tendons had subscapularis lesions in 100% of the cases and supraspinatus tears in 88% of the cases. Dislocations over the lesser tuberosity occurred only in the presence of subscapularis damage and almost always with additional supraspinatus damage (95%).70
In order to understand this relationship, it may be best to study the images provided above. As can be visualized, the supraspinatus and subscapularis tendon each play integral roles in maintaining biceps tendon position. When the LHB tendon passes through the biceps pulley, it makes a sharp turn (35-40°) before entering the bicipital groove.66 This point of angulation represents a significant mechanical vulnerability, which requires external assistance for stabilization. Largely, this duty falls on the biceps pulley complex. So not only are the supraspinatus and subscapularis responsible for providing active stabilization of the biceps through contraction, they also serve a passive role in mechanical stability due to their integration into the biceps pulley itself. Thus, the stress imparted upon the biceps tendon is compounded when there is evident structural damage.
Aside from any pain or force generation concerns associated with compromised biceps pulleys in isolation, structural deficiencies may additionally expose the LHB tendon to external shear and compressive stresses. When there is damage to the biceps pulley, the involved tissues are susceptible to a phenomenon known as anteriorsuperior impingement (ASI). Unlike SAIS, which is considered an external impingement, ASI is considered a form of internal impingement because the undersurface of the reflection pulley and the subscapularis tendon become compressed within the GH joint itself.
Similar to SAIS, it is often debated whether or not the ASI process is a physiological norm or if it represents a pathological progression. However, there appears to be evidence that intimately associates biceps pulley integrity and the occurrence of this compression. Habermeyer et al. found that when comparing between shoulders with known biceps pulley lesions, the probability of ASI significantly raised in accordance to the extent of RC pathology. The risk ratio of ASI increased to 4.99 when there was documented subscapularis tendon damage, and this ratio jumped to 12.0 when there were both subscapularis and supraspinatus tears. Therefore, this discovery led the researchers to speculate a causative cascade of events. In the presence of biceps pulley tears, the group theorizes that the LHB becomes unstable along its intra-articular course. This instability may lead to medial subluxation and subsequent shear stress placed upon the biceps tendon. Furthermore, this positional fault, according to Habermeyer, may negate the tendon’s role as an anterior stabilizer of the humeral head. Thus, excessive translation may further compress the pulley and RC structures within the GH joint, driving this cyclical pathological state.27
In reference to external factors, a third consideration involves the morphological changes that occur to the biceps tendon when exposed to excessive levels of stress. Multiple studies have found significant enlargement of the LHB tendon when comparing between patients presenting with and without rotator cuff dysfunction.8,58 This observation further insinuates the rotator cuff’s potential causative role in the development of biceps tendinopathy, as tendon thickening is a hallmark feature in pathological tendons.18b Although this adaptation is thought to be beneficial, the protective compensation can have detrimental repercussions if this occurs intra-articularly. Boileau and his colleagues coined the term “hourglass biceps” to describe a specific phenomenon where the intra-articular portion of the LHB tendon hypertrophies and creates an unwanted size discrepancy between the tendon and the bicipital groove. If the condition advances, the tendon can hypertrophy to an extent where it becomes entrapped within the joint when reaching overhead.5
Figure 1 from Boileau5: Illustrations demonstrating the mechanical consequences of the hourglass biceps. The tendon which has become hypertrophic (A) is unable to slide into the bicipital groove, leading to its incarceration in the joint on elevation of the shoulder (B).
Of note, Boileau’s phenomenon was observed in patients with an average age of 62 with full-thickness rotator cuff tears.5 So while this drastic entrapment is unlikely to occur in this article’s target audience, this process may still have important implications. Chronic tendon adaptations due to excessive loading might lead to relative stenosis of the LHB tendon within the bicipital groove. This narrowing may impart external stress to the tendon and serve to presumptively hasten the degenerative progression.
Finally, rotator cuff insufficiency may impact the biceps tendon indirectly by influencing the surrounding synovial sheath. Since the sheath of the biceps tendon is continuous with the GH joint synovium, any joint pathology may simultaneously influence the tendon covering. Therefore, any inflammatory condition directly involving the shoulder joint can contribute to bicipital peritendinous effusion (BPE). Importantly, tissues that are intimately associated with the GH joint capsule (such as the rotator cuff) can also play a pivotal role in this regard. Symptomatic RC tears have been strongly linked to inflammatory changes within the joint synovium and have subsequently been correlated to the presence of BPE.1,8b,8c,52b,60b Aside from an independent source of pain, synovial inflammation (synovitis) has been proposed to lead to adhesion and scar formation, which would contribute to relative stenosis of the LHB tendon.67 This progression would impact the LHB tendon tissue quality much in the same way as the hourglass biceps phenomenon described above. Although this rationale appears sound in theory, the relationship appears tenuous in reality. When assessing patients with chronic LHB tendon pathologies, there is no evidence of acute or chronic inflammation, and the presence and extent of BPE (as well as tendon sheath characteristics) show low to no correlation to shoulder pain.52b,62b,65 Thus, when assessing the data in totality, no strong conclusions can be made regarding this impact at present.
So What?
At this point, it should become clear that the described internal and external mechanisms of biceps tendon degeneration, influenced by rotator cuff function, are not mutually exclusive from one another. Each external factor that places the involved tendon under duress can induce internal adaptations. Consequently, with reduced mechanical capacity due to said adaptations, there is likely greater instability and subsequent external stress placed upon the biceps. This problematic cycle highlights the importance of addressing not only the physiological characteristics of the primary tendon of interest, but also any contributing factors that may be chronically perpetuating the excessive loads.
Now that the relationship between RC and LHB pathologies has been established, the intuitive question becomes: If, and to what extent, can this process be altered. On this front, there is good and bad news to report. In regards to the structural adaptations noted above (biceps tendon hypertrophy, integrity loss of the RC tendon and/or biceps pulley), there is little to no evidence suggesting these qualities can be meaningfully influenced.7c,13b,18b Additionally, current evidence suggests there is minimal to no difference in total excursion of the humeral head within the glenoid cavity following therapeutic interventions.4,49 Meaning, if SAIS does indeed impact the RC and the LHB tendons, we may not have an adequate solution to combat the phenomenon.
Fortunately, the good news is that unless these changes are severe, it likely doesn’t matter. While I have exhaustively highlighted various anatomical correlations above, the mere presence of any of these abnormalities does not guarantee anything. Prevalence data indicates rotator cuff tears are present in up to 39% of ASYMPTOMATIC individuals.58b While there are correlations between underlying tissue quality and pain, with prospective studies indicating those with structural pathologies are more likely to subsequently develop symptoms, the discrepancy between physical state and pain is quite clear13b,58b. A point which cannot be emphasized enough is the disconnect between pain perception and tissue damage. The contention that pain is directly proportional to the current state of the involved tissue is inaccurate and fails to account for the complex nature of the phenomenon. Pain is now largely considered a perceptual output of the brain that is formed through a dynamic interaction between the individual and their environment. The resulting experience of pain is modulated based on knowledge, beliefs, and culture and is often poorly correlated to tissue characteristics.69b There are substantial changes that occur peripherally (at the local site of the involved tissue) and centrally (spinal cord and brain) following injuries, which can be influenced without requiring any specific adaptations to occur within the degenerative tendon (Pelletier, Cooper). Thus, those who have a known compromise of their RC or LHB tendons shouldn’t view their condition as an inevitable, unyielding progression of dysfunction and pain. Exploring this concept further would extend this already drawn out article, so I recommend anyone interested in this topic to reference the works of Lorimer Moseley here or Louis Gifford here for a good entry point into pain science.
Rotator Cuff Training
Finally to the part that people actually care about: how we intervene. When assessing outcomes from a broad perspective, current literature indicates positive changes are possible in a wide array of conditions. Diverse patient populations, with various duration and extent of rotator cuff tendon damage, are capable of successful rehab.39 Even in the presence of full-thickness tears, meaningful impact on kinematics is possible. This success is directly evidenced by Miller’s 2016 study, which examined dynamic intra-articular control in a population with known supraspinatus tears.49 Visually depicted in the image below, the data revealed a 36% reduction in humeral head motion following 12 weeks of exercise therapy.
Figure 2 From Miller et al.49
Representative contact path kinematics for a single patient before therapy (A) and after therapy (B). The contact center is represented by a black circle, and the path followed by the contact center throughout the range of abduction is represented by the white line.
Similar studies have corroborated the above outcomes, improving confidence in the capacity to meaningfully alter internal movement.4 What becomes apparent is that in each scenario, on average, patients displayed an insufficiency in humeral control that was modifiable by exercise.4,49 If more precise intra-articular control is granted following intervention, there may be significant implications for the supplemental tissue(s) previously tasked with this role. As such, the internal demands placed upon the biceps tendon may be lessened.
When determining appropriate stress application and progression, it is important to first consider the current capacity of the tissue. If there is extreme sensitivity to loading, it may even require starting with low-intensity isometric contractions to build stress tolerance. This approach serves as a great entry point, as studies have found improved force expression, less pain, and reduced levels of cortical inhibition immediately following performance of sustained isometric contractions.54b Although these effects are less certain when discussing tendons of the upper body, it remains that exposing the tissue to tolerable levels of stress is beneficial from physiological and psychological standpoints.
Side Note: If this even remotely reflects your current capabilities, I implore you to seek medical advice.
Once load tolerance is established, rehabilitation is relatively simple. A recent systematic review demonstrated that inclusion of resistance exercise was a primary factor associated with positive outcomes; yet, specific recommendations regarding exercise volume, frequency, and intensity are not clear.39 This makes sense, as there is large heterogeneity between individuals presenting with rotator cuff dysfunction, rendering any notion of a universal “optimal” protocol obsolete. Recent evidence additionally suggests we may not need to be overly concerned with the specific selection and implementation of exercise interventions. Exercise interventions tailored to the particular deficiencies in patients presenting with SAIS have not been demonstrated to be more effective than general exercise programs when assessing pain, range of motion, strength, or function (Shire). Thus, as of now, it appears the best advice is to challenge the cuff sufficiently, with adequate volume, without evoking an adverse response.
Adam Meakins (a physiotherapist out of the UK) has put together several beneficial resources for management of rotator cuff disorders (see here and here for a quick list of common, effective exercises to perform). And for the minimalists reading this article, Dr. Chris Littlewood may have simplified this process even further. His group found similar (positive) results when comparing standard physical therapy treatment to a self-managed group who only used a single exercise.39b Over the course of 12 weeks, individuals performed one exercise for three sets of 10-15 repetitions twice per day. The exercise chosen (either abduction or external rotation) progressed from an isometric contraction, to a resisted isotonic contraction of the same movement, to a resisted, compound movement (push-up or pull-up). The intensity was to be adjusted such that it MUST PROVOKE PAIN during the performance, with no evidence of worsening of symptoms upon cessation. This is a vital stipulation for several reasons. First, the pain provocation helps indicate that certain thresholds of stress are being applied to the appropriate tissue- thus helping to promote any physiological adaptations within the shoulder itself. Second, resilience in spite of symptoms improves self-efficacy while simultaneously helping to psychologically condition an individual away from harmful interpretations of their current state. The authors are adamant that maintaining an optimistic perception of the pathology is an essential component of successful rehabilitation. Inaccurate appraisal of symptom meaning (i.e. that pain equates to tissue damage) may lead to destructive, self-perpetuation of the condition due to fear-avoidance tendencies.
Finally, when training for performance, certain provisions should probably still be in place to protect rotator cuff health. As shown in a recent study by Wattanaprakornkul et al, the rotator cuff musculature displays distinct activation patterns specific to the direction of resistance.70b Flexion exercises lead to greater EMG activity of the posterior musculature (supraspinatus, infraspinatus), extension exercises lead to greater EMG activity of the anterior musculature (subscapularis), and abduction exercises lead to relatively similar levels of activity globally.
Data originally from Wattanaprakornkul70b, Image provided by Adam Meakins here
This specific activation pattern indicates the importance of maintaining balance in a training program. I recommend calculating the average total volume performed in each direction to see if any discrepancies exist. From there, it would be wise to build capacity of the rotator cuff through isolated training and integrated stabilization exercises. Quinn Henoch has several excellent videos covering higher level training for shoulder function (example here), and his channel offers value for those seeking more in-depth philosophy and application of rehab principles into barbell sports.
Summing Up
One of the best parts about being a physical therapist is helping people continue to do the things they value. When faced with injury, lifters often fixate on the movements they can no longer tolerate instead of the options they can perform successfully. Often, this pessimistic focus is unnecessary, as we can alter rather than abandon. Intelligent program design, individually molded based upon the physical characteristics and the specific goals of the lifter, is extremely important. As discussed (in way too much detail), simple changes can be made to primary, secondary, and accessory lifts that allow for the LHB tendon to settle down (and potentially adapt) while still making progress toward competitive goals. Finally, with the knowledge as to why these injuries may be occurring, the risk of further degenerative progression may be influenced. Hopefully, this article provided the valuable insight needed to navigate this condition and allow for you, or those you work with clinically, to remain on the platform as long as desired.
Acknowledgements
I’ve surrounded myself with a couple of smart friends who hold me accountable. Thanks to Scot Morrison, Derek Miles, Ricky Tapia, and Dan Raimondi for all the help regarding content. Big thanks to my brother Stephen Eure and Greg’s amazing wife Lyndsey for help with general editing. And of course Greg for giving me a platform to reach others.
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Finding permanent housing, however, is a challenge for the women because of a lack of “clean, safe and affordable” residences in the Sacramento area.
Saint John’s saves the county untold dollars by helping troubled women reclaim their lives and get back children who they lost to foster care, Hewitt said.
“We’re not just providing a service,” he said. “We are intimately engaged in the lives of our folks.”
The agency’s requirements for entry are, indeed, barriers for some, he said. But “it’s not as though we don’t serve males at all,” he said. Half of all children in Saint John’s programs are boys, and they leave the program “having seen the importance of people loving all people.”
Sobriety, Hewitt said, “is something that we seek” from clients, more than 70 percent of whom have struggled with addiction. “We’re not saying that Saint John’s is for everyone. There must be a desire to really want to transform their lives. But if someone relapses in our program, we don’t ask them to leave. We give them support to recover.”
The county’s decision to cut off funding to the agency was based on “too shallow an analysis” of Saint John’s, Hewitt said.
In December, Edwards said, the county will open bids for $540,000 in county funding to “fill gaps” in the homeless system. “We are in the process of identifying those gaps,” which might include funding “diversion” programs that would target people at imminent risk for becoming homeless because of money constraints, medical problems or other issues.
In the meantime, the city and county agreed this week to commit $108 million over the next three years to help thousands of chronically homeless people get off the streets. Using federal and city money from a pilot program known as Whole Person Care, as well as county funding for increased mental health and addiction services, the combined effort is designed to keep homeless people out of emergency rooms, bring stability to their lives through various programs and move them toward permanent housing.
Saint John’s supports the efforts, Hewitt said. But until the project is up and running, he said, concerns are high for the estimated 2,000 to 3,000 people in Sacramento County who live outdoors. He urged the county to release its “gap funding” money as soon as possible to protect people during winter months.
“We think the delay is unconscionable,” Hewitt said. “As the weather is rapidly changing, we think it’s completely insensitive. It’s out of touch with the reality of homelessness in our community.”Image copyright AFP Image caption The Hindu, published daily since 1878, did not come out on Wednesday as workers could not access the press
One of India's oldest newspapers has not been printed for the first time in 137 years due to rains and floods in the southern city of Chennai (Madras).
The Hindu, published daily since 1878, did not come out on Wednesday as workers could not access the press.
The paper's publisher N Murali told BBC Hindi's Imran Qureshi that it was the first time this had happened.
The rains have suspended flights and trains and hundreds of people are without power.
The Hindu, which is headquartered in Chennai, is also published in 17 other cities.
"Our Maraimalainagar township was not accessible for the people who run the plant. So, none of our staff could reach the plant. It is located about 30km (18 miles) from the city in Maraimalainagar," Mr Murali said.
"The printing press plant is large so we put it up outside the city. Even if we had printed the paper, I doubt if it could have been distributed in the city," he added.
Other city newspapers like the Times of India, the Deccan Chronicle and the New Indian Express were printed, although it is unclear if they had reached readers in the city.
The army has been deployed to rescue thousands of stranded people after two days of heavy rains.
Flights from the city's airport have been indefinitely suspended after flood waters entered the runway and tarmac areas on Tuesday evening.
Most of the main streets are waterlogged and schools have been shut for the 17th day since November, reports say.
Schools and colleges have been shut in six districts due to the rains.Working for corporations, but failing workers and the planet
The Rana Plaza building collapse is the deadliest structural failure in modern times. It was home to factories manufacturing clothes for fashion chains such as Primark, Benneton and Mango. rijans under a Creative Commons Licence
Ethical supply chain audits can enable business as usual under the veneer of corporate responsibility, write Genevieve LeBaron and Jane Lister.
In recent years incidents such as the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh in April 2013 and the exposé by The Guardian of slavery and human trafficking in the Thai shrimp industry in 2014 have focused attention on the supply chains of global corporations.
What has been reported less is that both of these incidents, and many others, took place within ‘certified’ and audited supply chains. The Thai shrimp in British supermarkets had been ‘ethically’ certified by an NGO that sets voluntary standards for the certification of agricultural products and encourages producers to adopt ‘safe and sustainable practices’. Similarly, in Bangladesh the Rana Plaza factory, which made clothes for Matalan, Primark and Walmart amongst many others, passed a compliance audit just months before it collapsed.
Many key questions and serious concerns hang over the ethical audit regime. These include: are audits effective in identifying non-compliance and driving up standards, what does the audit regime mean for governments and NGOs, where does power lie within the audit regime and, ultimately, in whose interest is the ethical audit regime working?
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To monitor and verify standards, NGOs have developed transnational ‘sustainable production’ certification standards, such as the Rainforest Alliance certification, Marine Stewardship Councils and Fair Labour programmes.
These certification standards are voluntary and rely on private audits, designed and paid for by corporations, to assess standards. NGOs have also increasingly partnered with firms to develop bespoke voluntary programmes: Greenpeace has worked with Coca Cola to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and Oxfam with Unilever to integrate smallholder farmers into its supply chains.
As such, the contemporary governance of global supply chains is increasingly reliant on an ethical and voluntary ‘benchmarking regime’ supported by both corporations and civil society groups, which has audit inspections as its cornerstone. This auditing regime comprises company codes of supplier conduct, voluntary certifications, standardised metrics (e.g. the Higg Index for ‘ethical’ clothing) and aggregated indexes for comparing corporate environmental and social performance (e.g. the Global Reporting Initiative).
Corporations can choose whether to use independent third-party auditors or in-house auditors. Third-party auditors are generally deemed more neutral and hence legitimate, but even third-party auditors are not impartial. Walmart, for example, applies its own criteria for selecting a list of whom it deems ‘acceptable’ auditors.
Auditors are bound by rigid confidentiality clauses and clients exercise full discretion over what audit information is reported. Auditors produce standardised metrics and rankings that give the appearance of transparent and neutral monitoring; yet the information audits provide is selective and fundamentally shaped by the client. Information about abuses and non-compliance is rarely made available to governments or consumers and, as such, they are rarely resolved.
Auditors typically offer advice to help factories prepare action plans to address non-compliance findings. However, auditors have no influence over a company’s eventual business decisions; their advice can be ignored; and there is no external accountability for the action plans.
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Corporations have embraced Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) goals and ethical audits as an opportunity to preserve their business model and take responsibility for supply-chain monitoring out of the hands of governments. Corporate adoption of CSR has brought the ‘supply chain ball’ back into their court, and away from governments.
Through the presentation of active monitoring and ‘continuous improvement’, corporations have been able to deflect pressure for stricter state and international regulation that might otherwise curb business growth. This enables the preservation of existing business models and profits.
Adopting ethical audits has also enabled corporations to position themselves as responsible companies. This helps drive sales as retailers increasingly recognise the importance of ‘eco’ and ‘ethical’ products for consumers. A 2013 study of 1000 brands found that 28 per cent of brand value relates to corporate social responsibility.
The increasing use of private audits to monitor supply chains is serving to restructure the global regulatory system to privilege the private interests of business growth, profit and market advantage over the public interest and social goods of improving labour standards, general wellbeing and ecological protection. In a nutshell, the audit regime is ‘working’ for corporations, but failing workers and the planet.
The increasing use of audits as a tool of governance is bolstering corporate interests and influence over consumers and policymakers and, ultimately, deepens corporations’ power to make their own rules and norms and evaluate and report on their own performance.
Whilst audits give the impression of active supply-chain monitoring and ‘continuous improvement’, the regime actually reinforces endemic problems in supply chains. It deflects pressure for stricter, state-based regulation and legitimises unsustainable global production models – in particular, a retail economy that promotes consumption and environmental degradation.
Through voluntary certification programmes, and with state support, the structural problems within the audit regime – deception, failing to detect or ignoring problems within supply chains, and a compliance mentality – are being swiftly institutionalised within global governance mechanisms.
Genevieve LeBaron is a senior lecturer at the University of Sheffield. Jane Lister is senior research fellow at Sauder School of Business. This article is taken as excerpts from the 2016 Global Political Economy Brief, ‘Ethical Audits and the Global Supply Chains of Global Corporations', published by the University of Sheffield.“Actions speak louder than words,” Juanita Broaddrick wrote on Twitter
Adan Salazar
Prison Planet.com
October 8, 2016
Several alleged victims of former US President Bill Clinton have come forward to defend Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump after leaked audio emerged Friday of a controversial conversation the businessman had in 2005.
Juanita Broaddrick on Saturday morning remarked that Trump’s bad words didn’t affect her as much as Bill Clinton’s rape and Hillary’s subsequent cover-up.
How many times must it be said? Actions speak louder than words. DT said bad things!HRC threatened me after BC raped me. — Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) October 8, 2016
“How many times must it be said? Actions speak louder than words,” Broaddrick wrote on Twitter. “DT said bad things! HRC threatened me after BC raped me.”
The former nursing home administrator accused Bill Clinton, then running for Arkansas governor, of raping her in 1978.
Broaddrick described the incident in a 1999 interview with NBC.
“Then he tries to kiss me again. And the second time he tries to kiss me he starts biting my lip … He starts to, um, bite on my top lip and I tried to pull away from him. And then he forces me down on the bed. And I just was very frightened, and I tried to get away from him and I told him ‘No,’ that I didn’t want this to happen but he wouldn’t listen to me. … It was a real panicky, panicky situation. I was even to the point where I was getting very noisy, you know, yelling to ‘Please stop.’ And that’s when he pressed down on my right shoulder and he would bite my lip. … When everything was over with, he got up and straightened himself, and I was crying at the moment and he walks to the door, and calmly puts on his sunglasses. And before he goes out the door he says ‘You better get some ice on that.’ And he turned and went out the door.”
Broaddrick’s support for Trump was later reinforced by Paula Jones, another woman who claimed Bill Clinton had sexually assaulted her, ultimately leading to his White House impeachment. Clinton later paid an out-of-court settlement to the tune of $850,000 for Jones to drop the charges.
Jones on Saturday pointed out in a Facebook post that unlike Trump, Hillary and Bill had not apologized for their treatment of Clinton rape accusers such as Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broaddrick.
“I don’t recall that Bill or Hillary has ever apologized to me and Juanita Broaddrick or Kathleen Willey yet Bill was getting his wee wee sucked under the Oval Office desk and still won a second term, UNBELIEVABLE!” Jones wrote, to which Broaddrick reportedly commented, “You go girl,” according to The American Mirror.
Kathleen Willey, a former White House aide who has also accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault, on Saturday also called on Hillary Clinton to resign for her mistreatment of Bill’s rape accusers.
The Hag has called us bimbos,sluts,trailer trash,whores,skanks. From one woman to her rapist's victims.When will u resign from ur campaign? — KATHLEEN WILLEY (@kathleenwilley) October 8, 2016
Yesterday The Washington Post published leaked audio from a lewd conversation about women Trump had with other men aboard a Hollywood Access bus in 2005.
In a rare apology, Trump issued a statement on the surreptitious recording Friday admitting, “I said it. I was wrong and I apologize.”
Here is my statement. pic.twitter.com/WAZiGoQqMQ — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 8, 2016
“I’ve said and done things I regret, and the words released today on this more-than-a-decade-old video are one of them,” Mr. Trump stated, adding, “Anyone who knows me knows these words don’t reflect who I am.”
In a precursor to what he may touch on at the upcoming presidential debate, Trump turned attention to Bill Clinton’s history with women and Hillary’s enabling.
“Hillary Clinton and her kind have run our country into the ground,” Mr. Trump said. “I’ve said some foolish things, but there’s a big difference between the words and actions of other people. Bill Clinton has actually abused women, and Hillary has bullied, attacked, shamed and intimidated his victims.”
Watch Paul Watson’s break down of how Hillary Clinton smeared a 12-year-old rape victim and successfully defended a child rapist during her time as a lawyer:
This article was posted: Saturday, October 8, 2016 at 3:29 pm
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Comment on this articleA key government document obtained by The Intercept confirms that the Obama administration does not require “concrete facts” or “irrefutable evidence” to brand Americans or foreigners as suspected terrorists.
Journalists Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux reported Wednesday:
The “March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance,” a 166-page document issued last year by the National Counterterrorism Center, spells out the government’s secret rules for putting individuals on its main terrorist database, as well as the no fly list and the selectee list, which triggers enhanced screening at airports and border crossings. The new guidelines allow individuals to be designated as representatives of terror organizations without any evidence they are actually connected to such organizations, and it gives a single White House official the unilateral authority to place “entire categories” of people the government is tracking onto the no fly and selectee lists. It broadens the authority of government officials to “nominate” people to the watchlists based on what is vaguely described as “fragmentary information.” It also allows for dead people to be watchlisted. … The rulebook, which The Intercept is publishing in full, was developed behind closed doors by representatives of the nation’s intelligence, military, and law-enforcement establishment, including the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, and FBI. Emblazoned with the crests of 19 agencies, it offers the most complete and revealing look into the secret history of the government’s terror list policies to date. It reveals a confounding and convoluted system filled with exceptions to its own rules, and it relies on the elastic concept of “reasonable suspicion” as a standard for determining whether someone is a possible threat. Because the government tracks “suspected terrorists” as well as “known terrorists,” individuals can be watchlisted if they are suspected of being a suspected terrorist, or if they are suspected of associating with people who are suspected of terrorism activity.
Hina Shamsi, head of the ACLU’s National Security Project, reviewed the document. She told The Intercept: “Instead of a watchlist limited to actual, known terrorists, the government has built a vast system based on the unproven and flawed premise that it can predict if a person will commit a terrorist act in the future. … On that dangerous theory, the government is secretly blacklisting people as suspected terrorists and giving them the impossible task of proving themselves innocent of a threat they haven’t carried out. … These criteria should never have been kept secret.”
Scahill and Devereaux continued:
The document’s definition of “terrorist” activity includes actions that fall far short of bombing or hijacking. In addition to expected crimes, such as assassination or hostage-taking, the guidelines also define destruction of government property and damaging computers used by financial institutions as activities meriting placement on a list. They also define as terrorism any act that is “dangerous” to property and intended to influence government policy through intimidation. This combination—a broad definition of what constitutes terrorism and a low threshold for designating someone a terrorist—opens the way to ensnaring innocent people in secret government dragnets. It can also be counterproductive. When resources are devoted to tracking people who are not genuine risks to national security, the actual threats get fewer resources—and might go unnoticed.
Read more here and read the document in full here.
— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.On Wednesday, Mobile Citizen and Mobile Beacon, companies that supply schools, libraries, and nonprofits with mobile broadband service, sued Sprint (PDF), saying that in a few weeks, the telecom provider will unfairly throttle the companies' clients after they use 6GB of data. Thus far, clients of Mobile Citizen and Mobile Beacon enjoyed unlimited broadband over WiMAX, but Sprint is scheduled to shutter its WiMAX network and use the spectrum for its LTE network.
The trouble is, portions of that spectrum were actually granted to Mobile Citizen and Mobile Beacon, which are considered Educational Broadband Service (EBS) providers. The FCC granted the spectrum to the EBS providers, and nine years ago Mobile Citizen and Mobile Beacon decided to lease their spectrum out to Clearwire for 30 years, collecting rent on the spectrum as well as compensation in the form of use of the telecom company’s infrastructure.
Mobile Citizen and Mobile Beacon then sold that service at a reduced rate to their clients, including schools in rural areas that rely on mobile service for connectivity, church groups that set up Internet service for underserved members of the community, libraries, and non profits. But when Sprint acquired Clearwire two years ago, it soon decided to repurpose the struggling WiMAX network's spectrum.
Mobile Citizen and Mobile Beacon are asking a Massachusetts state court to prevent Sprint from throttling their data over the LTE network when their clients go over the assigned amount. “[I]n the case of Mobile Beacon, school modems use an average of 32 gigabytes (GBs) per month, with the top 25 percent using capacity between 50 and 300+ GBs per month,” the companies’ lawsuit against Sprint claims. “[I]n the case of Mobile Citizen the overall average broadband capacity consumption is 40 GB per month, nonetheless, Clearwire and Sprint are curtailing that current level of capacity to a mere 6 GB monthly, which is a near lethal blow to plaintiffs' non-profit users.”
Sprint, for its part, makes no apology for its throttling. A Sprint spokesperson told Ars in an e-mail, “We do not offer unlimited data-only service to any customer. Yes, Sprint engages in reasonable network management practices as it is contractually entitled to do to ensure that their customers did not lose access in the middle of the month... We have repeatedly made attempts to discuss with [Mobile Citizen and Mobile Beacon] how we can best meet their end users’ needs and resolve this matter. But instead of working it out like reasonable partners, they chose to file a complaint.” (Sprint does offer unlimited talk, text, and voice plans for retail customers, and it recently moved to stop throttling video data for customers buying all three services, as well.)
The spokesperson continued, "Mobile Beacon and Mobile Citizen receive significant fees from Sprint for the use of their spectrum. We provide them with data capacity on our networks for free, which they resell to customers at rates that they determine at their sole discretion.”
Sprint will shut down the WiMAX network by November 6. Mobile Citizen and Mobile Beacon say that will make them unable to provide free or low-cost unlimited data to 429 schools, 61 libraries, and 1,820 nonprofit organizations. But Sprint says the two companies have had over a year to figure our how to transition “to the more advanced and higher quality LTE,” and it notes that other EBS licensees have largely transitioned without issue.
But Katherine Messier, the managing director of Mobile Beacon, disagrees. In a statement, she said, "We don't believe providing a second-class Internet service or'slow lane' is an acceptable means to close the digital divide. We're fighting to prevent diminished service to schools and poor people now—and over the remaining 21 years of our contract.”School Board Member Contemplates Legal Action Against State Over School Calendar
Hogan makes it more difficult for school systems to get waiver for pre-Labor Day start
By Douglas Tallman
School board member Patricia O'Neill on Monday discusses the 2017-2018 school calendar. Montgomery County Public Schools
A Montgomery County Board of Education member said Wednesday the school system might contemplate taking the state to court after a new executive order makes it more difficult for Maryland school districts to start classes before Labor Day.
“I think we’ll have to make a decision about what direction we’re going to proceed,” board member Patricia O’Neill said. “We unanimously voted to seek a waiver. We should by all means follow the rules, and if that fails, consider legal options.”
On Aug. 31, Gov. Larry Hogan issued an executive order requiring public school districts to start school after Labor Day—Sept. 4, 2017—and complete the state-mandated 180-day school year by June 15. With his order, the governor said he wanted to make the summer longer for families as well as boost state tourism.
The order gave school systems the option of seeking a waiver from the requirements from the Maryland State Department of Education.
The county school board Monday approved a 2017-2018 calendar that starts Aug. 28, directing staff to seek a waiver.
On Tuesday, Hogan amended his original executive order to allow waivers for “innovative school schedules” for charter schools and certain low-performing or at-risk public schools. School systems also could get a waiver if they have closed 10 days annually during any two of the last five years for snow, natural disasters or civil disturbances.
The amended executive order “really stems from a lot of concerns from state board of education and some locals who were concerned about guidance as far as waivers go,” Hogan spokesman Doug Mayer said.
O’Neill wondered whether Montgomery County’s actions angered the governor, prompting the amended order.
Mayer disagreed. “I hate to disappoint them, not everything revolves around Montgomery County,” he said.
School board President Michael Durso would not speculate whether the board would seek legal action.
“I guess I’d be hesitant to even speculate,” he said. “It is a very complex situation that doesn’t seem to be getting any clearer.”
In addition to the approved 2017-18 calendar, the school board also prepared two others, including one that would follow the gubernatorial order.Everybody loves a great deal. If your product or service is cheaper than those offered by your competitors, then you’d be crazy not to focus on your pricing as your main selling point, right? Well, actually, wrong. You wouldn’t be crazy at all. You see, in a world where audience perception of your product really, really matters, it takes more than just a song and dance about how cheap you are to establish your brand as amazing.
Many companies learn this the hard way. The history books are littered with stories of ambitious brands who have crashed and burned by gunning for the budget market, despite the fact that their value proposition is packed with so much more.
Let’s take a look at one such story and see what we can learn.
“Twice as Much for a Nickel” – The Great Pepsi Blunder of 1936
Think of two cola brands off the top of your head. Now, I might be wrong here, but chances are pretty high that you thought of Pepsi and Coca-Cola, right?
Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola both launched their products in the late 19th Century and have been locked in a fierce marketing war ever since. These days, Pepsi and Coca-Cola are considered to be on roughly the same level – it’s all just a matter of which taste you prefer. But it hasn’t always been like this.
Did you know that for nearly thirty years, Pepsi was considered a shameful budget buy that people were embarrassed to be seen with?
Pepsi didn’t have much luck with their marketing in the early 1900’s. But in 1936, they developed a winning strategy that would blow their competition out of the water – twice as much for the exact same price. They introduced a brand new bottle size that held 12 full ounces of cola and priced it the same as Coca-Cola’s standard 6.5-ounce bottle. They then sent it to market with its very own radio jingle:
Pepsi-Cola hits the spot
12 full ounces? That’s a lot!
Twice as much for a nickel, too.
Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you!
Did it work for them? Heck yeah, it did! Sales went through the roof, and between 1936 and 1938, their profits doubled. But at what long-term cost?
Consequences?
PepsiCo remained a profitable company in the years that followed their 1936 campaign, but their brand image took a total nose dive. Sure, people still bought it, but Pepsi was relegated to the kitchen cupboard, forced to forge its existence as a beverage for people who couldn’t afford Coca-Cola. People were ashamed to consume it in public, and many people would refuse to pour Pepsi in front of guests, opting instead to fill the glasses in the kitchen and then bring them through to the living room, so as to avoid the embarrassment of people seeing that they were buying a low-quality budget drink.
The public’s perception of Pepsi-Cola plummeted, leaving Coca-Cola to simply step in and scoop up the prize of “best quality cola”. Pepsi had forced themselves out of the competition with Coca-Cola, not by being too cheap, but by focusing on how cheap they were. And try as they might, they just couldn’t peel off the label.
Subsequent campaigns with slogans like “The Sociables Prefer Pepsi” flopped, and did very little to improve their brand image. It wasn’t until their “Come Alive with the Pepsi Generation” campaign* that they finally cracked the 30-year deadlock, and began to shift public perception of their product.
Three decades to undo the damage of trying to make a few fast sales.
Are You a Table Drink or a Cupboard Drink?
Look, people do care about pricing, and they will try to find a good deal. But what they really want is a product they are happy to be seen with. They want to proudly bring their bottle of Coca-Cola into their living room and pour it for their guests – they don’t want to be sneaking off to the kitchen cupboard every time somebody gets thirsty.
Which of the following thoughts would you prefer your customers to have about your product?
I can afford this. I suppose I’ll buy it. I love this product. Oh, and I can afford it, too!
Your value proposition needs to be about so much more than just your price. If you attract customers on price alone, they will be fickle, fair-weather customers who are always wishing they had something better. But if you attract customers by appealing to their wants and needs, they will be happy, loyal customers who want to share you with the world.
Let me use one of my clients to show you an example of this in practice:
People® is a Human Resources software company – an industry with a lot of very heavy competition. Now, their HR software is probably one of the lowest-priced solutions on the market. But when we developed their marketing position, did we focus on this fact to stimulate growth? No – we developed a 6-point value proposition, which talks about all the things that make the solution attractive, and then mentions – almost as an afterthought – that their software is also affordable.
The result? Well, by using value-based marketing instead of focusing on price, People® went from being an unknown start-up, to becoming one of the fastest-growing HR software suppliers in Europe. And they’re definitely not attracting the budget clients, either – one of their 3,000 customers is Victoria Beckham; another is the Ministry Of Sound.
Here’s the bottom line: you need to be a table drink, not a cupboard drink. You should strive to be the bottle of Coca-Cola proudly sitting in front of guests, not the shameful bottle of budget cola hiding in the kitchen. You should focus on what makes your product awesome, instead of trying to win your clients based on price alone.
So, are you a table drink or a cupboard drink?
*Despite succeeding in reshaping their brand image, Pepsi’s “Come Alive with the Pepsi Generation” campaign brought with it a new set of problems – when it was translated into Chinese, the slogan was interpreted as “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead”. But that’s a lesson for another day!
About the Author:
John Crowley is a professional copywriter and content marketer. Over the last five years, he has helped hundreds of growing organisations to articulate the true value of their business, in a way that their target market understands and trusts. John has also helped ambitious companies to develop and execute a working content marketing strategy. If you need to make your complex business message more concise and more appealing, or if you need help with your sales and marketing copy, then John is your guy. You can hire John on PeoplePerHour here.
Want to contribute to PeoplePerHour blog? Get in touch via juste@peopleperhour.com!
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to work for you today.Earlier this month, a judge who served on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court laughed off the notion that the secret court was a "rubber stamp" for the government.
Royce Lambert, who served on the court from 1995 to 2002, claimed that anyone who knows him would say he wasn't a rubber stamp for the spy agencies:
"You've had judges like me, and the public perception of me is certainly not that I'm a rubber stamp for the government," Lamberth said in an interview, laughing. As if to underscore the point, Lamberth had issued a ruling earlier in the day ordering the government to stop genital searches of Guantanamo Bay detainees who want to meet with their lawyers. Lamberth was appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1987 and has been chief judge since 2008. On Tuesday, when he turns 70, he'll step down as chief judge of the court but remain as a senior judge with a reduced caseload. Last year, the government asked the FISA court to approve 1,789 applications to spy on foreign intelligence targets, according to a Justice Department notice to Congress dated April 30. The court approved all but one — and that was withdrawn by the government. But Lamberth said that doesn't mean the approval is automatic. Often, judges come back with questions or comments about the requests and require intelligence agencies to modify them to meet their standards. He said he doesn't remember rejecting any government request during his time on the FISA court. The overwhelming number of those "were the kinds of things we should be doing to protect our country," Lamberth said. "They were the kinds of surveillances that I thought the executive branch was right to do. And I felt that each one was the kind of thing that we needed to do to keep our country safe — both from spies and from terrorists."
Yes, I'm sure all the FISA court judges are as dedicated and respectful of civil liberties as this guy. And that's what scares me. Eighteen hundred wiretap requests and not one was rejected? Since 1979, there have been 39,000 requests made to the secret court and only 11 have been turned down.
This is relevant because this same court that has rarely found the government overreaching has just renewed the telephone snooping program revealed by Edward Snowden.
Reuters:
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, said its authority to maintain the program expired on Friday and that the government sought and received a renewal from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. The ODNI said in a statement it was disclosing the renewal as part of an effort at greater transparency following Snowden's disclosure of the telephone data collection and email surveillance programs. A top official said earlier on Friday that intelligence officials were working to declassify information on the programs that Snowden had already partially disclosed. Robert Litt, general counsel of ODNI, said he was optimistic the intelligence community could make "a lot of progress" in declassifying the information. U.S. officials faced a public uproar after Snowden began leaking classified information about telephone and email collection programs. Intelligence officials have been pushing to justify the programs as legal, particularly under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which requires a secret court to approve the programs. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court sided on Monday with Yahoo Inc and ordered the Obama administration to declassify and publish a 2008 court decision justifying Prism, the data collection program revealed last month by Snowden. The ruling could offer a rare glimpse into how the government has legally justified its spy agencies' data collection programs under FISA. "One of the hurdles to declassification earlier was that the existence of the programs was classified," Litt said in response to questions after a speech at the Brookings Institution. "It's very hard to think about releasing the opinion that says a particular program is legal if you're not going to disclose what the program is. Now that the program has been declassified, we're going back and we're looking at these opinions." Litt said intelligence officials were looking across the spectrum of its activities to see what could be declassified. "We're trying to prioritize things that we think are of the greatest public interest," he said. "The highest priority is getting out fuller information about the programs about which partial information is already out."
Question: If they feel they can safely declassify a lot of this stuff, what did Snowden do that was so God-awful injurious to American intelligence that he deserves to be hounded all over the world?
Sure, revealing the existence of the program would automatically negate the need for total secrecy regarding some of it. But don't these actions speak to the notion that at least some of these FISA rulings could be safely published?
Perhaps the ruling that renewed the telephone surveillance program could be published as well. It's hard to trust a court that appears to grant the government wide latitude in its surveillance efforts.Either support new pipelines or your community will be incinerated by an oil-carrying train.
It sounds outrageous, but it’s been a foundational argument made by the pro-pipeline lobby ever since the horrific Lac-Mégantic disaster in 2013.
“This is almost like putting a gun to the head of communities, saying ‘well, if we don’t build our pipeline then we’re going to put more oil-by-rail traffic through your community,’ ” says Patrick DeRochie, program manager of Environmental Defence’s climate and energy program.
“I think that’s dishonest and the oil industry’s really manipulating legitimate public concerns about rail safety to push pipelines.”
On Dec. 20, 2016 — less than a month after the federal approvals of the Kinder Morgan TransMountain and Enbridge Line 3 pipelines — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau clearly stated that “putting in a pipeline is a way of preventing oil by rail, which is more dangerous and more expensive.”
The fact that it’s an oft-repeated sentiment shouldn’t overshadow the fact that this is a completely false binary.
Canada is hardly shipping any oil by rail. It never has.
And the only way that oil-by-rail shipments will seriously increase as predicted by the Canadian Energy Research Institute and National Energy Board is if Canada continues with its plan to allow for the massive expansion of Alberta’s oilsands in the coming decades, a move that will undermine calls for a moratorium on all new fossil fuel infrastructure in order to avoid the effects of catastrophic climate change.
Highest Amount Ever Exported by Rail Was Mere 178,000 Barrels Per Day
Here are the numbers on oil-by-rail.
In September 2016 — the most recent month reported by the National Energy Board on the subject — oil-by-rail exports to the United States were 69,292 barrels per day (bpd).
They had dipped as low as 43,205 bpd in June 2016.
This obviously reflects the extremely low per-barrel price that bitumen is fetching from American refineries, which is also why there’s currently around 400,000 bpd of spare capacity in the pipeline network.
Plus, oil-by-rail generally costs more than shipping oil by pipeline, making it an even less viable option in such economic times.
But rail shipments have never been particularly notable relative to total crude oil production.
In fact, oil-by-rail’s high point in recent years was in September 2014, when 178,989 bpd were transported to the U.S.
The same year, Canada was exporting a total of 2.85 million bpd. In other words, at its very peak, oil-by-rail accounted for a mere 6.28 per cent of total exports.
Newly Approved Pipelines Quadruple Capacity Historically Shipped by Rail
It should also be noted that not all oil transported by rail is exported to the States, with some simply transported to other parts of the country for storage or usage for purposes such as asphalt.
For instance, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers reports the oil-by-rail hit “almost 200,000 bpd by the end of 2013,” despite the NEB only reporting 166,570 bpd in rail exports during December 2013.
Domestic transport also helps explain why the Canadian Energy Research Institute reported in 2014 that about 35,000 bpd of oil-by-rail from Western Canada wasn’t exported to the United States (and thus not counted by the NEB).
Incredibly, nobody is keeping detailed, accurate numbers on oil-by-rail.
But we can assume — generously — that the highest oil-by-rail shipments have ever hit in Canada is 225,000 bpd (180,000 bpd in exports and another 45, |
it comes down to, right? No more being used, being a puppet on a string. Spitting right in Fate’s eye and taking a stand, if only in a fall. Unless I was destined to come to this conclusion. The product of circumstances put into motion long before my existence only to reach said moment. So by dying I would be just a means to an end of an end. Maybe Susumu was right and I really am nothing. It hurts my head to think about it. Maybe I’m still hurting from the concussion. I can barely tell the raindrops apart at this point as everything starts to look fuzzy. So why am I not crying, faced with this most nihilistic of conclusions? Am I all out of tears? Am I crying? Or is it just the rain? I can’t tell anymore. I need to have a seat. Yes, that seems right, I think. As I lower myself, I realize how much give this fence is capable of. I could fall through right now and they wouldn’t really miss me. Sure, they’d cry, but only because now they have to find someone else to be their toy. I was never anything but a joke to them. My thoughts, my words, my ideas: all meaningless drivel no matter how loud or thunderous I was about it. The rain is coming in harder now. Almost typhoon-like. The lightning crackles over head as I silently plead for an answer, for something to hold on to as true, right, and just. This puppet is begging to have her strings cut though it will render her useless and dead. Some sort of sign or cue. A massive crackle of lightning roars overhead, forcing me to dive into the gravel on the roof. There’s a brilliant explosion of light and sound that I dare not look at, lest I be blinded. As suddenly as it came, it ends as I look up to see what has happened. A section of the fencing has literally exploded off the side, leaving a gap unprotected. A human sized gap. I asked for a sign. And here it is. Am I ready to act upon it? I climb onto the edge, my heart pounding with the thunder, becoming one with the moment. It will all be over soon.Getty Images
Former Chargers fullback and assistant coach Hank Bauer won’t be calling the team’s games on radio any longer, but it looks like there will be another retired member of the team’s offense in the booth when the season gets underway.
Alex Marvez of FOX Sports reports that Curtis Conway will be taking over as the color commentator on game broadcasts for the 2015 season. Conway has been working for NFL Network and Pac-12 in recent years.
Conway played for the Chargers from 2000-2002 and caught 181 passes for 2689 yards and 16 touchdowns. He posted a career-high 1,125 yards during the 2001 season and the seventh overall pick of the 1993 draft by the Bears finished his career with 594 catches overall.
Conway also played his college ball at USC and grew up in Los Angeles, so the Chargers’ potential move to Los Angeles would likely suit him just fine if things wind up working out that way.WASHINGTON -- The National Security Agency's massive collection of all Americans' phone records breaks laws without making the country safer, two members of the Senate Intelligence Committee argued Tuesday night, saying the practices must be reformed.
Taking to the Senate floor, Sens. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) called on the White House to act on its own to rein in the programs. The senators criticized the administration's intelligence leaders for "misleading" the public on the controversial NSA programs and accused the administration of breaking the law.
The outlines of the surveillance programs had been disclosed before, but NSA leaker Edward Snowden revealed their stunning sweep when he released reams of material earlier this year. The documents Snowden disclosed highlight the Patriot Act's Section 215 that allows the government to collect phone records and Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that allows government cyber-spying on overseas targets.
Wyden said he knew of at least one violation of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment under the 702 program. He said that based on a letter from NSA head Gen. Keith Alexander, the government committed several violations of the Patriot Act in gathering phone records.
"I'm not allowed to discuss the classified nature of that, but I want to make sure that those who are following this debate know that from my vantage point, reading those documents that are classified, these violations are more serious than have been stated by the intelligence community, and mind you, are very troubling," Wyden said.
The so-called metadata records of all Americans' phone calls are captured and stored for five years by the NSA, the agency has revealed.
Wyden and Udall have proposed legislation to curb the agency's access to all that data. Both argued that they are disturbed by what they described as dissembling by intelligence officials about the effectiveness of the surveillance, particularly the phone data sweeps. Alexander and other members of the administration have claimed some 54 terror plots (although they have revealed only four in detail) were disrupted by the two programs.
"The bulk phone records collection program alone played little or no role in disrupting terrorism plots," Udall said. "I say this as someone who has been fully briefed on these terror-related events. Nor has it been demonstrated that this program even provides any uniquely valuable intelligence."
Udall and Wyden said they took issue with suggestions by Alexander and others that the phone data was acutely important. The senators said the overseas surveillance -- which both would like to reform, not end -- has been much more significant.
"Leaders in the intelligence community have made misleading statements repeatedly," said Wyden. "It's not just a question of keeping the American people in the dark... which was true. But the American people were actively misled on a number of occasions."
Both lawmakers said phone records should be removed from government control, and left with phone companies. They argued that the 300 or so times that the NSA says it has needed to search the records could have been easily handled without the government controlling so much private data.
"I have yet to see any convincing reason why agencies investigating terrorism cannot simply obtain information directly from phone companies using a regular court order," Udall said. Alexander has argued that it is much faster for the NSA to pursue leads when it possesses the data.
"Convenience alone cannot justify the collection of the personal information of millions of innocent, ordinary, law-abiding Americans, especially when the same information can be obtained using less intrusive methods," Udall said.
The senators' efforts have only modest support in the Senate. A measure to curb the phone data collection narrowly failed in the House last week, however. Udall said American sentiment was turning, and indeed, a recent poll found for the first time that people's concerns about government intrusion on civil liberties is exceeding their worry that the government is not doing enough to stop terror attacks.
"Although the legislation didn't pass, the American people are demanding action, and those who share our concerns are on the march," Udall said. "It's just common sense that our law enforcement agencies should have a reason to suspect a connection between the records they are seeking and a terrorism or espionage investigation before using these broad authorities."By Juan Cole | —
This week, the release by the Senate of a report on torture as practiced in the zeroes by the CIA, along with Thursday night’s dramatic vote on an omnibus spending bill, laid bare the shape of the GOP platform in 2016. (Some Democrats were dragooned into voting for the spending bill, but key provisions or riders were clearly inserted by the GOP). However much the party or its members deny it, the practical actions and concrete words of party leaders make clear their priorities.
1. With a few noble exceptions like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Republican Party spokesmen, Republican politicians, and Republican media like Fox Cable News, defended torture. This defense was mounted from so many directions by so many Republicans that it now seems indisputable that the party stands for the principle of rectal hydration. Since torture is illegal in American law, presumably they want to repeal the 5th and 8th amendments to the constitution.
2. The Republican Party stands for the principle that elections should be stolen by the rich who pay the most for them. The new bill multiplies permitted donations by a factor of ten.
3. The GOP wants the US taxpayer to be made to bail out risky, casino-like “derivatives.” After the 2008 crash, caused by some corrupt Wall Street financiers stealing our money, Congress had removed FDIC protection from the riskier derivatives. The GOP, plotting in smoke filled rooms far from the light, just put the taxpayer right back in the sights the next time the bankers need a bailout. The provision was actually written by CitiBank, which won’t get my business. They think, much better to gamble with the taxpayers’ money; they would, but why would GOP lawmakers agree to be their ventriloquist’s dummy?
4. The bill blocks aid to the Palestine authority if it becomes a member of UN agencies without Israeli permission. Palestine has been recognized as a non-member observer state at the UN, and is gradually joining key committees. It likely will sign the Rome Statute, join the International Criminal Court, and sue Israel for war crimes. But in the fantasyland of Congress, none of this may be allowed to happen. The PA has other sources of money than the US, and all this provision does is further weaken the ability of the US to do effective diplomacy.
5. This fall, most Republicans ran on putting troops back into Iraq and getting even more deeply involved in the Syrian civil war than the US already is. This is a plank in their platform that leads to sanguinary wars.
These, then, are the major issues on which the GOP is running for the presidency in 2016. They underline that the party represents the 3 million wealthiest Americans, and has no scruples that might interfere in doing exactly what the 1% tells them to do.
But do these planks really amount to the platform Americans want to vote for in 2016? On the surface, no. But time shall tell.
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Related video:
WCVB Channel 5 Boston “Sen. Elizabeth Warren bashes bill favoring big banks”Hillary Clinton would like voters to believe she's the candidate most likely to help working Americans. After a surprisingly difficult primary fight with a socialist senator from Vermont, Clinton has adopted a lot of populist economic rhetoric. On her campaign website, she says she has an eight-point plan to help the middle class, with the first point saying, "Hillary is proposing middle-class tax breaks to help families cope with the rising cost of everyday expenses." However, Clinton actually hasn't ever released her plan to cut middle-income taxes (or really any taxes), instead relying on evasive answers and proposals for small-change tax expenditures.
Nowhere in Hillary's plan for a raise for the middle class does her campaign discuss lowering any income tax rates. In fact, she most often talks about raising taxes on the wealthy. She talks about expanding child care credits and making college affordable. She touts her support for unions, clean energy, and infrastructure, but doesn't really make it clear how those would increase voters' take-home pay.
In March the Clinton campaign released a tax plan that would raise $1.1 trillion in new taxes. She told the Tax Policy Center that an income tax cut for low- and middle-income families was forthcoming. We're still waiting.
On September 22 Clinton updated her tax plan again, this time spelling out major changes to the estate tax (mirroring a plan put forward by Bernie Sanders). But she still didn't talk about her promised middle-income tax cut. And her campaign has hinted in some places that what you see is what you get. The tax credits for "everyday expenses" that she has outlined in disjointed fashion throughout the Democratic campaign and general election might be her only version of a tax cut for the middle class.
Hillary's reluctance to commit to a specific tax cut for the middle class could be related to her husband's 1992 campaign. During the battle with President George H. W. Bush and Ross Perot, Bill Clinton pledged to cut taxes for most Americans, while fighting the deficit. Once he was in office, however, his plan changed almost entirely to deficit reduction. In fact, President Clinton's 1993 budget was a massive tax increase (albeit one that contributed to the first surpluses in decades by the time he left office). The backlash to that budget, along with a failed carbon tax and healthcare reform plan, propelled Republicans to seizing both chambers of Congress for the first time in 40 years. Maybe Hillary Clinton would like to avoid repeating that mistake. Perhaps she, probably accurately, sees that deficit reduction and new spending needs will trump any desire for broad tax relief and doesn't want to get caught up defending a flip-flop in 2018 and 2020.
Another possibility, which isn't mutually exclusive from learning from her husband's experiences, is that Hillary Clinton simply isn't all that committed to tax relief. Rifle-shot tax expenditures that sound good, but don't cost the government that much revenue, have always been among the Clintons' favorite political gambits. Perhaps that's all Hillary thinks she needs to talk about to win over populists who were backing Sanders or who might be thinking of supporting Donald Trump.
If that's the case, then Clinton owes it to voters to make it clear that no new plan is coming. And voters who believe that actual tax relief is a key part of fighting inequality or increasing take-home income need to look elsewhere.GMO Internet, a publicly listed IT firm in Japan, has officially launched its cryptocurrency mining operation.
The mining unit was previously unveiled in September, with a goal of going live with it in the first quarter of 2018. GMO has pursued a number of cryptocurrency-related business lines in the past year, including an exchange platform it opened in the spring and a bitcoin-focused payroll service unveiled earlier this month.
According to today’s announcement, the new facility is based in northern Europe. And while the firm declined to name its exact location, GMO indicated that the mine will draw electricity from geothermal and hydropower sources. As reported earlier, the mining facility will be equipped with a computing power at 500 petahashes per second (PH/s).
“The cryptocurrency mining business will use existing technology to mine from facilities (mining centers) in Northern Europe. GMO Internet will increase the size of the operation in phases, expanding the business,” GMO said in its statement.
The announcement also confirms previously suggested plans to develop a cloud mining service, through which it would sell excess hashing power and the associated rewards (when a new block is added to a blockchain by a miner, that miner receives new coins in return) to consumers.
GMO also appears to be taking a bullish approach to its mining business in the long-term.
For example, the publicly traded firm plans to begin upgrading its chips in the first half of next year. Supporting that effort is research into new mining chips being developed with as-yet-to-be-revealed partners.
Pending the outcome of that process, GMO indicated that it would move to begin selling mining hardware.
“After the company has gained a certain level of operational experience, it will work on initiatives including [the] provision of a cloud mining service and selling next-generation mining boards equipped with mining chips,” the firm said in the statement.
Bitcoin mining photo via ShutterstockColorado is home to some of the nation’s best ski resorts, tallest mountains, and most pristine resources. Historically known for its role in cattle trade and the westward expansion, this state has developed well into its own, with advances in education, training, and industry.
We analyzed statistics provided by the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division to determine which cities had improved most in their crime rate over a period of years. Data taken was from 2007 to the most recent information collected in 2012. To note, Colorado has been exceedingly successful in reducing crime across the board – almost 70% of Colorado cities and towns improved crime rates in this short period of time.
It’s important to note that during this period, some rather pivotal legal and regulatory changes occurred which would permanently alter how statistics are gathered and accumulated – namely the legalization of cannabis. There have been many untested hypotheses on why law enforcement reports a massive reduction in state-wide crime, but we have noted that the addition of modernized training and equipment to many of these local forces have increased these cities’ ability to properly deal with crime.
If you find your city below – congratulations on the hard work! You can copy the badge and add it to your municipality’s home page if you so choose.
1. Fort Lupton, CO
Along Interstate 85, north of Denver, resides the city of Fort Lupton. With about half the ratio of officers to residents compared to the average throughout the rest of the country, Fort Lupton depends on special programs and training to keep its officers prepared to face any challenge. When this city faced an increased crime rate earlier last decade, it placed an added emphasis on community outreach and anonymous tip programs. Adding a total of four more patrolmen in the following years, Fort Lupton has increased cooperation with other county and municipal police departments in the area to bring a greater sense of safety to its residents. This has resulted in a significantly reduced crime rate.
2007 Crime Rate: 27.20
2012 Crime Rate: 8.23
69.74% Decrease In Crime
2. Brush, CO
Heading northeast along US Route 76, coming from Denver, will bring you eventually to the quiet valley of Brush, CO. Long considered an agricultural hub for ranchers and cattlemen, Brush had seen a rise in its crime rate about a decade ago. Cooperating with the Morgan County Sheriff’s Department, Brush Police Department worked on improving its training and special programs to handle this new rise in crime. Adding two more officers and using the latest modern techniques in policing, Brush experienced a surge of success in stopping criminal behavior on its streets. Due to this, and increased community presence, Brush has experienced a decrease in its crime rate.
2007 Crime Rate: 26.92
2012 Crime Rate: 9.32
65.38% Decrease In Crime
3. Firestone, CO
The city of Firestone can be found halfway between Denver and Fort Collins. Operating at exactly the national average in terms of the ratio of police officers to residents, Firestone responded to its most recent surge in crime by improving its police readiness training. Defining itself as a “Community in Motion”, Firestone proved its willingness to become a safe living space by adding law enforcement services such as Neighborhood Watch, mentoring and a Citizen’s Police Academy. Its dedication and commitment to a safer area has resulted in these programs taking root and forming the foundation of a decreased rate of crime.
2007 Crime Rate: 24.93
2012 Crime Rate: 9.59
61.53% Decrease In Crime
4. Durango, CO
Located in the sparse and desolate region south of the San Juan National Forest and north of the Ute Reservation, Durango has always been a hotly contested area. A famous place for saloon shoot-outs and a history that besmirks of the Old Wild West, this city has come to grips with its roots and attempted to keep a solid program of law and order. Unfortunately, crime had spilled over in the last decade – forcing the Durango Police Department to improve its policing and safety practices. With added special programs such as the Citizen’s Police Academy and CrimeStoppers – Durango has made community protection its top priority. This may have been one of the major reasons why their crime rate has dropped over recent years.
2007 Crime Rate: 62.72
2012 Crime Rate: 27.22
56.60% Decrease In Crime
5. Steamboat Springs, CO
Another city whose industry is based upon ski resorts and wilderness adventures, Steamboat Springs is located well outside Fort Collins. Its small police force was already spread thin, when burglaries and arson began to be a problem. Steamboat Springs PD began a program to work closely with property owners to ensure that properties were safe between tenants and renters. This renewed vigilance to the safety of their community has resulted in a decrease in reported crime statistics for Steamboat Springs. With so many scenic mountains to climb and ski down, Steamboat Springs remains a low crime gem nestled in the heart of the Rockies.
2007 Crime Rate: 56.97
2012 Crime Rate: 29.47
48.28% Decrease In Crime
Pages: 1 2Comics scholar A. David Lewis (@adlewis) recently co-edited the new book "Muslim Superheroes: Comics, Islam, and Representation," which explores the history of Muslim characters in the comic book genre.
Lewis joins Here & Now's Robin Young to discuss the book, and his work with the nonprofit NuDay Syria to distribute Arabic-language comic books to Syrian refugee children.
Interview Highlights
On the history of Muslim superheroes in comic books
"There have been many, going as far back as our research finds to 1944, a character who's dear to me, Kismet, Man of Fate, first appeared in Bomber Comics, No. 1 in 1944. He has slight, small premonitions of the future, and he uses that to fight Nazis in wartime France.
"This is your good Muslim, and you get the sense that absolutely no Muslims were involved in the writing or illustrating of this character, not surprising, this was 1940s New York. One of the things that comes out in the 'Muslim Superheroes' book is how often Muslim characters reflect either anxieties or viewpoints held by the U.S. population at large. Many times it's written by non-Muslims — sometimes not, we have notable exceptions that are worth examining. But when we use this genre, the superhero genre, to reflect and amplify — and sometimes simplify — what the national thinking is, what our engagement with other peoples are, it's a useful lens, and the point of this book was to sort of bring together — with a scholarly eye, but an easy-to-read scholarly eye — what's been done thus far."
On the superhero genre's role
"One thing that I've always loved about the superhero genre in comics is that it really has been an immigrant's genre. We have Superman from another planet, we have Wonder Woman from her paradise island, we have aliens, we have sorcerers, and they all seem to come together in a sense of unity, in a sense of shared space. Yes, this is a great space and a great place for Muslims, and for Arabs — particularly if they're seen as other — to display non-otherness, to display a sense of shared humanity."Eric Berry wants to stay in Kansas City. The Chiefs want Eric Berry to stay in Kansas City. But the All-Pro safety doesn't want to play on the franchise tag again.
Speaking Thursday on NFL Network's Super Bowl Live, Berry definitively rejected the notion he'd acquiesce to the tag again.
"I'm definitely not going to play under the franchise tag this year," Berry said. "I want to end my career in Kansas City. I want to play there. I love the city, I love the vibe, I love my teammates. I really look at them more than teammates. We've been through a lot and they supported me a lot. And the organization. But I don't feel comfortable playing under the franchise tag this year."
Berry played 2016 under the $10.8 million franchise tag, but because he and the Chiefs couldn't come to a long-term deal he didn't report to camp until Aug. 28. If tagged again he could sit out even longer.
The 28-year-old wants the security that comes with a long-term deal, not the short-term tag money, which would be worth roughly $13 million in 2017.
The Chiefs are making it a priority to ink Berry to a long-term deal. The safety essentially dared them to tag him again this year.JERSEY CITY – Mayor Steve Fulop, a rare sight at City Council caucuses, sat in on the opening portion of last night’s gathering for what he called a “significant” and “exciting” announcement.
Fulop, along with officials from Jersey City Medical Center-Barnabas Health and United Hatzalah – an Israeli community-based emergency care program – unveiled plans to launch a new community response system for ambulatory calls. The program, known as Community Based Emergency Care (CBEC), is modeled after the United Hatzalah program, which began in Israel in 2006.
The mobile app-based system will be the first of its kind in the United States.
"This program leverages people who are there," said Fulop. "And recognizes that people are inherently good and want to help."
Mark Gerson, chairman of United Hatzalah, demonstrated for the city council and gathered audience how the program will work. For example, Gerson said if a young child is choking inside a restaurant across the street from City Hall, there may qualified individuals nearby whom could potentially get to the child faster than EMS. However, they would have no way of knowing that their help is needed.
With CBEC, the United Rescue technology uses a GPS-enabled mobile app to track and deploy the nearest volunteer who can reach those in need before an ambulance arrives. Residents will still call 911, and an ambulance will be deployed. CBEC volunteers do not replace EMS responders, they will “bridge the gap” between the time someone calls 911 and the time the ambulance arrives, according to Robert Luckritz, director of EMS for JCMC.
Trained CBEC volunteers begin treatment and stabilize a patient’s condition until the EMS arrive on the scene. The objective is to reach patients within 150 seconds from the time of the emergency call.
According to Fulop, the program will be funded through philanthropic donations and come at no cost to taxpayers or JCMC.
In Israel, the program currently has 2,500 trained volunteers responding to 650 incidents a day, according to Gerson. Initially, Jersey City will set out to train 100 volunteers beginning Feb. 16. and hopes to have them ready to be deployed by July 1.
All volunteers will either live or work in Jersey City, with the goal of having volunteers spread out across all neighborhoods of the city. The city is reaching out to different groups, including clergy, the chamber of commerce, and various community groups to find volunteers.
Volunteers will not be fully trained as EMS professionals, but will receive between 60 and 90 hours of “first-responder type” training, according to Luckritz. They will also receive equipment, including oxygen and a defibrillator.
During the meeting, Councilman Michael Yun raised safety concerns, asking about the liability these volunteers may have. Luckritz said that volunteers would not be sent to places of danger, and Gerson added that volunteers would be protected under the New Jersey Good Samaritan law.
Both Fulop and Gerson were enthusiastic for Jersey City to become the first city in the United States to implement the program.
“Because of the leadership of Mayor Fulop and the Jersey City Medical Center EMS, Jersey City is poised to become the first city in the United States to deploy a system of community-based emergency caregivers that will enable residents and visitors who suffer from trauma to be treated on the right side of the moments that separate life from death," said Gerson in a press release.The Onion, a satirical news website whose headlines alone garner thousands of shares on social media, was purchased by Univision Communications last month, who is a top donor to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The move made many fans wary, carefully watching to see if anything would be slipped in that seemed too good to be satire and, to the dismay of many, a pro-Hillary, not-very-satirical article did pop up.
The title of the article read, “Female Presidential Candidate Who Was United States Senator, Secretary Of State Told To Be More Inspiring.” Instead of the typical Onion jabs at the presidential candidate, the article is mostly about outlining Clinton’s basic track record in the U.S. government. According to the article, Jim Margolis, Clinton’s media advisor, tells “the woman — who overcame entrenched societal biases to build a successful legal career, became the first female senator elected in the state of New York, oversaw the Department of State during a period of widespread international tumult, and, if elected, would be the first female president in American history — to be more uplifting to voters.”
Many have already called out the news outlet for posting the propaganda because it was bought by such a huge donor for Hillary. Univision co-owner Haim Saban and his wife Cheryl have given Clinton’s campaign over $2 million, and another $10 million to The Clinton Foundation. Saban has been quoted as saying what his “three ways to be influential in American politics” are; the first is through political donations, the second is by establishing think tanks, and the third is by controlling media outlets.
It’s no wonder then that he has, through Univision, also purchased The Root and attempted to purchase the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. If he had succeeded, the reach of his pro-Hillary (and pro-Israel) influence without proper context and unbiased reporting would be immeasurable.
Satire has an important place in American politics, in a country where free speech is exercised by taking light, hilarious jabs at candidates, Congress, and the White House. The problem with this newly purchased satirical news outlet is that it takes away the hilarity of political articles and turns it into a place where skeletal versions of corporate candidate’s past employment are made to look like huge achievements with no real jokes at all. This article has no substantial backing or a true history of Clinton’s ethical accountability or the big money she allows to fund her campaign.
Instead of turning readers into pro-Hillary voters, this new move in ownership and content has shown even more why it’s so important not to follow major news outlets who have already been bought out and controlled and instead follow alternative media to form your own opinions.
This article (Hillary’s Top Donor Just Bought The Onion And Immediately Started Posting Propaganda) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TrueActivist.com.(Chris Rank/ Bloomberg News)
AT&T will start selling unlimited data plans again, the company said Monday.
The new offering, which begins Tuesday, allows customers who sign up for the plan to use as much data, voice and text messaging as they want. And it marks the return of a feature that AT&T stopped offering to new customers years ago.
But the resurrection of unlimited data comes with a twist: Consumers will only be eligible for the plan if they also agree to subscribe to one of AT&T's paid television services — either DirecTV or AT&T U-verse.
The decision to bundle wireless service and pay-TV with unlimited data reflects AT&T's desire to get consumers streaming more TV on their smartphones. Telecom companies are searching for new ways to make their mobile networks attractive to consumers, and with the exploding popularity of online video, particularly on handheld devices, AT&T hopes it can lure more Americans into using its network.
The new plan is being aimed squarely at AT&T customers who have either phone service or TV service, but not both, AT&T execs told CNN. Altogether, that's 36 million households.
Expanding into TV is also key for wireless companies as the cellular market has gotten increasingly competitive, with carriers engaging in costly price wars just to poach customers from rival services, analysts have said.Auto Club Speedway News & Notes:
• Groundbreaking for California Speedway, as Auto Club Speedway originally was known, took place in November 1995.
• The first race was a NASCAR K&N Pro Series, West race won by Ken Schrader on June 21, 1997.
• The first NASCAR Sprint Cup race was held on June 22, 1997 and won by Jeff Gordon.
• September 2004 was the first night race and that also was the first year both the NASCAR Sprint Cup and NASCAR Nationwide Series ran two races in a season there.
• The track name was changed to Auto Club Speedway (ACS) in February 2008.
• There have been 24 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races at Auto Club Speedway, the track hosted one NSCS race a season from 1997-2003, then two races per season from 2004-2010. In 2011 the track returned to a single-race season.
• 128 drivers have competed in at least one NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Auto Club; 106 in more than one.
• Three drivers have participated in all 24 races: Jeff Burton, Jeff Gordon, and Bobby Labonte.
• Joe Nemechek won the inaugural Coors Light pole (1997) with a speed of 183.015 mph (39.341 secs.).
• 15 drivers have poles at Auto Club Speedway, led by Denny Hamlin and Kurt Busch with three each.
• Denny Hamlin (2011, 2012), Kurt Busch (2006 sweep) and Jamie McMurray (2010 sweep) are the three drivers to win consecutive poles at Auto Club Speedway. Hamlin has won the last two poles at ACS and could become the first in series history to win three-in-a-row at Auto Club.
• 14 different drivers have won at ACS, led by Jimmie Johnson (five). Three other drivers have multiple wins: Jeff Gordon and Matt Kenseth each have three wins, Tony Stewart and Kyle Busch each have two.
• Hendrick Motorsports leads the series in wins at Auto Club Speedway with nine, followed by Roush Fenway Racing with seven and Stewart Haas Racing with two.
• California-native Jimmie Johnson became the first and only driver to win from the pole at Auto Club Speedway in 2008.
• Only two ACS races have been won from the front row both by six-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson, fall of 2008 (pole); and the fall of 2007 (second-place).
• Nine of the 24 (37.5%) NASCAR Sprint Cup races at Auto Club Speedway have been won from a top-five starting position.
• 13 of the 24 (54.2%) NASCAR Sprint Cup races at Auto Club Speedway have been won from a top-10 starting position.
• Seven of the 24 (29.2%) races have been won from a starting position outside the top 20.
• The deepest in the field that a race winner has started was 31st, by Matt Kenseth in the spring of 2006.
• The most proficient starting position at ACS is pretty random. Three starting positions (third, ninth and 24th have produced three winners each.
• Jimmie Johnson leads the series in runner-up finishes at Auto Club Speedway with five; followed by his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon with four.
• Jimmie Johnson leads the series in top-five finishes at Auto club Speedway with 12; followed by Jeff Gordon (10), Matt Kenseth (eight) and Carl Edwards (eight).
• Jimmie Johnson and Matt Kenseth lead the series in top-10 finishes with 14; followed by Carl Edwards (13) and Tony Stewart (12).
• Jimmie Johnson leads the series in average finish at ACS with a 5.737.
• Jimmie Johnson (5.7) and Carl Edwards (8.4) are the only two only active drivers with an average finish in the top 10 at Auto Club Speedway.
• There have been two green-white-checkered finishes at Auto Club Speedway: 2005 (250/254) and 2006 (250/251).
• Carl Edwards posted his first NSCS Coors Light pole at Auto Club Speedway on September 4, 2005. Kyle Busch won his first pole (2/27/05) and first series win (9/4/05) at ACS in 2005.
• Greg Biffle (4/28/02) and J.J. Yeley (9/5/04) made their first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series career starts at Auto Club Speedway.
• Jimmie Johnson posted his first series career win at Auto Club Speedway on April 28, 2002.
• Jimmie Johnson is the only driver to win consecutive races at Auto Club Speedway (fall of 2009 - spring of 2010).
• 12 of the 14 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series drivers who have won at Auto Club Speedway participated in at least two or more races before visiting Victory Lane. Jeff Gordon (1997 - inaugural event) and Jimmie Johnson (2002) are the only drivers to win at ACS in their first appearance.
• Tony Stewart competed at Auto Club Speedway 18 times before winning in the fall of 2010; the longest span of any the 14 winners. Only Stewart (18) and Kevin Harvick (17) have made 10 or more attempts before their first win at Auto Club Speedway.
• Jeff Burton and Bobby Labonte lead the series with the most NASCAR Sprint Cup Series starts at Auto Club Speedway without visiting Victory Lane at 24.
• Since the advent of electronic scoring the closest margin of victory in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series at Auto Club Speedway was the (3/27/2011) race won by Kevin Harvick with a MOV of 0.144 second over Jimmie Johnson.
• Three reigning NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champions have gone on to win at Auto Club Speedway the following season: Tony Stewart (2012), Jeff Gordon (1999) and Jimmie Johnson - the only one to do it multiple times (2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010).
• Two drivers have won and Auto Club Speedway race and the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship in the same season: Jeff Gordon (1997) and Jimmie Johnson (2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010).(NASCAR)(3-18-2014)True or False: Londoners Hate Tourists? Fa..Tr..Well…
While tourism is a year-round reality in a city like London, the summer sees a particularly high rate of vacationers and soon-to-be-students flocking to all of the city’s best-known places and often outnumbering full time residents 3 to 1. The culture shock resulting from these encounters can be harsh for both sides. Many tourists feel Londoners are snobbish and unwelcoming, and many Londoners look upon tourist season with all the enthusiasm of a locust invasion. I’ve heard tourists complain (loudly) that they feel targeted and disrespected. As an alien — no, not the cool kind from X-Files, the kind that emigrated from another country — allow me to dispel this notion. Londoners are not targeting tourists. Rather tourists gleefully draw targets on themselves by sticking out like sore thumbs and acting in ways that make it very obvious to any and all that clearly, you are not from here. That sounds bad doesn’t it? Partly it’s meant to, but if I could impart some helpful wisdom as someone who has had to learn to fit in, here would be my top 6 observations (it could have easily been ten) and suggestions for enjoying |
going on about the “politics of distraction” since the 1992 presidential campaign, when she used the phrase to describe the Republicans attention on Bill Clinton’s sex life. As did Bill. He went to decry the “failed policies of distraction” on the stump. When the womanizing stories returned in 1993, senior adviser George Stephanopoulos told USA Today (12/22/1993), “People can make up their own mind; the president is not going to be distracted by this stuff.” In August 1993, an unnamed Clinton aide told the Boston Globe that a Clinton weekend trip had been a success because no news had broken. “No stories means no distractions,” the aide said. “Distraction” became such a Bill Clinton byword that in 1997, he told USA Today he had learned to compartmentalize such “distractions” as Whitewater. While covering up his sex scandal in January 1998, Clinton denied having had an affair and expressed his fury about all the questions. “Anything that’s a distraction, I dislike,” Clinton said.
The Clintons aren’t the only politicians who rely on the distraction dodge. As POLITICO contributor Rich Lowry noted in a 2008 column, Barack Obama knows his way around the side-step too. In his column, Lowry urged the Oxford English Dictionary to update its definition of “distraction” to include the “diversion of the mind, attention, etc., from any object or course that tends to advance the political interests of Barack Obama.” In a May 2008 speech cited by Lowry, Obama dismissed from political discussion whole categories of issues. Obama said the media’s willingness to “play along” with the Republicans' strategy to stick Democrats with political labels, “fake” controversies, and gaffes were really “efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives.” [Emphasis added.] Obama went on, natch, to call for an end of “the politics of distraction.”
Recently, Republicans have seemed to mostly use the D-word as an excuse for their resignations. Earlier this year, Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL), voluntarily left Congress following allegations that he had misused public funds, saying questions about his conduct had “proven a great distraction.” Quitting the Senate in 2007 after being captured in an airport restroom sex sting, Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID), said that fighting the case “would be an unwanted and unfair distraction” for his Senate colleagues.
Genuine political distractions must exist, although I’ll be damned if I can find a good example. Most times “distractions” are cited it seems in the pursuit of a legitimate question. Instead of complaining about prying queries, politicians would be better off if they confronted questions they don’t like head-on with honest, definitive answers. Politicians like Hillary Clinton might also profit from examining their own verbiage for evidence that they might be guilty of the very transgressions they spend so much time accusing others of. In his 2008 presidential endorsement of Obama, Rolling Stone Editor and Publisher Jann S. Wenner charged Hillary Clinton with running “the kind of campaign that reminds us of what makes us so discouraged about our politics.”
Hillary, the ultraliberal Wenner charged, was a practitioner of “the politics of distraction.”
******
For another take on “The Politics of Distraction,” see Mark Leibovich’s recent piece. I will not be distracted by emails sent to Shafer.Politico@gmail.com. My email alerts, Twitter feed, RSS feed will, however, provide hours of distraction.(Reuters) - Store chains use Facebook pages to reach out to customers, but when customers reach back with complaints, many go unanswered, a new study shows.
The Facebook logo is displayed on a computer screen in Brussels April 21, 2010. REUTERS/Thierry Roge
Retailers did not respond to 65 percent of complaints and questions on their Facebook pages during a five-day period in September, according to Joshua March, chief executive officer of Conversocial, a firm that helps companies interact with customers on social media.
The results are from a just-completed study called “Who’s Ignoring Their Customers? A Survey of the Largest U.S. Retailers and Their Use of Social Media.”
“A lot of them probably set up these Facebook pages as marketing channels and have not considered them as customer service channels,” March told Reuters.
According to March, some retailers appeared to not monitor their Facebook pages for complaints or concerns at all, while some showed good service. A large group, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Macy’s Inc, are somewhere in the middle, he said.
Forty-one percent of the queries that Wal-Mart received on its Facebook page went unanswered, March said, while 35 percent went unanswered on the Macy’s page.
Yet some “missed” complaints or queries might have just been a matter of the retailer dealing individually with the customer, rather than in the public space of the Facebook wall.
“Because complaints often involve credit/customer account or employment matters, our first step is typically to request the complainant email us outside of the social space with details of their issue,” Macy’s spokeswoman Holly Thomas said. “We aim first and foremost to protect our customers’ privacy by handling offline.”
Macy’s is committed to reaching out to all customers who raise a complaint, she added.
But solving the problem “offline” means that people looking at Facebook only see the complaint, not the resolution.
“When we speak to customers that are doing it well, they realize they need to keep as much of the discussion on Facebook as possible,” March said.
For U.S. Walmart stores, the response to Facebook queries is varied, spokeswoman Sarah Spencer said.
“We answer questions online when we can easily point customers in the right direction,” Spencer said. “The conversation is taken offline when we need to obtain personal contact information to address a question, concern or idea.”
Walmart recently launched 3,500 Facebook pages for individual stores to better connect them with the company’s 9 million Facebook “fans.”
“With early Walmarts, customers would walk in a store and ask the manager to get a product or share an idea,” Spencer said. “The local Facebook pages allow us to do this on a national scale.”
Other large retailers are still trying to work out the best way for dealing with complaints on Facebook.
Grocery store operator Kroger Co was one retailer that Conversocial’s five-day study showed as not responding to any of the complaints on Facebook.
The company is testing different ways of responding to customers at its individual divisions, which include Fry’s, Fred Meyer, Dillons and other brands aside from Kroger, spokesman Keith Dailey said.
“Kroger is currently developing tools to make it easier for customers to contact us through social media channels,” he said.According to conventional wisdom the ideal working environment for a musician is free of external stimulus. Indeed, some of us go to great lengths to isolate ourselves from any kind of sensory distraction – be it visible, audible or otherwise. The assumption being, the less there is coming in from the ‘outside’, the more we can bring out from the ‘inside’.
But what happens when a musician turns this scenario on its head, introducing a constant stream of audio-visual stimulus into her workspace? This is precisely what producer and songwriter Lucrecia Dalt has done while writing and recording the music for two upcoming releases. Having recently settled in Berlin, her curiosity about her new home and her interest in cinema converged in an unorthodox, yet highly productive compositional technique. Dalt turned her studio into a screening room and, instead of absorbing classic works of New German Cinema in her leisure time or as a break between recording sessions, she let the films’ imagery, sounds and atmospheres envelop her and find its way into her music.
Dalt explains how this technique came about:
It all changed with my record Syzygy. For me, a stimulating working environment needed to be overly saturated. Juxtaposed information coming from lines of opened books, movies playing on another screen, a window opened to let the loud street background be present inside the room, music from others, flatmate making music, flatmate having sex, flatmate asleep, oscillating noise in my head – I needed to overlay my music with these elements to be able to move forward. These random clusters of information brought about interesting accidents that became a sort of new working techniques. But the accidents that stood were the ones happening when I was interacting with films: while recording I used to play them back on mute and sometimes, just randomly, I would turn up the volume for a second while playing back the stems I was working on. These random and brief sounds worked as deflectors – little seeds containing other possible prospective melodies. This began in my last six months living in Barcelona. Then when I got to Berlin I applied for and received a scholarship through the Musicboard to develop this "technique" and explore the more extensive entanglements between the emotional dynamic experienced during the viewing of films and during the music production process, just to see what could happen. I chose German cinema simply out of my new context. With this method I worked on my two upcoming releases: a self-titled EP that's coming out in October with Other People and one LP that's coming out with the label Care of.I ask a lot of questions.
Is ketchup better than mustard? Did man really walk on the moon? How do you eat crème brulee? Will they ever resume Heroes? Should I really have that fourth cup of espresso? What’s eighteen times thirty-two? Are gay men any different than the straight ones? Does true love exist for either?
I might not know the right spoon to eat my crème brulee with, or what colour shirt* goes with a leather jacket, but I do know that there never really is only the one. There’s a two, three, four, and probably more. It could work out with some of them and sometimes it won’t.
Sounds familiar?
It obviously does, because there really is no difference between gay and straight when it comes to love, sex or relationships. We all have the same worries: Who foots the bill? Do they validate me? Do they love me? Do I love them? What is love?
There are many stereotypes that exist which need to busted like the bell-bottom trend. Gay men are not very different, we love the way everyone else does — sometimes it is intense, sometimes it is fleeting, and sometimes we’re just lusting.
Gay men come in all shapes, sizes, and colours
Do we like pink? Is Adele on loop? Are we promiscuous? Do we really lust after our best friend’s boyfriend?
There is no general-one-size-fits-all answer to any of these questions.
And it’s definitely rude to ask gay men questions like these — it’s like asking someone if they’ve ever killed somebody or whether they have something stuck between their teeth.
Here’s a friendly PSA: Gay men come in all shapes, sizes, and colours. If someone tells you they identify as gay, there’s no need to ask them whether they like Bradley Cooper or Brad Pitt (Cooper, any day). Get to know them, they are not a sum of stereotypes.
Even though we live in a world full of hipsters and millennials, coming out isn’t easy. Reality is far from the Hallmark movie that I make it out to be – every year, more and more people are pushed back into the closets to rot away with clothes that are too tight, cigarettes that are too damp and love notes that are long forgotten. Every day, more and more gay men are abandoned, disowned, and even condemned to hell. Every day, a few more gay men hate themselves for their sexuality, and a few more men shut down these doors to their closets forever.
Coming out shouldn’t be an ordeal or a celebration; it should be a regular, everyday thing — like flossing your teeth every night, or telling your friends that you are vegan, or that you don’t like Taylor Swift. (We feel for you, Calvin Harris)
That’s where the Guysexual comes in (without any invitations, because invitations are so 2008). Think of this as your quintessential guide to the secret lives of Indian gay men and other queer folk — there might not be a pop culture guidebook to being a homosexual, but this about knowing how to behave with one.
This will be a list of dos and don’ts and wills and won'ts for every question you might have regarding the friendly gay man (or men) in your neighbourhood. How do you decide who pays for the bill at the end of a meal? Do we prefer beer or mimosas? What are the things you should never ever say to someone when they come out? Is it okay to call a woman a fag hag? Do we really like brunch as much as we say we do? Why are all the hot guys gay? Why is it not a good idea to instantly try setting up a new gay friend with the only other gay person that you know?
But mostly, how can we make homosexuality mainstream — the normal? Don’t say something is ‘gay’. Don’t point at someone who dresses differently and laugh. Don’t snigger at the guy who doesn’t play cricket. Don’t say that you want a gay best friend because you think it’s cool. Don’t assume. Don’t presume, and don’t bully.
Maybe sometime in the future, a month, a year or even in a decade’s time – every LGBT person in this country can enjoy the same privileges that a select few do. And maybe, just maybe, it won’t be a privilege, but simply a way of life by then.
Until then, I’ll need beer. And probably your number too.
*White shirts work with anything.
Watch this space every week for a new dose of The Guysexual
The author is a TedX speaker and a published gay writer, with an unused architect’s degree, living in Mumbai. He tweets @TheGuysexual.Last week, Verizon was caught and subsequently admitted to throttling all video traffic on its network. And today, the company is finally addressing the potential net neutrality issue.
In a statement to Broadcasting & Cable, Verizon said that its actions represented “reasonable network management,” which is an exception carved out under the 2015 net neutrality rules. "Video optimization is a non-discriminatory network management practice designed to ensure a high quality customer experience for all customers accessing the shared resources of our wireless network,” a spokesperson said.
It’s pretty expected that Verizon would argue this. It said last week that its video throttling was a matter of “network testing” that would be “completed shortly,” and speeds since appear to have returned to normal.
Some throttling is allowed, but only in limited circumstances
Here’s the actual text of the Open Internet Order that applies here: “A person engaged in the provision of broadband internet access service... shall not impair or degrade lawful internet traffic on the basis of internet content, application, or service, or use of a non-harmful device, subject to reasonable network management.”
The trouble is, the order is a little vague on what constitutes “reasonable network management,” since the commission assumed it might take many different forms. But it has a handful of guidelines of what might and might not violate the exception. One important limitation: the practice must be “primarily motivated by a technical network management justification rather than other business justifications.”
If a management practice passes that test, then it moves onto on other qualifications. The order also advises that network management practices that “alleviate congestion without regard to the source, destination, content, application, or service are also more likely to be considered reasonable.”
Verizon really walks the line on this one. On one hand, its throttling did discriminate between content, since it was designed to apply only to video content. But on the other hand, it didn’t discriminate within that content. According to Verizon, all video content was being throttled equally.
So while there certainly is the potential for a net neutrality violation here, it’s hard to say with absolute certainty. Ultimately, it’s up to the FCC to decide what does and doesn’t count as reasonable network management. And given that the current FCC leadership is halfway through proceedings to kill the Open Internet Order altogether, there’s pretty much no chance that Verizon will get in trouble for this.The National Rifle Association recently came out in support of regulating bump stocks, but there’s a catch. Stephen Paddock killed 58 people, and injured more than 500 at a country music concert in Las Vegas recently. In the hotel room he made his base, police found 12 rifles outfitted with the controversial attachment. The NRA wants them further examined, but not for the reasons one might expect.
What are bump stocks?
According to The New York Times, a “bump stock” replaces a rifle’s standard stock, or the part held against the shoulder. It allows the weapon to slide back and forth rapidly, harnessing the energy from the kickback. The stock “bumps” back and forth between the shooter’s shoulder and trigger finger. That causes the rifle to rapidly fire up to 400-800 rounds per minute.
“The classification of these devices depends on whether they mechanically alter the function of the firearm to fire fully automatic,” said Jill Snyder. She serves as special agent in charge at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “Bump-fire stocks … do not actually alter the firearm to fire automatically, making them legal under current federal law.”
The accessories’ capabilities, not classification, recently came under fire.
Why the NRA wants them regulated
Stephen Paddock’s use of the devices to augment his weapons’ firing speed brought them back to legislative attention. In the Senate, Democrat Dianne Feinstein introduced a bill that would make them illegal. Representative Carlos Curbelo, a Republican, also introduced a bipartisan bill banning them. In a departure from its past positions on gun control, the NRA agreed with part of the effort.
“The NRA believes that devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations,” NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre and executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action Chris Cox said in a joint statement. “The National Rifle Association is calling on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives … to immediately review whether these devices comply with federal law.”
The NRA stopped short of advocating legislative action. What it does want is an examination of a current law on the books.
Bump stocks are legal, but real automatic weapons aren’t
One of the legal instruments the NRA wants examined is the Firearms Owner Protection Act. That legislation banned fully-automatic guns manufactured after May 1986 from sale to civilians.
According to the ATF, in 1986, this act amended the National Firearms Act. That prohibits the transfer or possession of machine guns. Exceptions exist for transfers of machine guns to, or possession of machine guns by, government agencies, and those lawfully possessed before the effective date of the prohibition, May 19, 1986. That means antique guns and collector’s items stay in their owners’ legal hands, and some owners got grandfathered in.
The NRA has not specified whether it wants the ATF to add an amendment to that act specifying bump stocks. For some legislators, the ability of the accessory, and not its definition, make a difference.
Even gun owners don’t recognize these devices
Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas, the second-ranking Senate Republican, dispatched his staff to research the use of bump stocks. He told Politico he considers it “worthwhile” to hold a hearing on the topic.
“It is ordinarily illegal to transform a semi-automatic weapon into an automatic weapon, and it’s illegal to buy an automatic weapon unless you have a special license and undergo a special background check,” he said. “I’m not sure how these bump stocks fit into that scheme.”
Other pro-gun lawmakers said they just learned of the accessories. John Thune of South Dakota said he talked to other GOP lawmakers about them and several expressed interest in finding out more about how the devices are used. “I think it’s something we ought to look into,” he said. “I don’t know a lot about them, and I’m somebody who … is fairly familiar with a lot of firearms.”
Texas Rep. Bill Flores, a gun owner, told The Hill, “There’s no reason for a typical gun owner to own anything that converts a semi-automatic to something that behaves like an automatic.”
Some legislators questioned how the devices came into legality in the first place. The ATF itself flip-flopped on the idea several times.
Before bump stocks, another accelerator hit the market
The ATF approved the devices for sale in 2010, NPR reported. “It’s a goofy little doodad,” said Rick Vasquez, the former firearms official who first signed off on a recommendation that the ATF need not regulate the devices. Before bump stocks, the ATF did outlaw another, similar device.
The Associated Press reported that a former Marine, Bill Akins, created a similar mechanism two decades before bump stocks. He wanted to create something that harnessed a gun’s recoil, to fire bullets at a similar rate to automatics.
“For decades, gun owners had been bracing guns against their hips to increase the rate of their trigger pulls,” the AP reported, “a technique known as ‘bump firing.’” In 1996, Akins built an attachment that did the same. He received a patent for the Akins Accelerator in 2000 and began selling it.
The ATF initially ruled that, since the Accelerator did not modify a firearm’s ability to shoot multiple rounds per trigger, it did not warrant automatic classification. Then, in 2006, the agency reversed itself and ordered Akins to stop selling it. The ATF said the initial device it tested had misfired, and the agency then determined its use of a spring effectively made it a machine gun — a modification regulators deemed illegal.
After the ATF ruled in favor of bump stocks, Akins sold his patent to another company, which engaged in litigation with the company that made bump stocks. He said he remains bitter about the entire situation. “[The ATF] cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars and destroyed my company,” he said.
When the inventor of bump stocks submitted its patent, the agency stuck with its initial ruling.
Bump stocks became legal — and stayed that way
The original bump stock company, Slide Fire, was started by an Air Force veteran in Texas. He said he created the device to help gun users who “weren’t able to fire as fast as we wanted.” The Boston Globe reported the stocks have their challenges.
“It’s very difficult to control except under perfect conditions,” said Steven Howard, a gun and firearms expert based in Michigan. He called it “more of a toy that anything else.
“The reason [Paddock] was so successful was that he was shooting at something the size of a football field.”
Bump stocks originally went on the market as mobility devices, although Slide Fire’s current website makes no mention of that usage. Slide Fire, told the ATF the bump stock helps people “whose hands have limited mobility’’ fire an AR-15 military style rifle.
“The stock has no automatically functioning mechanical parts or springs and performs no automatic mechanical function when installed,” said a 2010 letter from the ATF signed by John R. Spencer, head of the firearms technology branch. “Accordingly, we find that the ‘bump-stock’ is a firearm part and is not regulated as a firearm under the Gun Control Act or the National Firearms Act.”
Even though the NRA wants them evaluated further, enthusiasts have a different response.
After Las Vegas, bump stocks hit unprecedented popularity
Slide Fire’s website claims the manufacturer has run out of the devices due to unprecedented orders. Gun resale websites and dealers said the same, and that bump stocks now sell for triple their value. Howard said banning them today makes little sense. “Only thing you’re going to succeed in doing is making criminals out of people who weren’t criminals in the first place,” he explained. First, other ways exist of turning a semiautomatic weapon into a more rapidly firing one.
“Converting a semi-automatic to fully automatic is very, very easy,” John Sullivan, lead engineer for the gun access group Defense Distributed, told Wired. “At the end of the day, machine guns are easy to make.”
Howard also noted that Slide Fire has sold so many since 2010, it’s nearly impossible to get rid of them now.
“There’s too many out there,” he said. “If they restricted them when they first came out, it might have done some good … Now it’s like trying to get rid of mosquitoes, you just can’t.”
Regardless, skepticism about their usage abounds.
Even the NRA bans bump stocks
The NRA actually bans them from its own firing range at NRA headquarters, due to safety concerns, Politico reported. Firing ranges often limit the rate at which guns can fire for safety reasons, especially for untrained users. Paul Valone, president of pro-gun rights Grass Roots North Carolina, said automatic weapons are also often banned.
“If someone is not trained to fire rapidly they may miss, frankly, and hit things like the ceiling of the range and other areas which could cause damage and safety issues,” Valone said. He called bump stocks “useless” for target practice. “Because it’s notoriously inaccurate, it’s really not a threat to anybody except in one, and only one, circumstance, and that’s when you’re on the 32nd floor of a building shooting into a mass of people,” Valone said.
Others, however, think any regulation creates a slippery slope.
Erich Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, gave his take on how Congress should view the issue, NPR reports. “They’ll start asking questions about why anybody needs this, and I think the answer is we have a Bill of Rights and not a Bill of Needs,” Pratt said.
Whether Feinstein and Curbelo’s bills make it to the floor remains in question. After the Sandy Hook shooting, Feinstein proposed similar legislation that never even made it to a vote. The NRA may not be ready to condone legislative action against these accessories, but its reservations at least might give some enthusiasts pause before buying similar devices.
Follow The Cheat Sheet on Facebook!By Dana Ter / Staff reporter
When Ranley Kuo (郭潤宇) first signed into Yelp in October 2010 he was looking for restaurant suggestions and pictures of food.
“I started using Yelp because a friend had suggested it,” says Kuo, who was living in New Jersey at the time. “I lost to peer pressure and downloaded the app.”
Since then, he has written over 270 reviews of restaurants, bars, cinemas, sporting goods stores and even convenience stores such as Family Mart, often during his lunch breaks from his office in Taipei.
The Web site, Yelp.com, which launched in 2004, allows users to rate local businesses on a one to five star rating system, upload photos and write reviews based on their experience there. Yelp became available as a smartphone app in 2008. Since then, it has been expanding globally, launching in Taiwan in March of last year.
Despite its recent launch, the app has already seen a steady increase in the number of Taiwan-based users, with some members entering its “elite squad,” which is a group of users nominated by other Yelp members because they have written what are perceived to be useful reviews. Elite members receive perks such as first dibs on Yelp events.
Kuo, who is an elite member, says there is a sense of prestige that comes with the position. As a regular user, he trusts reviews by elite members more. However, the real benefit of being an elite member is that it encourages him to continue being active within the Yelp community, not just online, but offline as well.
Part of the fun, he says, is attending Yelp events — ones for regular users as well as more exclusive events for elite members. His favorite so far was a “beer day” event, where a tarot card reader was invited to tell people’s fortunes. He’s also made friends with other people at Yelp events and they sometimes meet up on their own.
“Unless users take the initiative to meet in person, the community would probably stay online,” Kuo says. “Which is not a horrible thing, but everything is better over a beer or meal, right?”
ONLINE (AND OFFLINE) COMMUNITY
Taiwan is a smartphone-savvy, app-addicted nation. According to an August 2014 report on TechNews.tw, Taiwanese users spend an average of over three hours a day online on their smartphones — nearly an hour longer than the worldwide average.
A survey about social networking apps conducted last month by the Taipei-based Market Intelligence and Consulting Institute (資策會產業情報研究所) found that Line was the most popular app in Taiwan, with over 80 percent of respondents saying that they are active users.
Statistics aside, walk into any cafe or metro station and you’ll find yourself surrounded by people tapping away on their smartphones or watching videos on them (often without headphones).
Yelp Taipei’s community manager, Roxanne Lo, is well aware of how addictive smartphones can be. She introduces herself as a “heavy app user” when we meet at a French bistro tucked away in a bohemian alley near National Taiwan University. She says that she also loves wandering in alleys and discovering cool stores, such as a wine shop with board games.
It is part of her job to cultivate an offline community while growing Yelp Taipei’s online presence. So far, Lo has taken Yelp users out to catch shrimp, ice skate and Zumba.
Elite members have also learned how to pick coffee beans and make soup dumplings. Whereas the community events are casual and give people a chance to stop by after work for a drink, Lo says the elite events are more like monthly reunions.ADVERTISEMENT
Oh boy. Remember when a study came out that said that conservative political beliefs are associated with psychotic traits, such as authoritarianism and tough-mindedness? While liberalism is associated with "social desirability?"
The American Journal of Political Science recently had to print a somewhat embarrassing correction, as the invaluable website Retraction Watch pointed out: It turns out somebody made an Excel error. And the study's results aren't a little off. They aren't a lot off. They are exactly backwards.
Writes the American Journal of Political Science:
The interpretation of the coding of the political attitude items in the descriptive and preliminary analyses portion of the manuscript was exactly reversed. Thus, where we indicated that higher scores in Table 1 (page 40) reflect a more conservative response, they actually reflect a more liberal response. [American Journal of Political Science]
In other words, at least according to this study, it's liberals who are psychotic and conservatives who are awesome.
Well, obviously, as a conservative, I first had to stop laughing for 10 minutes before I could catch my breath.
I could also make a crassly political point, like of course liberals are psychotic given liberal authoritarianism, and of course conservatives are more balanced — after all, we're happier and we have better sex.
But actually, this is bigger than that. Adds Retraction Watch, "That 2012 paper has been cited 45 times, according to Thomson Reuters Web of Science."
I've been a harsh critic of shoddy scientific research. Criticizing American academia's liberal bias earned me a lot of pushback, mostly from progressives on Twitter patiently explaining to me that it's not "bias" to turn down equally qualified conservatives for tenure or promotion or their papers, since after all conservatives are intrinsically unreasonable and stupid (they could have added psychotic for good measure. After all, science proves it!).
Contacted by Retraction Watch, the authors of the study hem and haw and say that their point was not about conservatives or liberals, but about the magnitude of differences between those camps. Yeah, right.
Actually, as independent reviewers point out, the paper itself is so shoddy that we conservatives shouldn't use it to crow about how liberals are psychos. The correlations are "spurious," explains one reviewer. And looking at the methodology, I couldn't help but agree.
The reason the study was made, and the reason it was published, and the reason it was cited so often despite its shoddy methodology, was simply to smear conservatives, and to use "science" as a weapon in our soul-deadening cultural-political war.
Isn't it time we see that this is killing science and its credibility? Isn't it time to do something about it? That is, if science is an actual disinterested pursuit, and not a priestly class that, like all priestly classes, eventually forgets its calling and just seeks to aggrandize its power and control the masses.
The political bias problem is merely the visible part of the iceberg.
Science's problems run much deeper. The social prestige associated with the word science has led to excesses in many directions, leading us to believe that "science" is the equivalent of "magic" when it is a specific and flawed process for doing important but limited things. We're not helped by the fact that most scientists are themselves ignorant about how science works.
The end result is that Big Science is now broken, with it being nearly certain now that most published research findings are false — and, most importantly, nobody has any idea what to do about it. And nobody is panicking! Because science is infallible, so how could anything be wrong with it?
It's time for scientists and the scientific establishment to wake up. Only 11 percent of preclinical cancer research could be reproduced according to a recent survey. False results have spawned entire fields of literature and of study and grants. And this is just one example. At stake is much more than political and culture wars.Image copyright Geograph/JThomas/David Pickersgill/PA Image caption Voters in Barnsley and Doncaster were asked to vote between devolution proposals
People in Barnsley and Doncaster have backed a proposed 'Wider-Yorkshire' devolution deal.
More than 75,000 votes were cast in a community poll asking people to choose between the pan-regional proposal and a government-backed South Yorkshire deal.
Barnsley Council said in light of the result it would ask the government to postpone mayoral elections scheduled for 2018 until 2020.
The turnout in Barnsley was 22.4% and 20.1% in Doncaster.
Barnsley Council leader Sir Steve Houghton: "The will of the people is for wider Yorkshire. We'll work to make that happen and we're confident that this is the right move for Barnsley."
Mayor of Doncaster, Ros Jones said she the poll was a "very significant consultation exercise" and, as a result, "Doncaster's position on devolution is therefore settled".
Greater powers
A £900m devolution deal for the Sheffield City Region was agreed in 2015 and a mayoral election is scheduled for May 2018.
However, in August Doncaster and Barnsley joined with 17 of Yorkshire's 20 councils in announcing plans to push for a 'One Yorkshire' deal, claiming a wider deal would result in greater powers.
The result of the poll comes after Communities Secretary Sajid Javid said he was willing to compromise on a possible Yorkshire-wide deal involving the four South Yorkshire councils.
Image copyright PA Image caption Communities Secretary Sajid Javid said he was willing to compromise on a possible Yorkshire-wide deal
He had previously said he was not prepared to consider any deal that cut across the Sheffield City Region deal.
In a letter to the leaders of the four councils, he said: "The aim of any compromise, as I see it, should be to open the way for the people and business of South Yorkshire to have the full benefits of the Sheffield City Region deal, whilst not in anyway precluding your council and others from pursuing their ambitions for a One Yorkshire deal."
The cost of conducting the polls was about £240,000.
Analysis by James Vincent, BBC Look North political editor
If you think it's hard getting people interested in devolution, you're right.
I said before the result that if turnout for this poll was over 20% Doncaster Council would be happy enough.
They got 20.1%
They got just enough people to vote in the poll to make a deal of the result, the result they wanted.
Of those that did vote, it was an overwhelming victory for going for a Wider-Yorkshire deal.
At £2.60 a vote the council will say that's good value.
But when a council is spending £120,000 on a poll that is largely now redundant there are questions to ask.
If the Communities Minister is saying you can do a South Yorkshire deal then a Wider-Yorkshire deal, asking residents to pick one over the other doesn't really get you closer to a compromise.
And that's the real question. Will this result enable Doncaster and Barnsley along with Sheffield and Rotherham to start talking to each other again?Bill O'Reilly hears voices in his head. I know you figured as much, but he just confirmed it.
NYMag:
The Fox News host says his forthcoming book isn't religious per se: He "admits that some of his facts directly contradict the Bible, and he stands by them," 60 Minutes reports. "All of the ideas come to me in the middle of the night," Bill O'Reilly explains. "One night I just woke up and went, Killing. Jesus. And I believe, because I'm a Catholic, that comes from the Holy Spirit." How the Holy Spirit knew he'd already written books called Killing Lincoln and Killing Kennedy is just another mystery of the universe.
The Holy Ghost told him to support the Iraq war and the Virgin Mary told him that Andrea Mackris was available to be loofah'ed.
Andrea Mackris: Mainly the last time I had spoken to Bill and when this inappropriate conversation had happened, the last time, he said it was going to be in person. And, ummm...I felt extremely threatened for many reasons..
Mackris lawsuit settled out of court:
Sources told the Daily News that O'Reilly will have to pay Andrea Mackris at least $2 million - and possibly as much as $10 million. Under the deal, Mackris will drop the sexual harassment suit she filed against the talk-show host and Fox. O'Reilly and his Fox bosses, in turn, will forget about the extortion suit they filed against Mackris and her lawyer.
Washington Post:This might be the most adorable newborn photo shoot of all time. At first glance, the images look like ones introducing the newest celebrity baby to the world, with two glowing parents welcoming their little one in all of his or her splendor. But this set of photos offers up a twist: The "baby" is a rescue dog named Snuggles. Yes, SNUGGLES!
Photographer Jamie Clauss is known for her photographs of newborns and when her good friends Jan and Chase Renegar were admiring her pictures one day, the trio came up with an idea. "Jan saw a shoot I'd done and said, 'I can't wait to have photos like this of me and my husband with our baby!'" says Jamie. "They plan on having a family some day, but right now they have Snuggles (their dog) as their child. So I jokingly said, 'We should just use Snuggles.'" And it went from there.
The day of the shoot, Jan and |
may be the next large evolutionary step. But leaked photographs seem to show an iterative, familiar designs.
There are already a bunch of pix and motion pictures presenting leaks of the galaxy s8 in all of its glory. The leaks come from a number of one of a kind internet debts and mainly share the identical design factors, making them greater credible as a collective entire. The pics and movies show that samsung is essentially ultimate faithful to a lot of its older, greater famous ideas.
Also Read- [Nokia 3310 Dual SIM- the original mobile Phone, Updated Design & Features]
One of the most prolific galaxy s8 photo leakers is Benjamin Geskin (@venyageskin1), who has posted about a half-dozen special photos and motion pictures which shows the unreleased phone. The leaked pics variety from extraordinarily glossy snap shots that appear to be legitimate renderings to extra tricky arms-on motion pictures.
You’ll also see that the galaxy s8 and s8 plus don’t have a home button in those unofficial pictures, some thing that has historically been used on samsung’s flagship smartphones. As an alternative, this time samsung is joining the trend of using virtual buttons that appear on the smartphone’s display, just like we have seen on the google pixel or lg g6.
Further to several leaked pix, Geskin additionally posted a handful of motion pictures displaying off the device. The videos seem to corroborate lots of the same statistics proven in the leaked pictures, consisting of the two sizes, bleeding display edges, and usb-c port.There probably won’t be a stylus in the Galaxy S8 or S8 Plus.
What Will be the hardware or Specs?
The Galaxy S8 will also come prepared with a usb-c port and fingerprint sensor. The fingerprint sensor seems to be positioned just beside the rear digital camera, a instead uncommon layout choice for a top class phone. Most other phones with a fingerprint sensor on the again (just like the huawei 6p or lg g6) area it proper in the middle of the returned, wherein you finger naturally rests. This new placement may make it harder to attain. You’ll also get an iris scanner at the top of the phone near the selfie digicam, just like the one on the note 7.
In addition to some of the clues we’ve picked up from the purported leaks, we also have a fixed of technical specifications released by means of dependable leaker @evleaks, who currently tweeted an reputable-looking listing of tech specs. If genuine, the galaxy s8 plus will consist of IP68 dust and water resistance, 64gb of storage with micro-sd supported, wireless charging, an iris scanner, eight megapixel selfie camera, and a 12-megapixel rear-dealing with digicam.
You Must check- [Huawei P10 Plus With Dual-Curved Display leaked in Images]
Rumor blog SamMobile reports the Galaxy S8 will retain the Quad HD Super AMOLED (1440 x 2560) display which is used in its predecessor. But According to @evleaks, the display will be just slightly better than last year’s model, using a Quad HD+ (3200 × 1800) display, which means it will be slightly bigger and would use the same 18:9 aspect ratio as the LG G6.
The Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus are rumored to ship with Android 7.0 Nougat
Other important Specs?
The galaxy S8 and S8 plus are anticipated to hit shops april 21, approximately one month after they most useful at samsung’s special media occasion. Rumors propose pricing could be round $800, however, forbes reports the price may want to climb as excessive as $950-$1050.
The batteries also are rumored to be 3,000 mah and 3,500 mah inside the small and larger cellphone respectively. Samsung blamed battery size for its exploding note 7s previous yr, so it’s exciting to look that the larger cellphone is expected to have the identical size battery as those that have been exploding.
So, have you liked this new Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+? Will you going to buy it after release? Tell us in comments section below and don’t forget to share this if you like the information.American politics, particularly in the big-government, ever-more-insolvent blue states, are increasingly driven by scandal. We are witnessing a meltdown of the political class in states where the growth of government has, even in weakened economies, offered bountiful opportunities for living well off the public purse. Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut have all had to force corrupt governors from office in recent years. But now New York is sprinting ahead in the scandal sweepstakes. If extraordinary front-page editorials in today’s New York Daily News and New York Post calling for the resignation of David Paterson are any measure, the Empire State is headed for its third governor in three years.
That isn’t to say that Illinois, New Jersey, and Connecticut haven’t put up a good fight. A recent string of scandals helped defeat New Jersey governor John Corzine at the polls and forced Connecticut senator Chris Dodd to drop his reelection bid. In Illinois, Barack Obama’s path to the presidency was paved by two scandals against would-be opponents that opened the door to the Senate for him. The governor whom Obama twice supported for office, Rod Blagojevich, has been impeached, in part for trying to sell Obama’s Senate seat, while the man who bought the seat, Roland Burris, has been forced to step aside come November. Alexi Giannoulias—Obama’s buddy, heir to the Broadway Bank, and the Democratic nominee for the Obama-Burris seat—is involved in his own troubles. His family’s once-thriving bank made loans to the mob-associated Michael “Jaws” Giorango, who was convicted of running gambling and prostitution operations, and to Tony Rezko, a fixer with close ties to both Obama and Blagojevich. It seems unfair not to give Scott Lee Cohen, briefly this year’s nominee for Illinois lieutenant governor, a passing mention. Cohen, a pawnbroker who self-financed his runaway victory despite being unable to pay child support to his ex-wife, dropped out of the race after accusations came to light that he had held a knife to the throat of one of his girlfriends, a prostitute.
And then there’s Obama’s hometown of Chicago, where he racked up an enormous majority in the Democratic Party presidential primary that was crucial to his early lead over Hillary Clinton in the popular vote count. A new study from the Better Government Association notes that in the past 36 years, “31 sitting or former Chicago aldermen have been convicted of corruption or other crimes.”
Illinois and New Jersey are probably the only two states where corruption has burrowed so deeply as to involve the public medical schools. In Illinois, until recently, you could buy admission to the state’s medical school. In New Jersey, thanks to the patronage of Senator Robert Menendez of Hudson County—a man elected to the U.S. Senate despite being caught on tape engaging in a shakedown—until last year you could buy the presidency of the University of Medicine and Dentistry. Shocking? Not when you remember why former New Jersey senator Robert “the Torch” Torricelli was forced to drop out of his 2002 campaign for reelection: he had accepted gifts from David Chang, a lobbyist of sorts for nuclear North Korea. New Jersey law clearly states that in the final 51 days of a campaign, a candidate, no matter how badly tarnished, can’t be replaced by a substitute. Never mind: Torricelli’s fellow Democrats on the New Jersey Supreme Court shredded the law and allowed him to be replaced by fellow Democrat Frank Lautenberg, a former U.S. senator who went on to win the election. Lautenberg, whose accomplishments as senator are less than noteworthy, was one of the 60 votes that allowed President Obama to push his health-care proposals.
But for all this, New York doesn’t need to take a backseat to Illinois and New Jersey. In the past few years, Joe Bruno, the Republican temporary president of the New York State Senate, and Democrat Alan Hevesi, the New York State comptroller, have been forced to step down and then convicted of taking bribes. Meanwhile, the inventory of state legislators and New York City Council members caught up in shenanigans is too long to list, though Hiram Monserrate is worthy of special mention. Monserrate, who has enjoyed close ties with the Scientologists, helped paralyze the State Senate for two months this past summer while he switched back and forth between the parties, looking to buy himself the best possible deal. Earlier, he had assaulted a lady friend with a piece of broken glass. When that case finally came before the bar of justice, Monserrate, an embarrassment even in Albany, was rebuked by the courts and expelled from the Senate.
Now, Charlie Rangel—New York State’s ranking member in the U.S. Congress and the chair of the House’s powerful, tax-writing Committee on Ways and Means—has been given a slap on the wrist by his fellow Democrats on the House Ethics Committee for taking lobbyist money for a junket to the Caribbean. Rangel, who is far better at raising other people’s taxes than at paying his own, also recently discovered that his taxable net worth was roughly $1.5 million more than he had previously stated.
But when all is said and done, top billing in this debauched political floor show goes to the governorship of New York. Two years ago, Eliot Spitzer, anointed by The New Republic as a liberal messiah—this was in the pre-Obama days—had a brief rocky stretch as governor after he was caught using the state police to try to gather incriminating evidence about political rival Joe Bruno. But it was his patronage of a brothel that brought down this self-proclaimed supporter of women’s rights.
The state police and the abuse of women play a similarly prominent role in the current scandal involving Spitzer’s successor, David Paterson. One of Paterson’s first acts after his predecessor’s fall from grace was to admit his own extramarital affairs, including with staff members, and past drug use. He also demanded that Attorney General Andrew Cuomo investigate the state police, claiming that it had a special unit to collect information on public figures. Cuomo’s investigation, released last year, unearthed no such unit, but it did find political interference by state police higher-ups, including an attempt to lessen the impact of a domestic-violence report involving a Republican congressman.
Now, in the middle of a budget crisis, Paterson has been caught in a new disgrace in which, like Spitzer, he’s apparently put the state police to personal use. One of his closest aides, David Johnson, had by all accounts physically intimidated a girlfriend who went to court to receive an order of protection against him. But before she was to testify in court, she was visited by state police superintendent Harry Corbitt. She never testified. Key political allies have now called on Paterson to end his reelection campaign. Even more ominously, some political figures, including Congresswoman Nita Lowey, are now saying publicly what they’ve been discussing privately: that it’s time for the inept Paterson, who’s been largely ignored by the state’s spendthrift legislature, to step down from office. A resignation by the floundering Paterson would turn the governorship over to his unelected lieutenant governor, Richard Ravitch, who no longer seems to be in regular contact with Paterson.
Ravitch owes his office to a dubious ruling by New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. It was a decision, like that in the Torricelli case, that directly contradicted the state’s constitution, which made no provision for appointing a lieutenant governor should the post become vacant. The constitution does provide that in such a case, the president of the State Senate “shall perform all the duties of the lieutenant governor.” But as they eyed the chaos in the Senate—where Joe Bruno had been forced to resign as president, and where a collection of parochial pols, including the ineffable Monserrate, were running the show—the majority of the justices decided that the letter of the law needed to be ignored. (This may turn out for the best. As temporary president of the Senate, Democratic Majority Leader Malcolm Smith would have been next in the line of succession to the governorship, if not for the court’s legitimating Ravitch’s appointment. If Smith had become governor, he too would have been mired in scandal, having played a key role in the rigged bidding process that handed a lucrative state contract to run casinos to a group of which he was a partner.)
Paterson’s appointment of Ravitch as lieutenant governor may be recorded as his best decision. The widely respected 75-year-old Ravitch, who played a key role in New York City’s 1975 fiscal crisis, has no political ambitions, and he has the intelligence and integrity, despite a predilection for new taxes, to stabilize the ship of state for the time being. In fact, it is the presence of Ravitch in the lieutenant governorship that makes it possible to call for Paterson’s immediate resignation.
In both New York and Illinois, there is a close connection between fiscal irresponsibility and political malfeasance. Both states are in marked decline; both are essentially one-party polities run by Democrats (although the Republicans, when in office, have engaged in their fair share of corruption). In both cases, a largely unaccountable political class left unchecked by a decreasingly engaged electorate has, buffered by the rhetoric of compassion, gone into business for itself. Big government may not be good for the economy or for the citizens, but it been very good for a political class that has thrived on state spending despite the growing risk of getting hauled off to the hoosegow. In New York and Illinois, oversized government seems immune to reform; scandals have led only to new scandals.
In the absence of functioning political and fiscal systems, excessive spending in New York and Illinois, like that in famously corrupt Greece and Spain, can probably be restrained only by the bond market. But by the time that happens, we can expect each of these semi-sovereign entities to be in for a long stretch of hard times.In a year or two, I will be applying for Full Professor. To those outside academia or, indeed, to most students, the various ranks that professors hold may seem mysterious if not outright confounding. For those of us in the game, the promotion to “Full” is a daunting, yet tantalizing prospect.
Like most in the university world, I began my teaching career as a Teaching Assistant and then advanced to an occasional term or two as a lecturer while I worked on my PhD. These are the least prestigious titles (and jobs) for academic instructors. TAs and lecturers are the underclass of scholarly teaching: overwhelmed and underpaid, overworked and under-appreciated.
What every young academic really wants is a tenure-track position, a position that is more or less permanent and carries the hope of future promotions — and I was no different. In fact, I almost gave up on university work altogether when a tenure-track job seemed out of reach. When the tenure-track position did come along, I, like most young scholars, began at the rank of Assistant. This rank’s name is misleading, because “Assistant Professor” sounds like an assistant to a real professor, which, of course, it isn’t. In fact, in terms of the actual work professors do, the exact rank means little.
But it matters to us because those at higher ranks have more prestige and earn more money. Thus, it was my mission in the early years of my career to get promoted to the next rank: Associate. At some universities, the promotion to Associate goes hand in hand with tenure, so that everyone who is granted tenure is automatically promoted to Associate and everyone at the rank of Associate necessarily has tenure. At my august institution that is not the case. Indeed, being denied tenure is extremely rare in Canadian universities so the real prize is the promotion. There are few positions more secure than the Canadian tenured Associate Professor.
The final step at most universities is Full Professor or, simply, Professor. And while, again, it may sound like this is the rank most long-time profs would hold, it’s not. In fact, most professors never make it past Associate. As of September, for example, my department will not have a single Full Professor among its members. It’s something of a honour, and it’s an honour I covet.
And it’s not just the money. For one thing, Full Professor opens the way to some other perks like the possibility of receiving the honorific title “Professor Emeritus” upon retirement. But mostly there’s something deeply reassuring about not having to put any qualifier before Professor. I will have truly arrived, and it’s going to be sweet.
Now, where did I put that application package?Wow! Women’s March Leader Linda Sarsour Attacks Victim Of Female Genital Mutilation Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Linda Sarsour, who was the co-chair of the Women’s March viciously attacked Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Brigitte Gabriel on Twitter. Although the tweet is not very recent, it is shocking to see how this so-called women’s rights activist treats other women.
Brigitte Gabriel is a Christian from Lebanon and an anti-Islam activist. She survived a bomb attack during the civil war in Lebanon and shares her personal story and knowledge through her non-profit, ACT for America.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a beautiful Somali woman from the Netherlands who has suffered through horrific female genital mutilation because of Islam’s barbarism. The Gateway Pundit has reported on her personal story and struggles here. She is a very brave anti-Islam activist and calls Islam the real ‘war on women.’
Linda Sarsour is pro-Sharia law with ties to the terrorist organization, Hamas as TGP reported earlier this week. Sarsour attacked these two women because they call out Islam’s abuses towards women and non-Muslims. Clearly she hates women and wants to see other women suffer. Sarsour is not for women’s rights and the women who marched with her and support her should be ashamed of themselves. She supports the enslavement, abuse and female genital mutilation that is sanctioned under Sharia law.
She deleted the tweet in a panic, however; I have the archived link proving that it is indeed real. Click here to see archive.As Donald Trump's administration begins to take shape, we're learning more and more about the Koch puppets that Trump is appointing to #StaffTheSwamp.
The other day, an Environmental Defense Fund post called out Trump's EPA Admin nominee Scott Pruitt for possible impropriety and what looks like "pay-to-play" situations, where Pruitt, on multiple occasions, received money from the energy industry and shortly after took efforts to defend them.
And as E&E points out, since Pruitt has a super-PAC, he can still "keep raising money from the corporate interests he is charged with regulating." On top of that, as one of the first Cabinet-level appointees (who are prohibited from soliciting money) to have a super-PAC (which exists to solicit money), the legality and potential for corruption threatens to undermine what little credibility Scott "unprecedented, secretive alliance" Pruitt would have as the EPA administrator.
But not content merely pulling strings behind the scenes, the Koch network continues to pander the public with an offensively ironic effort to improve the reputation of fossil fuels by supposedly "standing up for poor, underserved communities." (Similar efforts have been taken by tobacco and soft drink companies to sell their products.) Hiroko Tabuchi, in a great piece in the New York Times, pulls back the curtain on a Koch effort to convert minorities to its fossil fuel religion—in some cases fairly literally, as the piece opens with a scene from a Koch-sponsored gospel concert.
The front group putting on the show is Fueling U.S. Forward, which has already come up a couple times over the short year of its existence. It puts a contemptible, self-serving effort into painting fossil fuels as "pro-human" and "sustainable," in order to improve the public image of the Koch's oily empire.
For those wondering if perhaps the Kochs really are sticking up for the poor and not just using them for their own gain, a 2016 literature review makes it clear that "children, and especially poor children, now bear a disproportionate burden of disease from both environmental pollution and climate change due to fossil fuel combustion."
And abroad, even more heartbreaking are the 1.3 million African children who are starving thanks to a drought amplified by climate change. Their families are surviving by making soup out of chalk or ash from the fire, with one man even contemplating selling his 10 year old daughter as a bride so she'd be the husband's responsibility to feed.
Meanwhile, the Koch's Fueling U.S. Forward reportedly planned to spend $10 million a year on its pro-fossil fuel efforts.Disclaimer:
In this post I am trying to cover a proper approach to a common problem. I am still in the process of wrapping my head around RxJava so what I write here might not be the best way to solve the problem.
Cached requests with RxJava
Lately I’ve been trying to develop a rest backed app using RxJava. I must admit that once you get in the proper mental mood, RxJava almost feels like cheating. Everything looks cleaner, multiple requests can be composed and manipulated easily, the StrictMode gets satisfied by observing on the ui thread and subscribing on a different thread, and all the nice things that can be read about how cool is RxJava with Android. What I could not find easily, was how to store the result of a request and be sure that even in case of no network, a cached content was available for the user, while still handling everything in a reactive fashion.
Caching vs non caching
Going straight from rest result to the UI is appropriate in many cases, for example when displaying the result of a search whose arguments are not predictable (think about Ebay, or Amazon where the user is looking for something different every time).
However, there are cases when the results fetched earlier are still significant and displaying them can improve the user experience significantly, compared to a spinning wheel or a white page. Those cases include your twitter feed, a local weather forecast that was fetched just 5 minutes before, or the list of the github repos of a given user.
Here you can see the difference between a non cached version and a cached version of the same activity:
For this reason I tried to figure out what could have been a clean way to cache the results of a request while keeping the flow in a reactive fashion.
The storage as the unique source of the truth
All reactive
If we want to cache the data while keeping everything inside the same subscription, things get a bit messy. The result of the request is thrown at the UI and the response is also stored in the storage. The UI subscribes from the storage too but checks which result came first and if the data is too old.
Cached
In this hybrid variant, the UI subscribes only to the storage, and a facade class wraps the storage and the subscription to the retrofit client that feeds the storage. Once the storage is filled with new data, the UI thread is automatically notified of every change.
In this scenario the observable acts as a hot observable, the first time it gets subscribed it emits the content of the storage, and any other change it might happen to it.
Talk is cheap, show me the code
A working example of the following code can be found in my github repo here To write this sample, I started from the abused Github apis which seems to power the 99% of the rest related examples. Sorry about that.
First there is the storage. I wrapped a SQLite helper (which I happily generated with my handy script) with a class that contains a PublishSubject which can be subscribed to and which we will notify when the insertion methods are called:
public class ObservableRepoDb { private PublishSubject < List < Repo >> mSubject = PublishSubject. create (); private RepoDbHelper mDbHelper ; private List < Repo > getAllReposFromDb () { List < Repo > repos = new ArrayList <>(); //.. performs the query and fills the result return repos ; } public Observable < List < Repo >> getObservable () { Observable < List < Repo >> firstTimeObservable = Observable. fromCallable ( this :: getAllReposFromDb ); return firstTimeObservable. concatWith ( mSubject ); } public void insertRepo ( Repo r ) { //... // performs the insertion on the SQLite helper //... List < Repo > result = getAllReposFromDb (); mSubject. onNext ( result ); } }
What we have here is the first piece of the puzzle: a storage that can be subscribed to. The concatenation is needed because we want it to emit the content of the storage as soon as it gets subscribed.
Then there is the facade class, where we get the observable from and to which we start a new update:
public class ObservableGithubRepos { ObservableRepoDb mDatabase ; private BehaviorSubject < String > mRestSubject ; //... public Observable < List < Repo >> getDbObservable () { return mDatabase. getObservable (); } public void updateRepo ( String userName ) { Observable < List < Repo >> observable = mClient. getRepos ( userName ); observable. subscribeOn ( Schedulers. io ()). observeOn ( Schedulers. io ()). subscribe ( l -> mDatabase. insertRepoList ( l )); } }
Note that everything happens far from the UI thread. This is because we are going to subscribe to the database observable as the unique source of truth.
Now, given that the observable is now hot, we can’t listen for its onComplete in order to stop any progress indicators we might put in place. What we need is another subject that can be bound to the update request, so here it is the new facade class:
public class ObservableGithubRepos { //... public Observable < List < Repo >> getDbObservable () { return mDatabase. getObservable (); } public Observable < String > updateRepo ( String userName ) { BehaviorSubject < String > requestSubject = BehaviorSubject. create (); Observable < List < Repo >> observable = mClient. getRepos ( userName ); observable. subscribeOn ( Schedulers. io ()). observeOn ( Schedulers. io ()). subscribe ( l -> { mDatabase. insertRepoList ( l ); requestSubject. onNext ( userName );}, e -> requestSubject. onError ( e ), () -> requestSubject. onCompleted ()); return requestSubject ; } }
In the UI client (activity or fragment) we’ll need to subscribe to the storage in order to get the data and to the request observable in order to stop the progress indicators. An observable that emits the state of the pending request is returned every time an update is being requested.
mObservable = mRepo. getDbObservable (); mProgressObservable = mRepo. getProgressObservable () mObservable. subscribeOn ( Schedulers. io ()). observeOn ( AndroidSchedulers. mainThread ()). subscribe ( l -> { mAdapter. updateData ( l ); }); Observable < List < Repo >> progressObservable = mRepo. updateRepo ( "fedepaol" ); progressObservable. subscribeOn ( Schedulers. io ()). observeOn ( AndroidSchedulers. mainThread ()). subscribe ( s -> {}, e -> { Log. d ( "RX", "There has been an error" ); mSwipeLayout. setRefreshing ( false ); }, () -> mSwipeLayout. setRefreshing ( false ));
Please remember that the DbObservable is a hot one, so every time a call to updateRepo happens, the db will be fed with the result of the query and the ui will get subsequently notified.
SqlBrite
If all this wrapping seems too laboruous, the prolific guys from Square wrote SqlBrite which is a super generic database wrapper that was written for this same purpouse. I am sure it’s better and more battle field tested than the poor man’s version we can write by ourselves.
Conclusion
I don’t know if this is an healthy way to use RxJava. Maybe I ended up with this scenario only because I am not 100% confident with RxJava and I am putting some non rx-ness in the middle to better control it. Here we need to choose where to place the operators, since we can modify the flow that feeds the storage from the http client, or the flow that comes out of the storage itself.
In any case, having an unique source of truth seems more clear, and I feel that in this way it would be a lot easier to do stuff like prefetching, scheduling updates so the user is presented with fresh data (remember having your app work like magic?), checking if an update is worth to be done at all (such as displaying a 5 minutes old weather forecast) and stuff like that.
Thanks to Fabio Collini for spotting a lot of mistakes in the first draft of this posts, and to Riccardo Ciovati for proof reading it.Let’s get this out of the way: I’m anything but a Kris Letang basher. There’s no bigger admirer of his skill set, his unparalleled combination of speed and stamina and, maybe above all, his dedication to the Penguins.
When I asked Wednesday morning if the flank of French-Canadian reporters surrounding his stall hours before faceoff against Montreal had made him a little homesick, if he had ever want to play anywhere else, he responded unflinchingly: “I’m a guy who affords a lot of respect to people when it’s due. Pittsburgh is the city that gave me the chance to play in the NHL at 19 years old. The ownership takes care of us like no other. For me, it would be important to finish my career here.”
He means it, too. He’s a great kid. Occasionally a great defenseman, too.
And that’s precisely why it’s time to trade him.
Or at least think a whole heck of a lot about it.
To repeat, this isn’t negative. It’s not about Letang’s maddening tendencies, his misfires or giveaways. It’s certainly not about any one game — and Letang was quite good, for the record, in the 5-1 flogging of the Canadiens, including a sweet assist on a Sidney Crosby goal — nor is it about his injury-plagued season, nor even his star-crossed career.
Rather, it’s quite the opposite. It’s that Letang remains so valuable that he can get you a mint. And if that mint happens to involve pieces that work better with the Penguins’ broader puzzle, all the more reason a trade merits robust consideration.
For all the heists Ray Shero has pulled off, he still hasn’t had that one trade where he has sent away a legitimately prized piece. I’m not talking on the Ryan Whitney/Alex Goligoski scale. I’m talking about Craig Patrick shipping a young Mark Recchi to Philadelphia in 1992 because he knew that particular roster was in greater need of what Rick Tocchet, Kjell Samuelsson and Ken Wregget would bring. He knew that particular roster was positioned to win a second championship in as many years. And he was right.
It’s about being honest about what you have, bold about what you seek.
And if that time isn’t now for these Penguins, fresh off four consecutive playoff flameouts, with Crosby and Evgeni Malkin in their absolute prime, with the Eastern Conference being so down that even the Blue Jackets can look like bullies … then when?
Shero has been adamant all winter he doesn’t want to go down the rental route again. He has had enough of sending away first-round picks for Brenden Morrows. He wants to make what he calls “pure hockey trades.” And that’s a great start to the thought process. No team can give up prospects and picks in perpetuity without some lasting returns.
This team needs more than a two-month fix or the brittle Beau Bennett at first-line right wing to replace Pascal Dupuis. It needs an impact performer, one who could stick around. It also needs more than a handful of AHL call-ups killing time on the third and fourth lines around poor Brandon Sutter.
Letang can draw all that. I don’t know who or where, but I know there are 29 teams that would listen. Don’t lose sight of that because of all those fist-shaking shortcomings. There remains a premium on offensive defensemen, especially those who are 26, have been a Norris Trophy finalist and come with cost certainty. This past July, the Penguins signed Letang to an eight-year, $58 million contract. That creates a long-term cap hassle here, but it might not elsewhere.
Here’s more about that contract: He’ll count $3.5 million toward the cap hit this season, but that jumps to $7.25 million next season. He’ll have a limited no-trade clause kick in next season – 15 teams of his choice, but there’s no such thing between now and July 1.
You get the picture.
Not suggesting it’s a no-brainer. Far from it. It’s absolutely imperative that Shero upgrades the Penguins at positions of need for years to come. And by that, I don’t mean winning the actual exchange. Rare is the trade in which the team receiving the best single player doesn’t win the exchange. And make no mistake, that’s what Letang likely will be.
But, at least to this view, it’s a risk worth taking.
Worried about the defense?
Not sure why, given that stirring show of Wilkes-Barre depth earlier this season.
Worried about offense from the blue line?
Short-term, Matt Niskanen, Paul Martin and Olli Maatta offer plenty, and they’re reliable. Long-term, there’s Derrick Pouliot, who by all accounts has power-play pedigree that Letang still doesn’t display.
Worried about losing the trade?
Hey, Patrick might have lost that exchange in ’92 and, as he has told me many times since, he’s OK with that.Another tech startup seeking to transform aviation has closed its doors. Beacon sought to bring an all-you-can-fly option to business and leisure travelers starting on the East coast.
The company’s approach was to charge membership fees, handle customers at the gate with a white-glove service and partner with regional aviation businesses to get passengers to their destinations.
The company was co-founded by Wade Eyerly, Cory Cozzens and Reed Farnsworth, who previously started the California-based all-you-can-fly airline Surf Air. Ryan Morley was their other co-founder.
Customers paid Beacon a $1,000 deposit and $2,000 per month for unlimited travel between Boston’s Logan Airport and the Westchester County Airport outside of New York City.
Pre-sales were key in the company’s plan, and revenue from these would enable Beacon to get started. The startup had to cover payroll while also renting planes from partners, planes that use a lot of fuel and required skilled pilots.
Eyerly said, “We built the business on the premise that once we launched we would never have to lose money on operations. We thought pre-selling would let us do that.”
He believes the business model behind Beacon would still work, but here’s where the former CEO says he made critical mistakes.
“Beacon launched in September and I believed we had sold enough to cover our expenses but learned that we had not because three-fourths of our sales were to people who didn’t want to start flying until a future date. Most of them wanted to wait until the summer to start flying.”
The company had raised a tranched Series A of $6.5 million led by Romulus Capital and joined by MiVentures and others. It also raised $1 million in venture debt funding.
About $4 million of its Series A money was earmarked to support Beacon’s growth, once it became operational and profitable, not to get Beacon flying in the first place.
Founders were subsidizing operations from day one, but could no longer do so by the turn of 2015, Eyerly says.
Beacon employed 20 in March when it closed shop. Its website is still up.
Most, if not all, employees have since found other work, according to Eyerly. Beacon co-founders have gone to lengths to help them find that work, he said.
The startup realized half a million in revenue. It could not return capital to investors — all of its funds and assets were assumed by senior creditors.
The company planned, but was not able, to launch a service between its hubs in Boston and Westchester, and summer vacation destinations in Nantucket and the Hamptons. Customers who made a deposit and intended to fly that circuit will get, or already have gotten, their money back. Others flew and got what they paid for.
The highly regulated industry of aviation proves a consistent challenge for upstarts.
Regulation and high overhead costs are reasons why we don’t see new airlines launching very often, or terrestrial trends like on-demand rides, subscription commerce and the collaborative economy transforming the industry as quickly as they have ground-based travel.
Beacon joins the ranks of Airpooler, BlackJet and others who have folded or pivoted under such pressures.
Eyerly himself has joined Wheels Up as the Managing Director of New Ventures. Wheels Up is a private aviation startup that sells memberships and on-demand flights. It charges customers $17,500 to become members, and $3,950 an hour to fly anywhere within the U.S. on short notice.
Correction: This post has been updated to reflect that BlackJet is still in business. The company launched in a bid to become like “Uber for private jets,” but now offers private jet seat booking to members who pay an annual fee for access to their network.Tony Nathan was a member of the Miami Dolphins during a time they were among the top franchises in the NFL.
Nathan, a running back from 1979-87, played on squads that were annually playoff-contending teams. For the first time in a while, he feels the Dolphins are close to returning to those days.
“In time, yes,” Nathan said. “It goes in a cycle. Right now, they’re working their way back on the upside.”
Nathan was among a handful of former players in attendance at the Dolphins annual draft party at Hard Rock Stadium. A few thousand fans were on hand to watch the team chose Missouri defensive end Charles Harris with the No. 22 pick of the first round.
Although the draft was the reason most fans attended, the optimism surrounding the team under coach Adam Gase was the reason behind their turnout. Gase, who is in his second year with Miami, led the Dolphins to the playoffs in his rookie season. It was their first appearance since the 2008 season.
See photos of Missouri defensive end Charles Harris, who the Dolphins took with the No. 22 pick in the NFL draft.
“I always say a team takes on the personality of the head coach,” former Dolphins cornerback Patrick Surtain said. “He’s (Gase) a young, vibrant guy. As they got going [last year], it became apparent that he was the leader of the team so guys played for him. We’re looking for bigger and better things in Year 2.”
After losing four of the first five games, the Dolphins finished 10-6 and second in the AFC East. The season ended with |
olithic enemy, Mr. Trump also repeated a disproved belief shared by his predecessors: that terrorists require “safe havens” from which to conduct attacks, and therefore a reduction of American troops in combat zones will mean “you get hit again,” as Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis ominously warned in June. This is based on a fundamental — and inexcusable — misunderstanding about the Sept. 11 attacks, where the hijackers passed undetected through border checkpoints 33 times and enjoyed the safe havens of southern Maryland, San Diego and Oklahoma City.In 2007, an L.A. family's unvarnished docuseries launched on E!, and reality television, female body image, social media and, above all, the economy of celebrity were forever changed. Now the stars and producers of the megafranchise (nine TV spinoffs, hundreds of millions of dollars earned) reveal the secrets of its improbable explosion into the zeitgeist.
Wearing curve-hugging black workout pants and a white tank top, Kim Kardashian perches on a couch in the media room of her newly renovated Bel Air estate and sips Pedialyte through a straw. The makeup-free 36-year-old appears almost normal — certainly not like a mogul who, according to Forbes, banked $45.5 million the past year from a brand she built on self-aggrandizement, shameless product peddling and nude selfies. At the epicenter of this unprecedented trajectory remains E!'s Keeping Up With the Kardashians, a living record of her happily debauched family — Kourtney, 38; Khloe, 33; Rob, 30; Kendall, 21; and Kylie, 20; as well as matriarch Kris, 61, and her ex Caitlyn Jenner, 67 (who in 2015 transitioned from Bruce). On Sept. 24, a 90-minute special will celebrate the series' 10th unapologetic year. It's a head-scratching milestone for a show that, at its conception, offered viewers little more than a voyeuristic lens into the lives of a celebrity-adjacent family — but quickly became the mother ship for all their product extensions and the platform through which Kris and her five daughters ushered in the era of the reality celebrity as a brand.
Keeping Up With the Kardashians now airs in 167 countries, boasts nine spinoffs to date and has ranked as E! Entertainment's top-rated series since 2010. And while it peaked in 2011 with 10.5 million viewers over two nights for Kim's fairy-tale wedding to Kris Humphries (they divorced after 72 days), it still averages north of 2.1 million every Sunday in its 13th season. In 2015, E! agreed to a reported $80 million deal to keep the family through season 14. But that's a pittance compared to the fashion and lifestyle empire they've built from one boutique in the Valley. With a combined social media reach of 700 million-plus followers and five insanely profitable apps, the family mints millions from a hodgepodge of endorsement deals, paid appearances and can't-stay-in-stock products. And it all grew from a show that opened its pilot with these prophetic words from Kim (already notorious for the sex tape she made with her ex, Ray J, that was made public in 2007): "I hate you all."
As much as the family reveals on the show, on red carpets and on Instagram, one mystery remains. How the hell did this happen?
Kris Jenner (star, executive producer) Before the show, I was managing Bruce's speaking career and personal appearances.
Kim Kardashian (star, executive producer) I was going to [Pierce College], and after school I would go work the cash register at our store, Dash. This all happened when I was 27 …
Kendall Jenner (star) That's so crazy because I'm not even 27. We've lived the same amount of time of the same thing, but I'm not even the age you were when you started.
Ryan Seacrest (executive producer) Everyone was talking about The Osbournes, and I said to my development executive Eliot [Goldberg], "Let's try to find something in this world and take it to E!"
Kris One night, Deena Katz [casting director for Dancing With the Stars] came over for dinner and life was swirling around, and she said, "This is a reality show — I think you should really talk to Ryan Seacrest." So I did.
Seacrest Kris told me what she envisioned, and I said, "Let's send a crew to your house and tape some stuff and then we'll take a look at it." Then I realized I didn't have a crew; I didn't even have a camera. I had Eliot buy a camera, and he went and shot them. He called me after and said, "I think we have something special."
Kourtney Kardashian (star, executive producer) We had talked to producers about doing a show about the three of us running the store, Dash, where Khloe and I would do the day-to-day, and Kim would come in as a stylist. It didn't go anywhere.
•••
In Caitlyn Jenner's memoir, The Secrets of My Life, released earlier this year, she implies that the series may actually have been her brainchild. She writes, "The house is awash in puberty and adolescence and young adulthood and two parents with very different styles. It seems to me something is there for television. … Kris says she is the one who came up with the idea …" Jenner declined to participate in this story.
Kris It's so absurd. I'm not sure what the motivation was for her to say something like that. Maybe somebody should remind her that it's called Keeping Up With the Kardashians.
Ted Harbert (then-CEO of E! Networks) Just like anybody else, I knew of the family through [O.J. Simpson attorney] Robert Kardashian. There was a bit of the stuff with Kim hanging around Paris Hilton and, of course, the fun with Ray J [who made a sex tape with Kim]. That was sort of world news.
Damla Dogan (senior vp development & programming, E!) They were just crossing over into pop culture territory, especially Kim. She had a look that wasn't on TV at the time. She wasn't stick thin, and that was relatable.
Seacrest We pitched it to E!, and initially they passed. I called Ted and said, "This is a special show, and I want you to know we brought it to you [first]." I was going to take it to Bravo.
Harbert Ryan asked me to take a look at this tape of them at the dinner table. There was conflict, sniping and resolution. I call it, "Fight, fight, fight. Love, love love." I came in the next day and said I wanted to do it.
Seacrest I was overseas and got a phone call from E!. "We're picking it up and going right into production." And I said, "Well, we just bought a camera." (Laughs.) They suggested Bunim/Murray to be our partners.
Gil Goldschein (CEO and chairman, Bunim/Murray Productions) Within 24 to 36 hours, I did a deal with E!, and we were in preproduction early the following week.
Jeff Jenkins (co-president of entertainment & development, Bunim/Murray) During our first meeting, Kris said, "How can we make this successful?" And I said, "Share everything." In other documentary series, you're following a football star or a rock star; in this case, sharing is the career.
Seacrest I remember Kris saying, "In order for this to work, yes, there's a glitz and glamour, but there's got to be honesty and vulnerability. We need to make a pact that the show won't just be pretty pictures. As time goes by, you see some of the most vulnerable moments. There was a deliberate intent to be vulnerable and capture that from the beginning.
Kris I sat everyone down and said, "If we're going to do this, we have to be all in. We have to really be who we are."
Kendall I was like, "Whatever. What am I having for lunch tomorrow?" She didn't make it seem like it was going to last this long.
Kim I don't think any of us thought it would.
Kris The only person I got any resistance from was Kourtney. She was sort of skeptical.
Kourtney I remember in season one being like, "I have to go the bathroom," and I'd cry in there as quietly as I could because I was still mic'd. I never want to cry in front of cameras.
Khloe Kardashian (star, executive producer) I don't think we knew what we were even saying yes to. Everything was just super-fast. Kim and my mom were steering the ship. We were just like, "Tell us where to be and we'll be there."
Dogan We were up against an airdate and didn't have a title we loved. There were a few contenders: The Kardashians: Krazy With a K.
Farnaz Farjam (current programming vp, Bunim/Murray) Living Kardashian, Krazy Kardashians …
Dogan But none that we loved. We were having our big launch meeting where we invite the producers to come in and tell our internal departments about the show, so everyone can get on the same page.
Farjam We all had been tasked with coming to the meeting with some title ideas and when it was my turn I had to confess I didn't have a list. I made a factual statement that I was "too busy keeping up with the Kardashians."
Dolgan Instantly, we knew that was our title.
Farjam I came up with it on accident because I was living it.
Harbert Internally, everybody had an opinion [about the show before it launched]. It was, who are these people and why do they get a TV show? Ad sales departments don't tend to jump up and down about shows that feature people that have been in sex tapes. They're usually going to worry about advertiser resistance, but I don't remember there being much.
Kris From the network's point of view it was a big success.
Harbert Sisters who wax each other will tend to strike a chord. I'm a big believer in TV that surprises people, and boy, did that surprise me. I was shocked at how they would speak to their mother and, who was then, Bruce.
Kris The watercooler chatter from the first episode was all about [9-year-old] Kylie jumping on a stripper pole. Kim had one installed in my bedroom and our friend Robin Anton, who is the founder of The Pussycat Dolls, was just messing around, and Kylie hops up there, twirls around a couple times, and it became this thing.
Seacrest Some people were up in arms; some people thought it was funny.
Kris When I look back on that, I belly laugh. I have a very dry sense of humor. You either think I'm hilarious or you think I'm a bitch.
Seacrest It was in that moment we realized what this show could be. At its foundation, it was an aspirational, Hollywood reality version of The Brady Bunch. They were unvarnished, and that honesty and irreverence resonated.
Brian Dow (former agent for the Kardashians) There was a lot of authenticity. If you look at the rest of the marketplace at the time, other reality stars were showing you their "character" and were more guarded.
Khloe In those days, our first and second season especially, no one knew who we were. We were allowed to leave the gates to film and not have it be a distraction. No one bothered us.
Kim When we would travel, I remember people calling mine, Kourtney, and Khloe's names and we thought they knew us from high school or something. We just didn't get it. Then they started chasing us down at the airport. That was the first time that we were like, "Oh my God."
Khloe In Armenia, I've never seen so many people. I got separated from Kim and everyone, and they all got in the van and left. I was like, "Hello? I'm still in the fucking crowd of people!" Everyone forgot about me and Erin Paxton, our audio mixer, took her boom and literally fished me back into our producer's van.
Kendall Kylie and I did a magazine signing for Seventeen, and it was at some store at The Grove and we had a crazy line around the corner. The store owner came up to us and said, "Justin Bieber was here a week ago and didn't get this response."
Dow They were flooding the marketplace with good photo content. There's a method to the madness, and when you don't know the method it just looks like madness.
Kris It just got really crazy, really fast. They engaged in conversation with an audience that through proper television had been completely ignored.
•••
Before filming wrapped on season one, E! re-upped the series for a second turn, just as social media platforms were starting to take hold.
Kris There was barely Twitter when we started. Ryan called Kim and said, "There's this thing called Twitter you might want to pay attention to." The girls [began] embracing their audience and sharing their lives.
Seacrest There were conversations where we said, "Is this OK that posts are happening today and the show airs five months later?" We didn't know if it was good or bad. We ended up determining that it was fueling the narrative and people will want to see what really happened.
Dow Kim sort of paved the way for the economic structure of native influencer marketing. Before the rise of the common man YouTuber in their bedroom, you had people like her. She was the one who kicked down the door and got the brands to spend money in that area because she showed success. Brands noticed that when when you would pay a celebrity to send out a branded tweet, they were getting more click-throughs for the dollar, so it made more monetary sense. That's why that revolution started.
Harbert At the beginning, I tried very hard to get a piece [of the earnings] because the policy was, if you become famous on our backs and get other businesses, we get a piece. Kris, given her great negotiating abilities, said, "We were already kind of famous." I remember those stare-downs, but I lost that fight. You know who I've got 10 percent of? Dr. 90210. That had to be at least $300 or $400 that I made off of that. Almost the same. (Laughs.)
Khloe It's totally a blessing to have the show to put you in that spotlight where you could let people see the brand that you're trying to create. At first, you are bright-eyed and people want to pay you to do the craziest things. Me and my sisters have all done it, but we've learned from those mistakes. I think viewers could see through when things are unauthentic, even with a social media platform. People need to really aware of their authenticity and doing thing out of passion not just to make a dollar. I will say there has been a learning curve.
Dow When Kim did the cover of CR [in 2013], that's when she was anointed. It's Carine Roitfeld's magazine, Karl Lagerfeld shot it and Riccardo Tisci art-directed. Fashion washes away all sins. That's when she went next-level.
Harbert Kris deserves the credit for turning it into an empire. Doing the show is a pain in the neck for them, but that TV presence provides the basis for many other products. When somebody leaves the limelight a network provides, it goes away. God bless her, Paris Hilton is a fantastic DJ in Ibiza.
•••
E! launched the first of nine spinoffs in 2009. That same year, Khloe married NBA star Lamar Odom in an episode that brought record ratings for the network (3.2 million viewers). In 2011, the couple debuted Khloe & Lamar.
Harbert Sometime during the first season, I said, "There are other shows in this family." Being able to get that many franchises from one family is sort of a schedule saver.
Seacrest We had a successful mother ship and we thought, "Let's try a spinoff." They were opening a Dash store in Miami, so that gave us a premise [Kourtney & Kim Take Miami]. I got a call from Jeff Shell, who was under Steve Burke at Comcast, which owned E! before the NBC merger. He said, "Should we be investing in spinoffs?" I told him, "I'll take the risk."
Harbert A couple of years in, I said, "Wait until Kylie and Kendall are 18 years old, then there's a whole new generation of shows that can supply the schedule for years." [Life of Kylie premiered Aug. 6 to solid ratings.]
Kylie Jenner (star) I feel like I've been hiding myself and my personal life for a really long time, so I thought it was time to do this show and hopefully be a little more understood.
Khloe I never wanted to do Khloe & Lamar [which ran for two seasons in 2011 and 2012]; my ex-husband did. He sold it to E!, and I let it happen because I wanted him to be happy. I was the one who canceled it. It was way too much. [Odom was hospitalized in 2015 after being found unconscious at a Nevada brothel. The couple divorced in 2016.]
Jenkins We deferred to Khloe on what she was comfortable with, because someone's life was hanging in the balance and that someone is a hero to a lot of young people. It wasn't necessary to go stick a camera in Lamar's face while he's on death's door in the hospital. It's just too much, so I guess, in a way, there is a line.
•••
In August 2011, Kim married NBA player Kris Humphries. The E! special of the $6 million wedding earned the network its highest ratings to date and more than $10 million in ad revenue.
Kim There was all this attention on the wedding, and I thought maybe it was just the pressure of the show giving me this anxiety. My friends told me I just had cold feet, but even the producers said, "You don't seem happy. You don't have to go through with this." The night before, my mom pulled me aside, off camera, and was like, "This isn't it for you. Why don't you go away and I'll handle it?" I felt like, if I pulled out now, everyone's going to think I just did it for the show. Then afterwards, people were saying, "You have to stay married for a year," but I physically couldn't do it. When I made the decision [to divorce], everyone said it was made up for the show. Everyone really wanted to take me down.
Kris People write and say the nastiest things and they've never met you. They have miserable lives, they have no direction, and probably no job. I mean for anybody to sit and be on the internet all day long. It always shocks me when I see such stupidity and really toxic energy.
Seacrest I remember when Kim called me after the wedding. It was just a few days after, and she just didn't feel like it was right. She was very candid and open.
Kim Think about this realistically: If it was for the show don't you think we would have found someone that signed off? Someone OK with getting married and getting divorced two months later? If it's for a show don't you think you'd want as little legal trouble as possible? This was real emotions, real feelings. People fuck up.
Kendall The beauty of having older sisters is you learn so many lessons from them. I've seen how their relationships have played out on TV so I learned that lesson. I I feel like it's just better to keep it more private.
Kourtney The hardest episode to film was my break-up with Scott [Disick]. I had a lot of anxiety about it, and finally said let's just get this over with. I sat down and started crying. You go through something, and then you move past it. Then you do your interview, and get all riled up again. And then you see the episode, and start seeing all these comments [on social media].
Kylie When you involve the whole world, everyone has an opinion. It's not the healthiest. That part of your life should remain sacred.
Kim It's kind of hard not to at least reference [your relationship]. [Current husband] Kanye [West] was like, "I'm not a part of the show. That's not what I do. I have my own career and life." He'll really surprise you though. He'll be like, "I'm not filming" and then randomly show up. But I will get [the footage] and show him. He knew I would love to have my engagement on camera so he filmed it and he said, "The look might be a little different because I need these type of cameras," and got music clearance. But I won't really ever talk about something that's going on with Kanye. I'll talk about how I feel. He knows that I'm really protective of him.
Adam Stotsky (president, E!) Kanye has been gracious enough to be on the show quite a bit. If he had a story that he wanted to tell through the lens of E!, we would be very open to hearing it, that's for sure.
Kris Kanye does not have time or have any desire that I know of to do a show like that.
Kim We had no intention of showing our wedding on the show. It was shot with only iPhones and my assistant on a handycam. She was literally standing on top of a castle and freezing, because we knew we wanted to capture this gorgeous walk from up above. People were yelling at her like, "You can't film up there!" But then we loved the footage so much, [we used some of it on the show].
•••
In 2014, Kris and Bruce Jenner finalized their divorce. The next year, Bruce announced in an interview with Diane Sawyer that he would begin living as a woman and signed on for E! series I Am Cait. In April 2017, Caitlyn released a memoir revealing details of her marriage to Kris.
Jenkins I was shooting with Kris during the last conversation she ever had with Bruce. I'm pointing a camera at her while she is having her heart ripped out. Those are not fun days, but those episodes have touched our culture.
Kim The most difficult thing [to film] was probably Caitlyn's transition and just seeing my mom and Khloe having such a hard time. We never really edited content before, but we did edit a bit of Khloe's reaction just because she was so upset.
Khloe If I act a certain way, I act a certain way, but I just knew in my head this needed to be a four-hour episode. This is so real, and I want to ask every question I have, but also I want honest answers.
Kylie At the time, I didn't think, "Oh, this is going to make pop culture history." I had different things on my mind, because this was my reality, and this is my dad.
Stotsky Caitlyn shared an incredible amount of personal history with us before we had even agreed to shoot it. [As an executive], you think about, "What kind of story do we think we can tell, and given the sensitivity of the matter, do we have the wherewithal to handle it appropriately and not be exploitative?" And then the last thing you think about is, "Is it going to be a hit?" We felt and Caitlyn felt that she had told the story that she wanted to tell in front of the cameras through two cycles and 20 hours [of I Am Cait]. There was a beginning, middle and end. Caitlyn is still a part of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. She is a part of Kylie's life and you will see her in Life of Kylie. Once a Kardashian always a Kardashian.
•••
In October 2016, Kim was robbed at gunpoint in Paris after burglars got her location via Snapchat and made off with $10 million in jewelry.
Kris Every time I tried to watch the episode when Kim shares her experience getting robbed in Paris, I couldn't even get through it to give my notes. I was crying so hard. I would watch it and then cry, cry, cry and then start over. It was very difficult for me to watch my daughter in that kind of pain.
Kim I was OK to show my struggles, because there was no way that I was going to allow it to damage me and make me a different person for my kids. I wasn't going to allow it to debilitate me from being be the mom that I need to be.
Kendall Your situation was a scare for all of us.
Kim It really changed our lives. This extra layer of security needed to happen. On social media, I'll never post something where I'm at home unless I know there's four to six security. We know when we're filming it doesn't air until months later, so we can share that and be free and always be who we are.
Kris It always occurs to me maybe this should be left out. Maybe this is too much. Every time I catch myself and I say no, this is what everyone who's watched since day one deserves to see for one reason or another. We signed up for this.
Kim Everyone was calling for a sit-down interview and I was like why would I do an interview about something I was just traumatized from? But I felt really comfortable to tell my story on my show, because it wasn't going to get twisted. I needed time off, but I was going to talk about it. I'm very aware of what fans want to see. I think if you ask the crew, I probably produce the most, because I know what my sisters might not be sharing. So I'll tell them, "Go over to Kourt's house right now. Something is going on."
Kendall I'm the most private one. If there's a moment I don't want anyone to hear, I talk to myself or talk to someone in another room.
Kim We're not perfect, but you see these things in the media, like Kendall and [her Pepsi ad that was accused of trivializing Black Lives Matter], where I see her at home crying, but in the media she looks another way because she's not addressing it. I'm just like, "This is wrong. You need to speak up." She was like, "I don't ever want to show that footage of me crying." She was trying to not make excuses or be dramatic, but that was what she was going through at the time.
Kris There are moments when it's hard to leave something in because it's vulnerable and it exposes us to a deeper level of emotion, and sometimes that's hard to share.
Jenkins There are days when there might be 30 crew people at a location to cover an event and there are days where there may be one person with an iPhone covering something incredibly intimate.
Kendall We have such a personal relationship with the crew. When one of us cries on the show usually you'll look around and the camera guy is crying and the producer is crying.
Kim It really is an intimate relationship. These people see every last thing.
Kris I mean, believe me, I'm not going to lie, there's been times when I've walked away from the camera and I've got a big bump in my hair and I'm like "Take that out, my hair looks like shit." I'm too vain to leave really ugly, ugly angles in.
Kim I definitely wish I didn't film so much pregnant. I looked like such a cow and I can't stand to see those episodes. I would say, "Try to film me more from chest up, so it looks better," but I look like a blob. I would have rather seen my belly and shot farther away. [On the possibility of a third child with Kanye, reportedly via surrogate] I hope so. There have been a lot of things said and Kanye and I have not confirmed anything. We're definitely trying. We are hoping so.
Dow The reason the show has this shelf life is that at its core it's about family and everyone can relate to it on some level. It has this ongoing ability to allow people to relate even if they don't live a life that's anywhere similar they can find connections to the material. The girls are incredibly hard workers and they had the ability to evolve so they didn't just get stuck. They constantly reinvented themselves with an upward trajectory.
Khloe I know people think, "You guys just film and eat your salads and drink iced tea all day." I think if someone tried to spend a week with us and did what we do — I'm not complaining about what we do at all, but it's a job.
Seacrest This family has been through things in their life that have introduced understanding and acceptance to people. Everything from interracial relationships to addiction to the Bruce-to-Caitlyn transition. There will always be a story; as they're committed to doing it, the show can go on.
Harbert You can have whatever opinion you want about the Kardashians, but they deliver a true family drama. When people ask me what [shows] I've been involved in, I love to mention Kardashians. I'll get that "really?" look, and I just look them in the eye and say, "The job is to put on hits, and this is a hit. So, sorry." You can decide if you're not a fan of the way they speak or the language they use, but as far as I can tell, the republic is still standing, and we've got bigger problems than the Kardashians.
Stotsky It's unfortunate people won't give them the credit they're due. If you take a step back and assess what they've built, it's extraordinary, and it didn't happen by accident.
Kris When we first started, I jokingly said, "We'll be on season 32, Kylie gets married." I was kidding, and here we are, and it's season 14, so be careful what you wish for.
Additional reporting by Lacey Rose.
A version of this story first appeared in the Aug. 16 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.Review: Mad Catz Dream Pad
December 3, 1999
Web posted at: 1:27 p.m. EST (1827 GMT)
By John Robinson
CNN Interactive Senior Associate Editor
(CNN) -- Buying a third party controller usually means accepting a step down in quality in favor of saving a few bucks to spend on games. Few manufacturers have ever been able to match the feel and control offered by the original device. The Mad Catz Dream Pad for the Dreamcast game console is cheaper, but does come very close to matching the quality of the official Dreamcast pad with only a few small problems.
One of the major issues with the official Dreamcast pad is that it is way too small for people with large hands. The makers of the Dream Pad apparently thought that too and made their controller significantly larger to accommodate all the game-playing apes in this world. The sides of the controller also sport a neat rubber insert to keep your hands from slipping during a game. There are also two ports on the front of the pad to accommodate a VMU and a rumble pack, like Segas original.
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Analog control offered by the Dream Pad is the same as the Dreamcast pad with a stick on the left side along with left and right triggers on the underside. The only noticeable difference is that the stick on the Dream Pad offers a bit less resistance. To its credit, the stick also has rubber coating giving it a nice tackiness.
Unfortunately, Mad Catz took the whole rubber-coating thing just a little too far and decided to coat the directional pad too. The problem with that is that it becomes difficult to quickly change your thumb position. In addition, the pad requires a harder push than the original to make it register.
Fans of fighting games will like the six button layout on the face of the controller as opposed to the original Dreamcast pad's four. Those two extra buttons allow you to use them in lieu of using the triggers. The placement of the top two buttons seems a little awkward initially but gets easier with some practice.
The Mad Catz Dream pad offers a respectable alternative to the original Dreamcast pad. It offers great analog control and a comfortable grip. Even though the directional pad isn't perfect, it does work well and is not a big enough problem to keep this controller from being well worth the money.Afghan adventures
In May 2003, 14 teams gathered at the Chaman-i-Hozori maidan in downtown Kabul for the very first Afghan national cricket trials. Some players had come from far parts, from Khost, in the east, and Kandahar, in the south, as word spread by mouth among the country’s small community of cricket players that a tournament was being organised by the Afghan Cricket Federation, and that the best players would be picked for the new U17, U19, and senior national teams. The federation had been formed in 1995, and was being run by two men, Allah Dad and Taj Malik. Malik had recently returned to Afghanistan from the vast Kacha Garhi refugee camp outside Peshawar. He came back with the express intention of setting up an Afghan national team and leading them to the World Cup.
They had some kit, much of it donated by English counties, and the support of a few key diplomats at both the British Embassy and in the Afghan government. Now they needed players, which is why they decided to hold what became known, thanks to a last-minute sponsorship deal, as the First Olympia Lube Oil Cricket Tournament. A concrete strip had been laid at Chaman-i-Hozori, the only flat patch on the rutted, dusty and rubbish-strewn park. A wrecked helicopter lay just by one boundary, burnt-out and shot-up, a relic of the Soviet-Afghan war, and beyond that sat a broken-down twin-prop plane. The first match was between Malik’s Kabul academy side and the International Security Assistance Force. The Afghans scored 151 in their 40 overs, and won by 11 runs.
World T20: Spinning conditions lie in wait as England arrive in Delhi Read more
The academy’s best player was a handsome man named Asghar Stanikzai, who made 65 and then took five wickets. So he became the very first man to be picked for the new national team. Back then they called Asghar “Dandy”, because he liked to dye his hair red with henna, and often wore a skullcap embroidered with jewels. His father had been a gem dealer, and his family had some money and a modern house in Peshawar. These days he is Afghanistan’s captain, and last Friday he scored 62 off 47 balls against Sri Lanka at Eden Gardens in the World Twenty20. He threw his bat so hard it looked like a man trying to trying to heave a bathtub over a tall brick wall. It was a brilliant innings.
In the long history of English cricket, which stretches back into the 16th century, 13 years is nothing at all, just another quick tick of the clock. For the Afghans who play them in Delhi on Wednesday, it is everything, and encompasses nearly their entire history. It’s not just Stanikzai. Karim Sadiq, Taj Malik’s brother, also played in the First Olympia Lube Oil Cricket Tournament. So did Samiullah Shenwari, one of the team’s two leg-spinners, Mohammad Nabi, their middle-order batsman and spinner, and Hamid Hassan, their fast bowler. In fact no one at the ACF had ever seen Hamid until he turned up for the trials, an overweight schoolboy who had never even held a hard cricket ball. He had skipped his final exams to come and play.
The 13-year timeline doesn’t square with some of the players’ ages. Hamid is listed as 28, which means he would have been 15 when he started. Karim is supposed to be 32, but seems to have been that age for at least six years now, ever since I first met him back in 2010. But then, when the team were invited to their first international tournament, the 2004 ACC Trophy in Malaysia, the players did not have birth certificates, let alone passports. And because many Afghan families didn’t celebrate birthdays, most of the players could only guess at their date of birth. Karim’s documents, for instance, claim he was born 48 days after his elder brother, Hasti. When they flew to Malaysia, it was the first time any of them had been on a plane. They still beat both Bahrain and Malaysia, which meant they finished fifth.
All the team had to work with back then was their talent. In his brilliant book Out of the Ashes – still the best account of the Afghan team’s journey, and the source for many of the details in this story – Tim Albone reports a conversation between Taj Malik and a Kabul shopkeeper. Taj had gone out to by himself a new suit before the team’s trip to Jersey to play in Division 5 of the International Cricket Council’s World Cricket League. The shopkeeper told him that he preferred football to cricket. “Taj finishes the argument by telling him the Afghan cricket team is only five years behind the international community whereas the football team is 50 years adrift.” And he was right. In two years the cricket team were playing in their first World T20. In seven, their first 50-over World Cup.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Afghan boys play cricket at Chaman-i-Hazoori in 2004. Photograph: Syed Jan Sabawoon/EPA
Those matches in 2003 seem so long ago. But time goes both fast and slow and in another sense, things have moved so very quickly, accelerated along by all the help the team have had, especially from the Asian Cricket Council and the MCC. Now they need more. Last week Stanikzai added his voice to the chorus calling for the associate nations to be given more matches against the top teams. Afghanistan have now played 22 limited-overs matches against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, and won 14 of them, including five out of six T20s. But they’ve played only 16 against the other eight full members of the ICC, and only three of those took place outside of ICC tournaments. They are still waiting for their first win against one of those eight teams.
“If we play against other associate countries, |
Server 2016 requires a minimum of eight 2‑core licenses for each physical server. In its licensing guide, Microsoft states that "the price of 16‑core licenses of Windows Server 2016 Datacenter and Standard Editions will be the same price as the 2‑processor license of the corresponding editions of the Windows Server 2012‑R2 version."
One piece of good news though: there will still be a free Hyper-V Server Edition if all you need is the hypervisor. ®ANAHEIM, Calif. – Yu Darvish on Wednesday night made his fifth start of the season, the 34th of his career on this side of the ocean, and after three innings a veteran scout tapped into his phone, "Darvish might have the best slider I've ever seen tonight."
Not Darvish's best slider. Anybody's best slider. Of the tens of thousands of sliders this scout had witnessed, recorded and committed to memory, the best slider. That one.
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And Darvish has, like, a half-dozen other pitches.
Several hours earlier, a more veteran scout (by perhaps 20 years) listened attentively to the clumsily phrased question: "How many pitchers have you seen with both the quantity of pitches and the quality of pitches possessed by Darvish?"
He got the gist, formed an O with his thumb and forefingers, and grinned.
"Zero," he said.
In the fourth inning at Angel Stadium, Darvish's former teammate, Josh Hamilton, came to the plate with two outs. The first pitch was a 60-mph curveball. Hamilton swung over it. Darvish got the ball back and stared in.
Darvish's catcher then went to the mound.
"I put down all 10 signs and he didn't want any of them," A.J. Pierzynski later explained.
The second pitch to Hamilton was a 98-mph fastball, which Hamilton took for a ball. In between the two, you could have fit the speed limit in most residential neighborhoods.
By the merciful end of a thorough AL West thrashing here, Darvish had gone six innings (extending his scoreless streak to 18 innings), allowed three hits and two walks and struck out 11. By eyeball count, Darvish threw 47 sliders in his 100 pitches. Twenty-seven of the sliders were swung at and missed (plenty by a foot or so), or taken for strikes, or fouled off. Six were put into play, only one of them with some authority.
Story continues
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That's the thing about barely hittable pitches, too, and the reason Darvish could be so dominant and yet be excused with still three innings to go. (That and the 11-run lead with which he departed.) That is, so few are put into play, Darvish has to throw lots of them. Through five starts, he's struck out a major-league best 49. Only once in five starts has he lasted more than seven innings – he retired the first 26 batters of his first start, only to lose the perfect game and the no-hitter – and still he's struck out at least 10 three times. And that leads us to perhaps a reasonable inside-the-numbers comparison to Darvish.
Derek Lowe, who's in his 17th season and coming up on 40 years old, swears he's seen something like Yu before. The variety of pitches, the velocity, the savvy, the heartlessness of it all and the resulting workload, it reminds Lowe of Pedro Martinez.
"People talk about all the high pitch counts," Lowe said, "and I go to Pedro. His stuff is so good they can't hit him. Pedro used to say, 'I throw every pitch expecting them to hit it. When I throw it over the plate, they're probably going to hit it. Then they don't.'"
So, he'd throw another. And another. Kind of like Darvish. Martinez won 219 games, won three Cy Young Awards and is going to the Hall of Fame. Darvish just got here, has won 20 games (and lost 10), and isn't yet in Martinez's universe. But, similarities exist, according to Lowe.
"Yu's got six pitches, at least," Lowe said. "I marvel at that. I mean, just knowing when to throw a certain pitch."
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The game's best pitchers can throw a handful of pitches, but few absolutely command more than a few. Darvish can. On Wednesday night, he did not throw a splitter or a changeup. He threw a few cutters, a few more curveballs, and rode his fastball and slider. And the Angels had no chance in a game that eventually ended at 11-3.
Scouts, managers, teammates and opponents agree Darvish is better this April than he was last season, when he came to the U.S., adjusted to the baseball and the routines and the deeper lineups and won 16 games, had a 3.90 ERA and struck out 221 in 191 1/3 innings. Against the Angels, a single baserunner appeared to be an act of mercy.
"He's coming out of the bullpen knowing what he has working," Rangers manager Ron Washington said. "He's not trying to throw everything he has. What I think we're seeing is the type of pitcher he always was. It just took him half-a-year."
In 13 starts since mid-August, Darvish is 10-3 with a 2.10 ERA. In 90 innings he has 116 strikeouts.
The veteran Pierzynski, new to the Rangers, said he strategizes with Darvish the afternoon of his starts, then again after Darvish warms in the bullpen. And even then the game can go in unforeseen directions. Wednesday was the slider and the fastball. Next start? They'll see.
"I've never been around a guy who has as many pitches and as quality pitches," Pierzynski said. "He has six or seven pitches. Most guys have two or three."
By midway through the third inning here, by which time he'd struck out Mike Trout, Howie Kendrick, Chris Iannetta and Luis Jimenez with sliders, Pierzynski had found his pitch.
"He's got one of those sliders that just stops and makes a right turn," Pierzynski said. "When he's on he's as tough as anybody I've ever seen."
Darvish said afterward that his second full season with the Rangers has brought greater comfort. Specifically, he said, he knows "how things are run here." He said he's even getting a feel for Pierzynski, who has caught four of his five starts and is regarded as a headstrong catcher.
[Video: Slow start for Angels, Dodgers]
Asked how long it takes a catcher, even one as time-worn as Pierzynski, to sort through his ‐ Darvish's – array of pitches and preferences and moods, Darvish grinned.
"I had a catcher that caught me throughout my career in Japan and I still shook him off many times my last year in Japan," he said. "I'd heard about A.J. I must say he had a pretty bad reputation in my mind. I found on the contrary, he's a good person, a very good catcher and very mature. On the whole, he treats me like a parent treating a child, in a good way. … I felt very comfortable from the beginning."
At 26 years old, 34 starts in, he's actually still in the beginning. That's what's so impressive. He's just now figuring it out. Soon, he'll be the one running things here.
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The Eagles had five players selected to the initial Pro Bowl roster this year and they are back to five despite guard Evan Mathis joining his teammates on the team.
Jeff McLane of the Philadelphia Inquirer reports that running back LeSean McCoy has pulled out of the game because of an injury. There are no details about the nature of the injury, although McCoy did ding his knee in the season-ending win over the Giants. McLane reports that it isn’t believed to be serious.
McCoy is set to make $9.75 million for the Eagles and carried a cap number just under $12 million, which led to speculation that the team will revisit his contract this offseason. McCoy said that he’s “sure we can work something out” so that McCoy remains in Philadelphia.
No replacement has been named for McCoy yet. Packers running back Eddie Lacy, Bengals rookie Jeremy Hill and Dolphins tailback Lamar Miller are potential replacements among the crew of alternates.Turns out that Mega Fracker Rex Tillerson, Exxon Mobil CEO, is a staunch supporter of Home Rule – local zoning ordinances, when they would keep a frack water supply tower away from his house – which is located in a town that had a moratorium on fracking. So he is suing in support of Home Rule in order to keep the frack water supply tower (and the frack water trucks) away from his house. His co-plaintiff in the lawsuit to block the frack water tower is the eponymous Dick Armey, Tea Party lobbyist and Cheney side-kick.
February 20, 2014 5:45 PM
BARTONVILLE, Texas—One evening last November, a tall, white-haired man turned up at a Town Council meeting to protest construction of a water tower near his home in this wealthy community outside Dallas. The man was Rex Tillerson, chairman and chief executive of Exxon Mobil Corp.
He and his neighbors had filed suit to block the tower, saying it is illegal and would create “a noise nuisance and traffic hazards,” in part because it would provide water for use in hydraulic fracturing. Fracking, which requires heavy trucks to haul and pump massive amounts of water, unlocks oil and gas from dense rock and has helped touch off a surge in U.S. energy output.
It also is a core part of Exxon’s business. The lawsuit – that Mr. Tillerson is the lead plaintiff in – cites the side effects of fracking, namely the frack truck traffic:
An Exxon spokesman said Mr. Tillerson declined to comment. The company “has no involvement in the legal matter” and its directors weren’t told of Mr. Tillerson’s participation, the spokesman said.
The dispute over the 160-foot water tower goes beyond possible nuisances related to fracking. Among the issues raised: whether a water utility has to obey local zoning ordinances and what are the rights of residents who relied on such laws in making multi-million-dollar property investments. The latter point was the focus of Mr. Tillerson’s comments at the November council meeting.
The tower would be almost 15 stories tall, adjacent to the 83-acre horse ranch Mr. Tillerson and his wife own and a short distance from their 18-acre homestead. Mr. Tillerson sat for a three-hour deposition in the lawsuit last May, attended an all-day mediation session in September and has spoken out against the tower during at least two Town Council meetings, according to public records and people involved with the case.
The Exxon chief isn’t the most vocal or well-known opponent of the tower. He and his wife are suing under the name of their horse ranch, Bar RR Ranches LLC, along with three other couples. The other lead plaintiffs are former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey and his wife, who have become fixtures at Town Council meetings.
Mr. Tillerson, 61 years old, moved to Bartonville in 2001 and became CEO in 2006. Since 2007, companies have fracked at least nine shale wells within a mile of the Tillerson home, according to Texas regulatory and real-estate records.
The last to do so was XTO Energy Inc., in August 2009, according to Texas regulators. Mr. Tillerson had just begun talks for Exxon to acquire XTO. Four months later, Exxon swallowed its smaller rival for $25 billion, becoming America’s biggest gas producer.
In 2011, Bartonville denied Cross Timbers a permit to build the water tower, saying the location was reserved for residences. The water company sued, arguing that it is exempt from municipal zoning because of its status as a public utility.In May 2012, a state district court judge agreed with Cross Timbers and compelled the town to issue a permit. The utility resumed construction as the town appealed the decision.
Later that year, the Armeys, the Tillersons and their co-plaintiffs sued Cross Timbers, saying that the company had promised them it wouldn’t build a tower near their properties. They also filed a brief in support of the town’s appeal. Last March, an appellate judge reversed the district judge’s decision saying he had overstepped his jurisdiction and sent the case back to the lower court, where it is pending. Meanwhile, the utility has reached out to Bartonville voters, who in November elected two members to the council who criticized the town’s fight against the tower, which would be located near Tillerson’s house, shown below:
“The council is currently evaluating all options,” said Bill Scherer, Bartonville’s mayor pro tem.
In the wake of the election, Mr. Tillerson was among those who lined up in a windowless hall to address the council. He told officials that he and his wife settled in Bartonville to enjoy a rural lifestyle and invested millions in their property after satisfying themselves that nothing would be built above their tree line, according to the council’s audio recording of the meeting.
Allowing the tower in defiance of town ordinances could open the door to runaway development and might prompt him to leave town, Mr. Tillerson told the council. “I cannot stay in a place,” he said, “where I do not know who to count on and who not to count on.”
Exxon CEO Against Fracking If It Affects His Property Value
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Texas Sharon’s take on the irony: “I was at the Bartonville Town Council meeting the night Rex and Dick appeared to speak about the frack water tower. Rex and Dick were given as long as they wanted to speak. We were held to a strict 3 minutes. It was surreal because several in the audience were sick from the gas well emissions, including Zoe who had oozing lesions all over her body that mysteriously cleared up when she moved away.”Cyclingnews understands that the troubled Katusha team has asked the UCI for a temporary Professional Continental licence so that Joaquim Rodriguez and his teammates can ride the Tour de San Luis in Argentina that begins on January 21. Related Articles Katusha denied 2013 WorldTour licence
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The Russian team was refused a WorldTour licence for ethics reasons in December, but has appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in the hope to overturning the UCI's decision. However, the CAS hearing is expected to be held at the end of the month and not on Thursday as reported by some media, forcing Katusha to find a temporary solution as they fight for their future.
The team is currently without any kind of licence and faces a race against time to ensure its riders can start the Argentinean race. The Katusha riders are due to travel to Argentina on January 13. The UCI has apparently told the team decision by the Licence Commission will made before January 15.
Katusha was refused a WorldTour licence for 2013 due to a series of ethical issues, including several failed anti-doping tests in recent years. New team manager Viacheslav Ekimov has defended the team's record on doping and claimed the team deserved a WorldTour licence thanks to Rodriguez ending the 2012 season as the world's number one ranked rider. Rodriguez has threaten to quit Katusha if the team does not secure a WorldTour licence and an automatic invitation to the Tour de France. RCS Sport has already overlooked the team for a wild card invitation to the Giro d'Italia.
The ethical issues sparked speculation that the team could also fail to secure a Professional Continental licence. It seems that the team's management has now offered a series of extra anti-doping measures in an attempt to appease the Licence Commission and at least secure a Professional Continental licence for 2013. These apparently include some kind of internal anti-doping controls and a much stronger stance against doping.
The way the UCI Licence Commission decides which teams meet the required ethical standard to be obtain a licence remains a tightly guarded secret. Cyclingnews understands there are no written rules or standards that must be met, with any decisions arbitrary to the Licence Commission president Pierre Zappelli and the three other members.
Rusvelo – also part of the Russian Global Cycling projected presided by oligarch Igor Makarov was given a Professional Continental licence on Wednesday. If Katusha joins them, there would be 20 teams in cycling's second division. The UCI has indicated that if the Court of Arbitration for Sport rules in favour of Katusha and awards them a place in the WorldTour, then the lowest ranked team, would be forced down to Professional Continental level.Park showdown proves neighborhoods' strength
Wal-Mart this week demonstrated that it has learned something that San Antonio developers learned 30 years ago.
That's about the time that the rise of neighborhood associations as a political force began.
Such associations generally are sensitive to what they see as incursions on their neighborhoods — whether the incursions be low-income housing or big-box developers. Or just about anything other than a park.
About that time City Council members learned that it was politically hazardous to be seen as tools of developers or their lobbyists. This was especially true if the politicians received substantial campaign contributions from those very developers and their lobbyists, as many did.
So council members took on the role of mediators between developers and neighborhood leaders. They would put both sides through a process that often produced more acceptable designs, sound-reducing barricades, traffic control and other amenities.
North Side neighbors of the proposed Wal-Mart on 42 acres at Blanco Road and Wurzbach Parkway — right next to Hardberger Park and the North Castle Hills subdivision — are busy judging for themselves how well Councilwoman Elise Chan did in her role as mediator. The reaction Tuesday evening when she presented the concessions she had won from Wal-Mart indicated more negotiations may be in order.
Chan, with the help of her fellow council members, forced the current negotiations with a bit of mau-mauing last February, when she and her colleagues threatened to down-zone the property so that the Wal-Mart could not be built.
It was clear from the beginning that Chan was just trying to gain more ammunition in negotiations that had stalled with Wal-Mart. For one thing, it would require at least nine members of the council to down-zone the property in the face of vigorous opposition from the still-powerful real estate development industry.
For another, even if that super-majority were achieved, there is little reason to think that the Texas Supreme Court would let the decision stand. That body recently showed itself to be so tilted toward individual property rights as opposed to community concerns that they overturned decades of precedent and a voter-approved state constitutional amendment that made all of Texas beaches public property.
But retailers must be sensitive to public perception, and to engage in a protracted legal battle to run roughshod over neighborhood concerns would hardly enhance Wal-Mart's image.
In the wake of the massively documented article in last Sunday's New York Times (find it on mySanAntonio..com: http://tinyurl.com/cfk5f5u) detailing allegations that Wal-Mart used systematic large-scale bribery to fuel the company's aggressive expansion in Mexico, Wal-Mart should be especially sensitive to public perception these days.
Neighborhood associations are part of the political fabric that makes such corruption more difficult in the United States. History offers plenty of evidence that U.S. politicians are not inherently more virtuous than Mexican politicians.
But when voters here organize, they can compete with the power of money — at least on the local level.
This commentary is Rick Casey's “Last Word” from KLRN-TV's “Texas Week With Rick Casey.”Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
Singer Vehicle Design is well known for providing lavish attention to the Porsche 911s it restores, but this, man, is something else. The California company announced today that it’s collaborating with Williams Advanced Engineering—yes, that Williams—on a modified air-cooled, naturally aspirated 4.0-liter Porsche flat-six that makes 500 horsepower.
For those keeping score at home, this engine matches the power output of the current 911 GT3, despite the fact that it relies on a belt-driven fan for cooling.
Singer and Williams tapped Hans Mezger, the man who designed Porsche’s first flat-six and many of its greatest race engines, as a technical consultant for this project. This engine is actually a modified version of a Mezger design, the 3.6-liter flat-six from a 1990 911, but its spec reads more like something designed for F1 competition.
It uses four-valve cylinder heads, dual oil circuits, titanium connecting rods, aluminum throttle bodies, carbon-fiber intake trumpets, and a carbon-fiber airbox. There are also ram-air intakes built into the 911’s rear quarter-windows and a titanium and Inconel exhaust. Singer says it’s good to rev beyond 9000 rpm.
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It must sound quite nice.
The engine pictured here is just a rendering, but it will make its first real-world appearance in a 911 restored for Singer client Scott Blattner. We should have additional details about this Singer-restored 1990 911 in September.
Singer said that Williams worked on other elements of Blattner’s 911 that will be announced shortly. Eventually, Singer will offer these Williams-enhanced components as part of a stand-alone collection of lightweight and high-performance mods.
Considering most Singer clients pay more than $600,000 for the company to restore their old 911s, it wouldn’t be surprising to see cars with this engine crest the $1 million mark. Given what we can see here, it might just be worth it.
This story originally appeared on Road & Track.De'Anthony Thomas is sort of world-famous for his haphazard all-caps Twitter tangents. Friday night was something else, though.
The tale really hit the ground running.
I LOVE TALKING TO MOMS — DE'ANTHONY THOMAS (@1STCLASSMOMBA) January 26, 2013
Then it suddenly became clear that we were about to be subjected to the insane college football version of Cosmopolis. Only more entertaining.
ON MY WAT TO THE BARBERSHOP IM FINNA CHOP IT LOW FADE — DE'ANTHONY THOMAS (@1STCLASSMOMBA) January 26, 2013
To the streets!
TAXI RIDE LOL — DE'ANTHONY THOMAS (@1STCLASSMOMBA) January 26, 2013
lol
I LOVE TALKING TO MY MOM — DE'ANTHONY THOMAS (@1STCLASSMOMBA) January 26, 2013
Well it's nice that there's a specific mom now.
STARTING MY WEEKEND WITH A FRESH CUT — DE'ANTHONY THOMAS (@1STCLASSMOMBA) January 26, 2013
Power move, De'Anthony.
MOST FADED BARBERSHOP — DE'ANTHONY THOMAS (@1STCLASSMOMBA) January 26, 2013
If that's not the actual name of the barbershop, that's the funniest tweet of the bunch.
I NEED A CLEAN BRUSH SO I CAN GET ON TEAM 360 — DE'ANTHONY THOMAS (@1STCLASSMOMBA) January 26, 2013
is this a reference I don't get it I am old
WHAT'S YO BODY COUNT? — DE'ANTHONY THOMAS (@1STCLASSMOMBA) January 26, 2013
That is kind of a personal question, man. #cmonman
DREAMS COME TRUE SO DREAM BIG — DE'ANTHONY THOMAS (@1STCLASSMOMBA) January 26, 2013
We can learn so much from you, young man.
THEY YELL OUT THE WINDOW GO DUCKS — DE'ANTHONY THOMAS (@1STCLASSMOMBA) January 26, 2013
They sure do!
I WANT SOME OLIVE GARDEN TO GO — DE'ANTHONY THOMAS (@1STCLASSMOMBA) January 26, 2013
Hey, join the club, pal. Make sure you get some toasted ravioli as an app.
EVERYBODY TIMELINE GOING CRAZY EVERYTHING ABOUT ME — DE'ANTHONY THOMAS (@1STCLASSMOMBA) January 26, 2013
This just got meta. WE'RE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, PEOPLE.
STOP SNITCHING — DE'ANTHONY THOMAS (@1STCLASSMOMBA) January 26, 2013
Kool Moe Dee would probably give you like a C- in "sticking to themes."Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks.
SOME time after the dotcom boom turned into a spectacular bust in 2000, bumper stickers began appearing in Silicon Valley imploring: “Please God, just one more bubble.” That wish has now been granted. Compared with the rest of America, Silicon Valley feels like a boomtown. Corporate chefs are in demand again, office rents are soaring and the pay being offered to talented folk in fashionable fields like data science is reaching Hollywood levels. And no wonder, given the prices now being put on web companies.
Facebook and Twitter are not listed, but secondary-market trades value them at some $76 billion (more than Boeing or Ford) and $7.7 billion respectively. This week LinkedIn, a social network for professionals, said it hopes to be valued at up to $3.3 billion in an initial public offering (IPO). The next day Microsoft announced its purchase of Skype, an internet calling and video service, for a frothy-looking $8.5 billion—ten times its sales last year and 400 times its operating income. And those are all big-brand companies with customers around the world. Prices look even more excessive for fledgling firms in the private market (Color, a photo-sharing social network, was recently said to be worth $100m, even though it has an untested service) or for anything involving China. There has been a stampede for shares in Renren, hailed as “China's Facebook”, and other Chinese web giants listed on American exchanges.
So is history indeed about to repeat itself? Those who think not point out that the tech landscape has changed dramatically since the late 1990s. Back then few people were plugged into the internet; today there are 2 billion netizens, many of them in huge new wired markets such as China. A dozen years ago ultra-fast broadband connections were rare; today they are ubiquitous. And last time many start-ups (remember Webvan and Pets.com) had massive ambitions but puny revenues; today web stars such as Groupon, which offers its users online coupons, and Zynga, a social-gaming company, have phenomenal sales and already make respectable profits.
The this-time-it's-different brigade also points out that the 1990s bubble expanded only after numerous web firms were floated on stockmarkets and naive investors pumped up the price of their shares to insane levels. This time, there have been relatively few big internet IPOs (though that is likely to change). And there is no sign of the widespread mania in the high-tech world that occurred last time around: the NASDAQ stockmarket index, a bellwether for the tech industry, has been rising but is still far below its peak of March 2000.
In one respect the optimists are right. This time is indeed different, though not because the boom-and-bust cycle has miraculously disappeared. It is different because the tech bubble-in-the-making is forming largely out of sight in private markets and has a global dimension that its predecessor lacked.
The bubble is being pumped partly by wealthy “angel” investors, some of whom made their fortunes in the late-1990s IPO boom. Their financial firepower has increased and they are battling one another for stakes in web start-ups (see article). In some cases angels are skimping on due diligence to win deals. When it comes to investing in more established companies like Facebook and the bigger web firms, traditional venture capitalists now face competition from private-equity companies and bank-led funds hunting for profits in a bleak investment environment. Gucci-shod leveraged-buy-out kings may appear to be more sophisticated than the waitresses buying dotcom shares a decade ago—but many of the newcomers are no more knowledgeable about technology.
This boom also has wider horizons than the previous one. It was arguably started by Russian investors. Skype was born in Estonia. Finland's Rovio, which makes the popular Angry Birds smartphone game, recently raised $42m. And then there's China. Renren and Youku, “China's YouTube”, supposedly offer investors a chance to profit both from the country's extraordinary growth and from the broader impact of the internet on commerce and society. Chinese web start-ups often command $15m-20m valuations in early financing rounds, far more than their peers in America.
These differences will have important consequences. The first is that the bubble forming in the private market could be pretty big by the time it floats into the public one. Facebook may turn out to be the next Google, and LinkedIn has a fairly solid revenue plan. But they will be followed by less robust outfits—the Facebook and LinkedIn wannabes—with prices that have been dangerously inflated by the angels' antics.
The froth in China's web industry could also lead to unrealistic valuations elsewhere. And it may be China that causes the web bubble eventually to burst. Few of those rushing to buy Chinese shares have thought through the political risks these companies face because of the sensitivity of their content. A clampdown on a prominent web firm could startle investors and prompt a broader sell-off, as could a financial scandal.
With luck the latest web bubble will do less damage than its predecessor. In the 1990s internet euphoria caused a dramatic inflation in the price of telecoms firms, which were creating the infrastructure for the web. When internet firms' share prices plummeted, telecoms investors suffered too. So far, there has been no sign of such a spillover effect this time around. But the globalisation of the internet industry means that many more people could be tempted to dabble in web stocks in the current boom, adding to the pain of the bust.
When will that be? This paper warned about both the last internet bubble and the American property bubble long before they burst. Irrational exuberance rarely gives way to rational scepticism quickly. So some bets on start-ups now will pay off. But investors should take a great deal of care when it comes to picking firms to back: they cannot just rely on somebody else paying even more later. And they might want to put another bumper sticker on their cars: “Thanks, God. Now give me the wisdom to sell before it's too late.”Only two races, the Republican candidacies for sheriff and school superintendent, have even token primary opposition.
The roster of county candidates took shape June 1, 2016, as the deadline passed for them to submit their nominating petitions. (Photo: Charlie Leight/The Republic)
On Tuesday of this week, the roster of candidates running in the Aug. 30 primary election for Maricopa County offices had a lot of empty spaces.
By Wednesday's deadline for filing signatures to be placed on the ballot, those slots had filled out — but just barely.
Only three races, the Republican candidacies for sheriff, recorder and school superintendent, have even token primary opposition. The rest of the candidates will run unopposed. And candidates challenging incumbents by and large have little or no government experience, their Facebook pages and websites sparse on background.
The county primaries, in other words, are a mere formality. The act of gathering signatures was enough to ensure a spot on the ballot for the November general election. Many candidates, especially incumbents, will run unopposed in November, too.
The field of candidates:
Maricopa County sheriff
Despite his legal problems, Republican Joe Arpaio is running for his seventh term as sheriff. But he faces challenges in his own party from former Buckeye police Chief Dan Saban, who has run unsuccessfully against him twice before; a retired long-time county sheriff's deputy named K.W. Baker; and Marsha Ann Hill, whose law-enforcement experience consists of starting Arpaio's former animal posse. That posse was disbanded after Hill reportedly battled with the Sheriff's Office over funds she had raised.
Former Phoenix police Sgt. Paul Penzone is running unopposed for the Democrat spot on the November ballot. It will be his second run against Arpaio, if Arpaio wins the primary.
A single Libertarian candidate, Chad Thomas Lisk, also has put his name in and will appear on the general election ballot. His campaign material shows him wearing a Maricopa County Sheriff's Office uniform, but he no longer works for that office and does not mention any further law-enforcement experience.
School superintendent
Incumbent Dan Covey, a Republican, faces Valley schoolteachers Steve Watson and Jana Jackson in the primary. The sole Democrat up for the post is a Glendale woman, Michelle Robertson, whose website gives no insights into who she is, other than that she has worked in some capacity at a Glendale middle school.
Recorder
Embattled incumbent Helen Purcell is running to remain in her longtime post. She faces primary opposition in Aaron Flannery, whose only listed credentials on his campaign Facebook page are that he is conservative and has a master's degree in public administration. Defense attorney and former Assistant Arizona Attorney General Adrian Fontes has put his name in to run as a Democrat, and will face Purcell or Flannery in November.
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County attorney
County Attorney Bill Montgomery is the only Republican on the primary ballot, though Diego Rodriguez, a general practice attorney with some prosecutorial experience at the Pima County Attorney's Office, is running as a Democrat.
Treasurer
Treasurer Hos Hoskins has decided not to run for re-election. His chief deputy, Royce Flora, a Republican, is running in his stead. Joe Downs, a financial adviser and MBA with cute videos of his dog on his campaign Facebook page, is running as the lone Democrat.
Assessor
Republican incumbent Paul Petersen is the only candidate in the running.
Board of Supervisors
As of Wednesday's filing deadline, none of the incumbents or would-be supervisors will have primary opposition, and only one will have a challenger in the November general election. A Mesa tech-firm systems expert named Matthew Cerra, a Democrat, will run against incumbent Republican Denny Barney in the East Valley's District 1.
Republicans Steve Chucri (District 2) and Clint Hickman (District 4) and Democrat Steve Gallardo (District 5) will run unopposed in August and November.
On Wednesday, Phoenix Councilman Bill Gates announced that he resigning from his post to run as a Republican for supervisor in District 3, to fill the slot that will be left vacant by longtime Supervisor Andy Kunasek, who has chosen not to run again.
Read or Share this story: http://azc.cc/1sPOYzQSen. Al Franken, D-Minn., is seen during the third day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 27, 2016. (Paul Sancya/AP)
Sen. Al Franken's admission of "completely inappropriate" actions with a radio host who accused him of non-consensual kissing and groping 11 years ago opened up a new wave of recriminations as the political industry confronts its own problems of harassment and abuse.
The second-term Minnesota Democrat, once considered a potential presidential candidate, quickly accepted responsibility for his behavior and expressed unequivocal regret for actions during a USO tour he left undescribed. He also endorsed a congressional ethics inquiry into the incident that occurred prior to his election as senator.
But Republicans, who were reeling from a nonstop week of morally disturbing and politically disastrous allegations against Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, were eager to train partisan fire on Franken, if only to even the treacherous political playing field.
GOP lawmakers had been badgered day after day to disavow and cut ties with Moore, who is accused of multiple sexual encounters with teenage girls, at least one of whom was under the age of consent. An undeterred Moore remains in the Dec. 12 special election to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions, even as most national Republicans have abandoned him.
Suddenly, on Thursday, it was Democrats who were placed in the awkward position of grappling with the appropriate consequences for Franken. Most of his colleagues expressed outrage and disgust, but none had called for him to resign, not even a single Republican.
"There is never an excuse for this behavior – ever," Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois said. "What Sen. Franken did was wrong, and it should be referred to the Ethics Committee for review."
Campaign committees for the House and Senate GOP quickly targeted Democrats who had received thousands of dollars of contributions from Franken. Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, who faces an expectedly difficult re-election bid next year, announced Franken would no longer appear at a Saturday fundraiser on his behalf. |
1.8.7 release 2010-05-14 JI) [x86_64-apple-darwin10.3.0]
If you prefer to live life on the wild side, you can hit up the Rubinius GitHub repository, check out the code and perform a manual install (by following the instructions in the README). If you're interested in tinkering, rather than just trying your code on Rubinius, this is the route I'd advise, since you can more easily dig into Rubinius's source code and see just how it's implemented (or, of course, you could just browse the source on GitHub, as I tend to do).Ellen Pao walks back to court. A jury ruled against Ellen Pao on Friday in her sex discrimination case against venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The jury found that Kleiner Perkins did not discriminate against Pao on the basis of gender, did not keep her from a promotion due to her gender, took reasonable steps to prevent gender discrimination at the firm and did not retaliate against her for complaining about gender discrimination. (Photo11: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images)
SAN FRANCISCO — The revelations keep coming in the Ellen Pao discrimination case that appeared to have ended when she lost on all counts. In fact, it is far from over.
A frank and sometimes cutting court filing Friday shows the former venture capitalist asked for $2.7 million not to appeal her loss, nearly three times what she was offered as a settlement before the case went to trial.
In a much-publicized five week trial, Pao sued her former employer, the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers for $16 million in lost wages and future earnings because of gender discrimination and retaliation.
She lost on all claims on March 27 in San Francisco Superior Court.
After the loss, Kleiner filed a request for just under $1 million to recover its costs for the trial. That $1 million didn't include charges for Kleiner's legal team, which likely ran into the millions.
In response, Pao filed a notice disputing the request, calling the amount unreasonable.
At some point, she also asked Kleiner for $2.7 million to not appeal, though neither side will say when that was. Kleiner did not accept the offer and on Tuesday Pao filed a notice that she planned to appeal the decision.
On Friday, separate from the appeal notice, Kleiner filed its response to Pao's previous filing disputing the repayment costs.
"Her claim for unreasonableness is particularly nonsensical given her own post-trial demand of KPCB for $2.7 million to cover her fees and costs," it read.
In the filing, also Kleiner states that Pao refused a $1 million settlement offer prior to the trial.
Pao is interim CEO at Reddit, a news and discussion site. Her spokeswoman, Heather Wilson, said she would not comment on the filing.
In a statement, Kleiner's Christina Lee said Pao was obligated, as a matter of law, to repay a portion of the company's legal costs.
When Kleiner offered to waive costs in an attempt to bring this matter to a close, Pao instead "demanded an additional $2.7 million payment from KPCB in return for not appealing, despite the jury's unequivocal verdict in our favor on all counts. We have no intention of accepting this unreasonable demand," Lee said.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1MbYKA6A new year begins, and with new years come resolutions. As we move forward we look to progress further, enter more titles and create more opportunities for Ninjas in Pyjamas and our fans. Our first large expansion of the year sees our return to Dota 2.
A new and exciting venture for NiP into another large title in the esports scene, as Dota 2 is one of the world’s most popular MOBA games. This is not our first venture into the scene, but with a new lineup comes new adventure, new possibilities and new personalities. With that being said, we think you will recognize some of the faces, as we return to the scene with a team filled with great talent, experience and outgoing personalities.
We would first like to welcome Adrian ‘ Era’ Kryeziu back into the NiP family! The 21 year old Swedish Carry has before been a part of the Ninjas in Pyjamas Dota lineup up until late 2015. He first made his name in Heroes of Newerth before moving on to a successful career in Dota 2.
Next up we would like to welcome Max ‘qojqva’ Bröcker! The 21 year old German Midlaner has played in two The Internationals (2014 and 2016) and has before played for Team Liquid and Mousesports amongst others.
The third player we would like to welcome is Kalle ‘Trixi’ Saarinen! The 27 year old Finnish Offlaner is another player who made his start in Heroes of Newerth. He showed impressive versatility in HoN before moving to Dota 2 and has since spent much of his time under the Fnatic banner.
Fourth we would like to welcome Kai ‘H4nn1’ Handbückers! The 27 year old German defines himself as a semi support and is one of the more experienced names in the game, coming from a background of HoN and Dota 1. Another player who spent a large amount of time at Fnatic also appearing at TI 2013.
Finally we would like to welcome Troels ‘syndereN’ Nielsen! Completing our lineup is the 27 year old Danish Support player, who also takes on the team captain role. syndereN is another well known player across the scene with well documented history putting his analytical nature to work in both his playing career and casting. Nielsen has attended TI both as a player and a talent personality in his career so far.
The NiP Dota 2 Team Captain syndereN has this to say about the team becoming part of Ninjas in Pyjamas:
“I am thrilled to join Ninjas in Pyjamas. It is one of the most renowned organizations with a rich history. Playing with such a name is a great opportunity, but also a responsibility; it comes with high expectations and therefore I’m happy to have formed a team of such experienced and proven players with great synergy to deliver. Together with NiP, we plan to become a top contender for the year. We’ve already progressed a lot in our early practice and I only see us improving as the year progresses.“
Hicham Chahine, CEO of Ninjas in Pyjamas has the following to say regarding the team and return to Dota 2:
“2016 was an exciting year for Ninjas in Pyjamas with great developments both in- and out of game. As we enter 2017, we are eager to continue our expansion to further manifest ourselves as a multi-gaming organization competing across several large titles with top tier players and lineups. We are therefore extremely excited to bring the majority of an iconic Dota 2 lineup back together as we announce our return to the scene. We are happy to have five extremely professional, experienced and talented players to share this journey with in order to provide our fans with more great NiP moments and experiences. Welcome Troels, Adrian, Kalle, Max and Kai to the Ninjas in Pyjamas family, we are looking forward to seeing them competing carrying the NiP name and legacy.”“Life is a mirror and what you see out there, you must first see inside of you” – Wally “Famous” Amos
It’s a theme that is consistent in almost everything from self-help books to teachings by spiritual gurus, it’s the notion that the relationship we have with ourselves will determine the relationship we have with the world around us. This idea is very empowering, because while so many people have spent precious time trying to change someone or something in their lives to no avail, this idea shows that all that we need to do in order to feel more at peace with the world is to change ourselves. When we change, the world around us automatically changes. If you desire to live a less stressful life by changing the relationship you have with yourself, here are some tips to consider:
When You Change; The World Around You Also Changes
Watch Out for the Ego
The ego, or sense of self, is a very fragile thing. It’s the part of you that wants so desperately for your bad mood to be their fault, or your anger to because of them. The ego never wants to see itself as the problem, so it will make you believe that nothing is ever your fault. It’s always something someone else has done that has forced you to behave in the way that you did. The most important thing to remember here is that your actions and feelings are always generated by you alone. The way someone else behaves is their doing, while your reaction to it is your doing. That being said, there are things that you can do for yourself that will greatly influence your perspective of life and your reaction to others.
Love Yourself Unconditionally
When we love ourselves exactly as we are now, in this very moment with all of our perceived imperfections, we are loving ourselves unconditionally. It’s ok to not be exactly where you want to be yet. So many people want to wait until they are “perfect” to start loving themselves, but that perfection never comes. It’s only when we see ourselves as perfectly imperfect as we are now, that we can find inner peace and acceptance of ourselves. When we accept ourselves for all of our imperfections, we find it easier to accept others with their imperfections, which means we stop looking for what’s wrong with the world and instead start seeing what’s right. See Also (How to Love Yourself)
Forgive Yourself
We’ve all made mistakes…… When you a mistake, and you will at some point, you have two options, you can dwell on it and beat yourself up about it over and over, or you can recognize it, learn from it and move on. When we choose to learn from our mistakes we stop being so hard on ourselves for making them in the first place. We can move forward with our lives without living in the past. The best thing about being more forgiving of ourselves is that we find it easier to forgive others. Who has never done something or said something they shouldn’t have? Absolutely no one. So if we can allow ourselves to make a flub every once in a while, we also give the same luxury to others. Forgiving ourselves easily will always translate into forgiving others more easily, which will in turn make life move along with more ease.
Point the Finger Back at Yourself
If someone brings about a strong negative emotional reaction from you, it’s always the universe giving you a clue to something you need to work on in yourself. This is one of the hardest lessons to learn (that ego again), but the most rewarding. When someone angers you, use it as an opening to see what part of your ego is being hurt. Every negative situation is a chance for self-awareness, and a chance to choose a more loving reaction. You can say to yourself, “where can I practice love or forgiveness either towards them or myself in this situation?” When we grow as people, we will notice that we are bothered, annoyed and frustrated less. The love and happiness we find in ourselves will be reflected back to us in the world we see.
Trying to change the world around us can be an exhausting endeavor. We place the key to our happiness in the behavior of others who may or may not ever change. To get to the root of the problem, turn your attention inward and focus on changing yourself first. You will find that you notice less problems in the outside world when you have made peace with all of the perceived problems inside of you.
Photo credit: Susanne NilssonImage copyright Picture by Ian Dobson Image caption Emergency services at the scene of the incident at Strangford Lough
Ten people have been injured during an international boating event on Strangford Lough in County Down.
A major rescue effort got under way after 87 sailing dinghies were hit by a sudden squall.
Initial reports suggested up to 100 people, including children, were in the water. However, the coastguard has since confirmed that 20 went overboard.
Everyone has now been rescued. A major incident was declared at a nearby hospital but has since been stood down.
A spokesperson for the Ulster Hospital in Dundonald said two people had been taken to the hospital with minor injuries.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption About 87 vessels were taking part in the race on Strangford Lough when 20 capsized
The injured were treated by the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service, which set up tents at the scene. Most of those being treated showed signs of hypothermia.
Liam Colquhoun, watch manager at Belfast Coastguard, confirmed the search and rescue operation had been a success and was called off within three hours.
"We have now been told by our rescue units on scene that everyone has safely returned to shore and that no one is missing," he said.
"We believe 20 people ended up in the water after their boats capsized this afternoon, 10 of them requiring medical attention.
"The weather conditions on scene have been pretty treacherous, with winds gusting up to 60mph. We're very thankful that everyone has now safely returned."
Image copyright PAcemaker Image caption About 87 boats were taking part in the event when a squall hit
A GP14 world championship event was being held on the lough near Killyleagh.
A spokesperson for the event said the first race had been due to take place at 11:55 BST on Monday but it had been cancelled due to bad weather.
Competitors were on their way back to shore when the incident happened.
It is not known how many children were involved, but they are thought to be aged between 13 and 18.
Ian Dobson, a world champion dinghy and yacht racer, who was taking part in the event, praised "the well executed response and safety procedure deployed by the organisers".
The Bangor and Portaferry Coastguard rescue teams, the Portaferry and Newcastle RNLI lifeboats, the Irish Coast Guard helicopter along with the helicopter from RAF Valley are helping in the rescue effort.
The GP14 world championship event sees one of the biggest fleets of single class twin crew dinghies assemble in Northern Ireland.
With an international following the event attracted about 200 competitors, some from as far away as Australia.
Hosted by East Down Yacht Club, which is a few miles outside Killyleagh, races are held daily over the week-long event.One of the men convicted of gang raping a woman on a bus in Delhi has blamed his victim for the fatal attack, saying “girls are far more responsible for rape” than men.
The 23-year-old physiotherapy student died of horrific injuries two weeks after being assaulted by six men as she travelled home from the cinema with a male friend.
Among them was Mukesh Singh, who claims he was driving the bus during the incident on 16 December 2012 and did not take part In an interview with the BBC from prison, where he is awaiting execution, he referred to the woman’s murder as “an accident” caused by her being out at night.
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.
“A decent girl won't roam around at nine o'clock at night,” he said.
“A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy. Boys and girls are not equal.
“Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong things, wearing wrong clothes.
“About 20 per cent of girls are good.”
Police said his victim, known as “Jyoti”, meaning “flame”, was found with multiple wounds and had also been raped with metal bars, causing catastrophic internal injuries.
She and her friend were thrown from the moving bus and 13 days of extensive medical treatment could not save her.
Jyoti’s death sparked a wave of unprecedented protests across India and the world and five of the perpetrators were sentenced to death.
The Indian public also gave her other names, including Jagruti (“awareness”), Amanat (“treasure”), Nirbhaya (“fearless one”).
BBC Four is airing a documentary on the rape and its impact on 8 March.
Speaking to interviewers for the Storyville programme, to be aired on International Women’s Day, Singh is seen suggesting the rape and beatings were to teach Jyoti and her friend a lesson.
He criticised her for resisting her attackers, saying: “When being raped, she shouldn't fight back.
“She should just be silent and allow the rape. Then they'd have dropped her off after doing her and only hit the boy.”
Her male friend was badly beaten and suffered broken limbs but survived to testify against Singh and the five other men at their trial.
Singh was sentenced to death by hanging for Jyoti’s rape and murder, along with four others.
His brother, Ram Singh, was found dead in his jail cell in March 2013 and Mukesh and the remaining three are currently on appeal with their sentences put on hold.
Their 17-year-old accomplice was also convicted of rape and murder but sentenced to three years in a reform facility according to Indian sentencing laws for juvenile offenders.
Singh claimed that executing him and the other convicted rapists will endanger future rape victims.
“Now when they rape, they won't leave the girl like we did - they will kill her,” he said.
Shape Created with Sketch. In pictures: India in shock after teenage girls 'gang raped and hanged' Show all 13 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. In pictures: India in shock after teenage girls 'gang raped and hanged' 1/13 India gang rape Sohan, father and uncle of Murti and Pushpa, the two girls who were raped and hanged in Katra Sadatganj in Uttar Pradesh, is comforted by his mother (Photo Simon de Trey-White) Simon de Trey-White 2/13 India gang rape Murti's mother is briefed by the local Senior Superintendant of Police Atul Saxena (Photo Simon de Trey-White) Simon de Trey-White 3/13 India gang rape Sohan (55) holds passport sized images in his hands of his daughter Murti (right) and niece Pushpa (left) in Katra village, Ushait near Baduan, Uttar Pradesh (Photo Simon de Trey-White) Simon de Trey-White 4/13 India gang rape Murti’s brother Veerendar (Photo Simon de Trey-White) Simon de Trey-White 5/13 India gang rape Villagers stand by the mango tree from which the two girls were hanged (Photo Simon de Trey-White) 6/13 India gang rape Villagers and media throng the home of the murdered teenage girls (Photo Simon de Trey-White) 7/13 India gang rape Congress party Vice President Rahul Gandhi interacts with women during his visit to the village of the two girls 8/13 India gang rape Demonstrators from All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA) hold placards and shout slogans during a protest in New Delhi against the recent killings 9/13 India gang rape Members of the All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA) shout slogans during the protest 10/13 India gang rape Members of Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union shout slogans as they participate in a protest against the gang rape 11/13 India gang rape A member of Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union shouts slogans 12/13 India gang rape An activist places a candle on a pavement during a candle lit vigil to protest against the gang rape of two teenage girls 13/13 India gang rape Activists hold candles during a vigil 1/13 India gang rape Sohan, father and uncle of Murti and Pushpa, the two girls who were raped and hanged in Katra Sadatganj in Uttar Pradesh, is comforted by his mother (Photo Simon de Trey-White) Simon de Trey-White 2/13 India gang rape Murti's mother is briefed by the local Senior Superintendant of Police Atul Saxena (Photo Simon de Trey-White) Simon de Trey-White 3/13 India gang rape Sohan (55) holds passport sized images in his hands of his daughter Murti (right) and niece Pushpa (left) in Katra village, Ushait near Baduan, Uttar Pradesh (Photo Simon de Trey-White) Simon de Trey-White 4/13 India gang rape Murti’s brother Veerendar (Photo Simon de Trey-White) Simon de Trey-White 5/13 India gang rape Villagers stand by the mango tree from which the two girls were hanged (Photo Simon de Trey-White) 6/13 India gang rape Villagers and media throng the home of the murdered teenage girls (Photo Simon de Trey-White) 7/13 India gang rape Congress party Vice President Rahul Gandhi interacts with women during his visit to the village of the two girls 8/13 India gang rape Demonstrators from All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA) hold placards and shout slogans during a protest in New Delhi against the recent killings 9/13 India gang rape Members of the All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA) shout slogans during the protest 10/13 India gang rape Members of Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union shout slogans as they participate in a protest against the gang rape 11/13 India gang rape A member of Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union shouts slogans 12/13 India gang rape An activist places a candle on a pavement during a candle lit vigil to protest against the gang rape of two teenage girls 13/13 India gang rape Activists hold candles during a vigil
“Before, they would rape and say, ‘Leave her, she won't tell anyone.’ Now when they rape, especially the criminal types, they will just kill the girl.”
Two lawyers who defended the rapists in court were also interviewed for the documentary.
AP Singh had previously said that if his sister or daughter “disgraced herself” by being seen with a man, he would “to my farmhouse, and in front of my entire family, I would put petrol on her and set her alight”.
Another defence lawyer in the case, ML Sharma, said: “In our society, we never allow our girls to come out from the house after 6.30 or 7.30 or 8.30 in the evening with any unknown person.
“You are talking about man and woman as friends. Sorry, that doesn't have any place in our society. We have the best culture. In our culture, there is no place for a woman.”
It was a double standard of which Jyoti was well aware. Her former friend and tutor told the BBC that she said India’s biggest problem was its “mentality” enforcing perceived differences between girls and boys from birth.
Her murder increased scrutiny of the country’s staggering levels of violence against women and provoked promised legal reforms.
Jyoti was working as a physiotherapy intern when she was murdered and her parents had sold their ancestral lands to pay for her training.
Speaking on the documentary, her father said her death “lit a torch” for women’s rights.
Her mother added: “Whenever there's a crime, the girl is blamed, ‘She should not go out. She shouldn't roam around so late or wear such clothes.' It's the boys who should be accused and asked why they do this.”
Storyville – India's Daughter, will air on BBC Four Sunday 8 March at 10pm
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 nowVenezuela's President Nicolas Maduro gestures while he attends to a rally against the opposition's amnesty law at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, April 7, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela’s top court on Monday struck down an amnesty law approved last month by the opposition-dominated Congress, scuttling an effort by critics of President Nicolas Maduro to secure the release of jailed opposition activists.
The supreme court’s constitutional chamber ruled that the law violated constitutional principles because it promoted impunity and offered amnesty for crimes that were not eligible for such treatment.
“This impunity law cannot pass,” said Maduro, who had vowed to veto it, in a televised broadcast minutes before the court’s decision was released. “If we want peace, that law cannot pass.”
The court has repeatedly backed Maduro in his disputes with the legislature following the opposition’s blowout victory in December polls that gave it a two-thirds majority of seats.
Opposition leaders accuse Maduro of using allies in the courts to run roughshod over the assembly, noting that ruling Socialist Party legislators used lame-duck sessions late last year to name party militants to the bench.
“The autonomy of the legislative branch is not up for discussion, and for that reason #Amnestyislaw,” wrote the National Assembly’s leadership via the institution’s official Twitter account. The tweet includes a link to a petition demanding the law’s enactment.
Opposition leaders had promoted the law to benefit high-profile government adversaries, including Leopoldo Lopez, who was arrested in 2014 on accusations that he helped spur a wave of demonstrations that ultimately left more than 40 people dead.FEAR Online has been announced as in development at Koean-based Inplay Interactive.
To be published on PC by Aeria Games, the free-to-play online multiplayer game is currently accepting beta applications.
“We are thrilled to present the next entry in one of the most popular horror franchises of the last decade,” said Tom Nichols, VP of PC Games, Aeria Games. “FEAR Online will bring back the tense, heart-pounding action that the series is known for and make it accessible to a huge online community of competitive players.”
The game will focus on several team combat modes spanning over ten maps filled with “still-twitching bodies hanging from meat hooks and messages smeared in blood.”
F.E.A.R. 3’s Soul King mode also makes a return, challenging players to “possess enemies for new abilities and collect more fallen souls than their opponents.”
The story also continues in cooperative scenarios detailing the occurrences surrounding the events of F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin.
Up to four players can team up against Armacham personnel and “hideous monsters lurking around every corner.”
A release date was not provided, but a teaser is posted below along with some screenshots, renders and art.
F.E.A.R. 3 developer Day 1 Studios was recently acquired by Wargaming.Beachy threw three scoreless innings in a start against the Cubs ( won by the Dodgers, 6-5 ), reinforcing the belief that he's the preferred choice to move into the starting spot opened by last week's unexpected back surgery for Brett Anderson.
PHOENIX -- Dodgers management is entering its second year believing that Brandon Beachy has a place in the starting rotation, and he moved closer to that Saturday night.
PHOENIX -- Dodgers management is entering its second year believing that Brandon Beachy has a place in the starting rotation, and he moved closer to that Saturday night.
Beachy threw three scoreless innings in a start against the Cubs (won by the Dodgers, 6-5), reinforcing the belief that he's the preferred choice to move into the starting spot opened by last week's unexpected back surgery for Brett Anderson.
View Full Game Coverage
"He threw well," said manager Dave Roberts. "Every time he goes out there, from the bullpen to each game, he continues to get better. His pitches were sharper today. Just another positive outing."
Beachy had to work around a pair of doubles, he bounced some breaking balls and he wasn't thrilled with fastball command in the first inning. That said, he insists the right elbow that underwent two Tommy John surgeries is healthy, and he trusts it will stay that way.
"I'm on track," he said. "I got better today from the first start five days ago, and I figure to be better five days from now. I wasn't very efficient, but I am missing barrels."
Since 2012, Beachy has made only seven regular-season starts in the Major Leagues, two of them for the Dodgers last year.Young Wicked releases “SLAUGHTER” One Sheet
Yesterday via his Instagram, Young Wicked released a peek at the one sheet for his upcoming solo album: SLAUGHTER! He said that Psychopathic’s own J-Webb wrote up the bio, and that the image on the sheet will NOT be the album cover.
You can see the image that he posted below:
If you’re having a hard time reading it, I went ahead and transcribed it here:
Direct from the most infamous underground hip-hop label of all time, Psychopathic Records, comes the stunning and hard-hitting debut from a true musical wunderkind…Young Wicked! A songwriter, producer, performer, and multi-instrumentalist, Young Wicked (also known as one-half of the Billboard charting rap duo Axe Murder Boyz) is one of the most exciting and talented artists to ever grace the Psychopathic Records roster. He first gained the attention of the hip-hop community when he performed and co-produced portions of the Reindeer Games album from the supergroup The Killjoy Club (a collaboration between Insane Clown Posse and Da Mafia 6ix). Young Wicked also produced several tracks for Insane Clown Posse’s recent Billboard Top 20 album: The Marvelous Missing Link (LOST) and will be prominently featured on the companion release The Marvelous Missing Link (FOUND), which will be released nationally on 7/31/15. Young Wicked’s debut album Slaughter showcases his remarkable array of talents, with every track written, performed, produced and arranged by this dazzling new artist. Packed with 14 menacing tracks and featuring special guest appearances by noted Nashville rapper Jelly Roll and Platinum-selling underground icons the Insane Clown Posse, Slaughter is the sound of a promising musician stepping out into the spotlight after spending years paying dues. His name is Young Wicked…and he’s taking over!
Contributors:
Websites:Firefighters rushing to assist at a shocking fatal crash in Sydney’s south yesterday were horrified to discover the man killed was one of their own.
Drew Cullen, 39, died when the car he was travelling in collided with a truck and another vehicle on the Heathcote Road bridge over the Woronora river about 4pm.
Police are still investigating what caused the smash, but the off duty firefighter's car was completely crushed by the truck during the collision. The truck’s driver, a 42-year-old man from Yagoona, suffered a broken leg and the 28-year-old Wollongong woman in the third vehicle was taken to Bankstown Hospital with minor injuries.
Fire Commissioner Greg Mullins today said firefighters and emergency personnel who responded to yesterday’s crash were understandably shaken up after discovering their mate was involved.
Firefighters were shocked to find the deceased in yesterday's crash was one of their own. (9NEWS) ()
Mr Mullins said they would be offered counselling.
“The loss of a firefighter is deeply felt among the close-knit firefighting family,” he said in a statement issued today.
"My deepest sympathies and thoughts are with firefighter Cullen's family over their loss.
()
“When it involves one of our own, and in such tragic circumstances, it has a devastating impact.”
Mr Cullen worked at Fairfield Fire station. (9NEWS) ()
Flags at Fairfield fire station, where Mr Cullen worked, flew at half mast today in a show of respect.
The crash caused major delays for commuters last night, with Heathcote Road closed for much of the evening and traffic diverted through surrounding streets.
Heathcote Road was only re-opened this morning.
Anyone with further information about the crash should contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2019Not to be confused with Rod Blagojevich controversies
"Christopher Kelly (politician)" redirects here. For other politicians, see Christopher Kelly (disambiguation)
In December 2008, then-Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich and his Chief of Staff John Harris were charged with corruption by federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. As a result, Blagojevich was impeached by the Illinois General Assembly and removed from office by the Illinois Senate in January 2009. The federal investigation continued after his removal from office, and he was indicted on corruption charges in April of that year.[3] The jury found Blagojevich guilty of one charge of making false statements with a mistrial being declared on the other 23 counts due to a hung jury after 14 days of jury deliberation.[4] On June 27, 2011, after a retrial, Blagojevich was found guilty of 17 charges (including wire fraud, attempted extortion, and conspiracy to solicit bribes), not guilty on one charge and the jury deadlocked after 10 days of deliberation on the two remaining charges.[5][6] On December 7, 2011, Blagojevich was sentenced to 14 years in prison.[7]
The investigation became public knowledge when a federal judge revealed that Blagojevich was the "Public Official A" in the indictment of Tony Rezko. The case gained widespread attention with the simultaneous arrests of Blagojevich and Harris on the morning of December 9, 2008 at their homes by federal agents.[8][9] Blagojevich and Harris were each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and one count of soliciting bribes. The case involved sweeping pay to play and influence peddling allegations, including the alleged solicitation of personal benefit in exchange for an appointment to the U.S. Senate as a replacement for Barack Obama, who had resigned after being elected U.S. President (see bribery).[10] U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald noted that there had been no evidence of wrongdoing by Obama.[11]
After the arrest, Illinois elected officials began calling on Blagojevich to resign. The 50 members of the U.S. Senate's Democratic caucus called on Blagojevich to not appoint a senator and pledged not to seat anyone he attempted to appoint. Legislators introduced bills in both houses of the Illinois General Assembly to remove the Governor's power to appoint a senator and require a special election; however, no such bill passed. Blagojevich did eventually appoint Roland Burris to the seat. Despite attempts to keep Burris from taking the seat in the U.S. Senate, he was eventually allowed to take the oath of office. Within days of Blagojevich's arrest, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a motion with the Illinois Supreme Court seeking to declare the Governor "unable to serve" and strip him of the powers of his office. The court denied the request. Meanwhile, Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan (the Attorney General's father) announced that on December 16 he would begin impeachment proceedings. The state House impeached Blagojevich on January 9, 2009, and the state Senate convicted him 20 days later, thereby removing him; they also disqualified him from holding further office in the state.[12]
Background [ edit ]
Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich had been under investigation for corrupt activity for four years, as part of a broader federal investigation by Patrick Fitzgerald, code-named Operation Board Games, that had been going on for three years.[13] To date, 15 people have been charged in connection with the investigation.[8][13] Blagojevich had long been suspected to be a target of the investigation, but it was confirmed by U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve that he was the "Public Official A" referred to in the federal indictment of Tony Rezko.[14] Just before the 2008 U.S. general elections, federal investigators were granted authority to tape Blagojevich's conversations.[15] On December 8, 2008, in a press conference, Blagojevich claimed, "[W]hether you tape me privately or publicly, I can tell you that whatever I say is always lawful and the things I'm interested in are always lawful."[15] He further stated, "[I]f anybody wants to tape my conversations, go right ahead, feel free to do it. I appreciate anybody who wants to tape me openly and notoriously; and those who feel like they want to sneakily, and wear taping devices, I would remind them that it kind of smells like Nixon and Watergate."[15] After a meeting between Blagojevich and Jesse Jackson Jr. regarding the Senate seat,[15] when asked his thoughts on being the subject of federal tapings, Blagojevich stated that he "[didn't] believe there's any cloud that hangs over [him]" that he "[thought] there's nothing but sunshine hanging over [him]".[16]
Mug shot of Blagojevich taken after his arrest.
At 6:15 a.m. on December 9, 2008, Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff John Harris were arrested at their homes by deputies of the U.S. Marshals Service on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).[8][9] Blagojevich and Harris were each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and one count of soliciting bribes. The case involved sweeping pay to play and influence peddling allegations, including the alleged solicitation of personal benefit in exchange for an appointment to the U.S. Senate as a replacement for Barack Obama when the latter resigned after being elected U.S. President.[10] Fitzgerald noted that there had been no evidence of wrongdoing by Obama.[11] The cases are part of a broader federal investigation by Fitzgerald code-named Operation Board Games that had been going on for three years in which 15 people have been charged by Fitzgerald.[8][13]
Before the scandal, Blagojevich considered himself as a contender for the 2016 presidential election, but was willing to pursue an interim position as a Cabinet member, a U.S. ambassador, or a high-profile corporate titan instead.[17] The governor viewed his statutory power to appoint a replacement for Obama in the U.S. Senate as convertible currency of the form that could assure this future.[17] Soon after the Presidential election, it became very clear to Fitzgerald from his wiretaps that a sale of the Senate seat was imminent; Fitzgerald immediately pressed for Blagojevich's arrest.[8] After the arrest, the prosecution began proceedings to obtain an indictment from a grand jury; this process was granted an extension to April 7, |
the inner circle of the African National Congress group in Durban, according to Gerard Ludi, a retired South African intelligence official.
Mandela was being sought as a fugitive for his anti-apartheid activities. The morning after a secret dinner party with other congress members in Durban, Mandela, dressed as a chauffeur, ran into a roadblock. He was immediately recognized and arrested.
On August 5 of 1962
Mandela had been hiding from police for 17 months when his car was flagged down outside the town of Howick in Natal at a roadblock.
Only later did stories appear explaining why the police set up the roadblock in that place. Three South African newspapers, and the London Press, ran stories that claim a CIA officer Donald Rickard who worked undercover as a consular official in Durban had tipped off the South African Special Branch that Mandela would be disguised as a chauffeur in a car headed for Durban. Rickard obtained this information through an informant in the ANC.
Apparently, a year later, at a party, he is reported to have said that he had been due to meet Mandela on that night. However, Rickard later refused to discuss the issue when he was approached by CBS. While Mandela went on to serve 28 years in prison where he suffered tuberculosis from the damp cell he was in for years and other health problems, Rickard retired comfortably in Pagosa Springs Colorado. Still, Mandela has managed to survive into his nineties as a revered figure while Rickard is forgotten by most people.'What I think is probably the logical result is, that Link gets built into monitors and TVs,' says Gabe Newell
As well as its Steam Machines, Valve is also releasing the Steam Link. The tech enables users to stream their PC or Steam Machine session to any television screen or monitor in the home.
It’s a cheap alternative to get your games in the living room if you don’t want to fork out for another expensive machine, but already own a PC. Valve boss Gabe Newell also has a longer-term view for the hardware, however.
“What I think is probably the logical result is, that Link gets built into monitors and TVs,” he told Develop in an interview earlier this year. “It’s just a really general purpose interface that [manufacturers] could use for anything that requires high performance, low latency, interactive connections.
“They’ve been really good at adding a couple of hundred milliseconds latency, so you could do visual processing, and we’re kind of saying that’s great if you want to make my television show look like a movie, but it does horrible things to my gaming experience. This is something that you can support. We’ll just give that away.”
You can read more from our analysis on Steam Machines, featuring interviews with Gabe Newell and other top PC game developers, here.The ACADEMY OF MAGICAL ARTS is one of the world’s preeminent magical organizations, dedicated to the advancement of the craft and the preservation of its remarkable history. Find out how to join.
THERE ARE MANY SHOWS to see. Some are on stage. Some are close up. They go on throughout the evening, and you can enjoy them all whilst still managing other indulgences.
The Magic Castle is an exclusive, private club. Reservations are required, as are coat and tie. Inside, miracles are rampant. Here’s how to make your appearance.
The House Has Its Secrets A visit to The Magic Castle is always amazing, literally. The mansion is full of surprises, the dining is superb, and the shows are no less than remarkable. You’re in for a truly unique, unforgettable experience.
Gift Shop Hundreds of items, straight from the Academy of Magical Arts and its famed Clubhouse. Apparel, souvenirs, playing cards, books, momentos. Even Gift Cards, which we'll happily mail on your behalf.Overview on the Snap Watch
I created Snap watch because I found myself changing watches and also the watch face position often. Everyone likes their watch uniquely designed with a unique watch face and position. This watch allows you to find your unique combination and to change it whenever needed. The watch band is infused with 3 snap fasteners that connect to snap fasteners on the watch face.
Once I get my Snap Watch kickstarted with the $1000, I will buy the bulk watch bands and watch faces. The bulk amounts will help with the cost per product. This will allow me to sell the Snap Watch for a lower price and enter the market competitively. After assembling the projected 100 watches, I can then sell these watches locally and use the money made to buy more. These 100 watches will help me test the market and see what people like. This means the second time I buy bulk material, I will be able to give the market exactly what it wants.
How the Snap Watch works
Like every great idea, the snap watch started from a drawing and questions as to how the design would be accomplished.
Drawing 1
After months of trial and error the snap watch was created using snap fasteners from the local clothing design store. These made it possible to "snap" the watch face to the watch band.
The snap band can come in many different designs and materials, along with the watch face.
There are three snap band snap locations that allow you to change the watch face position to wherever needed.
Attaching the watch face is as easy as a snap.
Snap band with two snaps attached.
Different watch, different snap face.
About the Creator
The team for this project consist of Matt Giannino and Nancy Struzenski. Matt Giannino is a student athlete at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He created the Snap Watch and use it daily. The Snap watch gives me what I need when I needed without fumbling around or wasting time. Nancy Struzenski plays the role of the expert with materials for the watches and the designer for the kick starter page and video.BitShares Dev Hangout - April 22, 2016
Listen to Episode 151 - Create a BitShares Account
Dan Larimer discusses STEEM and Steemit.com, the social media platform.
Transcript
bytemaster: One thing I was going to recommend for BitShares is the moving of discussion of proposals and features and work from BitShares talk to Steem. With the purpose that the players involved can vote and rank and reward people who make positive contributions. The voting of course will have to be approved by the holders of Steem, but in theory positive developments in the crypto-space are positive developments for everyone.
So really regardless of what platform you come from, whether it's Ethereum or Bitcoin, moving the discussion over to the Steem platform can have the ability to reward contributors to all of those projects with a stake in Steem. And in a way Steem can be used to fund the growth of all platforms by recognizing those who contribute to the overall discussion in the crypto-world.
Thom: One things I'd like to have explained is exactly what is the Steem platform, in terms of moving to it?
bytemaster: The Steem platform organizes discussions into topics or categories. Kind of like sub-reddits or otherwise, so all BitShares related discussion could fall under the BitShares category and within that topic you can view the trending and recent post. Recent post is kind of like viewing BitShares Talk in the recent messages section or it just sorts the thing that's the most active, which is sort of the default view, it shows you all the new stuff up top and stuff that hasn't been poked in a while falls to the bottom.
fuzzy: The question I've been having recently is, is Steemit in Beta?
bytemaster: Technically Alpha.
fuzzy: So is the algorithm or all that stuff that is set in place to evaluate the voting of the value of the voting and the value of the post? Are these pretty much solidified or is this something that is going to kind of fluctuate over time?
bytemaster: I want to give the answer that it's pretty much solidified. In order to change it would require a hardfork. That said it's not a suicide pact. No rewards are actually going to be distributed until July 4th which means there's a huge blogging competition where several million dollars worth of STEEM will be given away to the best people who blog and post between now and July 4th.
We have the ability to change the algorithm if it becomes apparent that it's not behaving like we project it will behave. That said we do not want to be in the mode of constantly changing the rules, so there is a very high standard that we are trying to set. But obviously this early in the game we don't want the entire platform to die just because we got a single constant wrong. So we have to see how it behaves in the real world with a large number of users, which is really hard to simulate those behaviors.
Community: Can you give any explanation of how many people you see gleaning on the Steem platform that are outside of the BitShares Community?
bytemaster: A lot. There's some major players with lots of influence, skills and connections who weren't involved with BitShares, but they are involved with Steem. There's about 130 people in the Steem slack right now, which is a lot considering the relative barriers to entry to get into Slack, the level of motivation required to sign up there versus just staying on Bitcoin or BitShares Talk and considering it's still Alpha and relatively unknown.
fuzzy: Another question that I personally have regarding this is, whenever I go to Steemit.com/treneding, and this is something anyone can do, they can go and see the top post, they can vote on post that are in the stream that they are looking at, but whenver you go there and you see the top post, right now they're earning essentially in the 30's, 40's, 50 thousand STEEM USD. Can you talk a little bit about whether that is representative of what the actual reward is going to be to the individuals who are posting right now and do you see that changing or is that not reflecting the correct amount being played out?
Thom: Real quick, you said that anybody can go there and vote, is that correct, is that possible to vote or do they have to be a member of the Steem Community to be able to vote?
bytemaster: During the Alpha phase you can login with your private key, assuming you've got an account that you've mined onto the blockchain. Xeroc or maybe it was puppies (it was puppies), there's a post on Steemit.com (https://steemit.com/spam/@dele-puppy/register-bot) that gives instructions on how to create an account on Steem if you have a BitShares account and have bought some Steem on Bittrex ( or OpenLedger ).
So to answer fuzzy's question, the amount's assume that Steem has a $5 million market cap. The payouts don't go to the poster and it's not all in STEEM dollars, that's the dollar value that the blockchain is going to be paying to people involved with that post. Half of it is going to be allocated to the people who upvoted it and then half to the poster itself. I guess for the top post that would be the $17,000 split between voters and the person who posted it.
Now those numbers are all pending, so new downvotes can come in and they will also go down if there's more content because there's a fixed budget, kind of like Proof of Work. The more work you get, the lower the reward. So what this is saying right now is that the Proof of Work is incredibly easy and if you can even get a few votes you're going to make a ton of money. So coming in and participating and voting is highly profitable right now.
The numbers are so high because we haven't paid out any rewards over one month, so they've just be accumulating. And they're going to continue accumulating and they're about 10% of the market cap of STEEM, until July 4th at which point in time most post from the creation until then will be paid out.
After that period of time post are going to be paid out on a daily basis, so the amounts being paid and the things on the front page should be constantly rotating. After something gets paid out it gets taken down from the front page because it's no longer trending, it's been paid out. And payouts are 24 hours on average after each vote. So you can expect that new content should constantly be flowing to the top and getting paid out and then going back to the bottom.
Thom: I want to push back a little bit on what you just said about, "mining is incredibly easy". I've been mining since Monday morning at 9AM and I just checked and my miner has still yet to produce an account, which is the only way I'm going to be able to get in I think.
bytemaster: I wasn't referring to computational mining, I was talking to subjective Proof of Work mining.
Thom: Could you explain that further then?
bytemaster: The primary concept here is the blockchain's trying to measure and quantify subjective work, whereas traditional mining is measuring and quantifying an objective measure of work, a hash difficulty. We're trying to do a subjective measure of work. And subjective measure work is based upon the... effectively the network effect that you can get in voting. What percent of total STEEM holders can you get to vote for your post.
Thom: Well I'm entirely confused now, so when you use the term "mining", exactly what do you mean by that?
bytemaster: I guess I've been a little lax in my definitions. If I say computational mining, I mean Bitcoin style mining. There's curation mining and posting mining, so there's different types of work that you can do that are subjective. There's also market making. So if you view mining as a general concept of doing work, sifting through lots of things and finding the diamonds in the rough so to speak. That's what mining is generally speaking in the abstract sense. We've got many different types. I think it's safe to say that traditionally mining refers to computational mining, but if I'm making an analogy...
fuzzy: This is social mining.
bytemaster: Social mining, great. Alright so we'll use that term, thank you for the contribution fuzzy. Social mining is what STEEM is all about and the difficulty of making money through social mining is very low right now. There's not much competition which means the rewards are high. So the blockchain pays a fixed reward for a variable amount of work. The more competition there is in work being performed the lower the payout reward. It's kind of like computational mining, the more miners on the network the lower the reward.
So when you come to the main page and you see something as stupid as, "We're listed on Coinmarketcap" as being the top post, you recognize that "well maybe if I write a nice thousand word blog article and get it posted and published somewhere, that will easily make it up higher". But there's relatively few voters right now, primarily because it's difficult to sign in and the voters that are voting are kind of whale voters so a few votes can really push things around right now, because we don't have a lot of variation in the voter pool.
I wouldn't view the current ranking as indicative of what the actual payouts are going to be. But in terms of dollar value being distributed to people who contribute to the platform, it's currently underestimating the dollar value by a factor of three, based upon the market cap of the coin. We've hard coded a $5 million market cap just to be conservative until we get price feeds. But once we have price feeds published those numbers will bounce around with the price as well.
When the payouts occur, remember they're going to be in the form of STEEM Dollars and what we're calling STEEM Power which was previously known as VESTS. So I just want to make that clear.
fuzzy: And the STEEM Power is voting power correct?
bytemaster: Yes.
Thom: The terminology is very confusing regarding STEEM and if you want to get this adopted by the general public you need to make this brain-dead simple. And I'm not an idiot, so the fact that I have not picked up on it is kind of a shortcoming in your marketing so far.
bytemaster: Sure. I think a lot of that is a reflection of the fact that we actually haven't gone public. This is all Alpha insider stuff. A lot of your questions are answered in the white paper. It's a great white paper, anyone here who's read it and cares to talk about their impression of the white paper please speak up.
We are actively moving to make this so simple that people can understand. I think there's two things, one is using the site and if you know how to use Reddit you know how to use Steemit, which means you know how to use STEEM. The other is understanding how it works. People who use Reddit they don't know how the voting system, scoring, point system behind the scene works. So we're not trying to market how the engine works, we're trying to market how the car drives. It drives and we can explain it in a way that most people should be able to understand.
ingenesist: I thought the white paper was really excellent, it has me very excited about STEEM. So thank you for a very clear cogent explanation in the white paper.
Thom: That's good to hear.
Community: I read the white paper too and I'm very excited about STEEM. But I also have some grave concerns about BitShares. Being an investor in BitShares from the very beginning and having bought more BitShares all the way down from the highs near the beginning and despite the fact that I see the big picture with STEEM and think it's eventually going to be very good for BitShares, I do have a concern when the topic of BitShares 3.0 came up in the forum because of what happened from 1.0 to 2.0.
Some people's whole business model was based on BitShares 1.0 and I invested heavily in some of those projects and when 2.0 came out, yes it was an absolutely fantastic upgrade, but it also blindsided the people who built projects on 1.0 and I lost a lot of money from that. I'm concerned about the same thing happening when 3.0 is introduced into BitShares, having garnered all the upgrades from STEEM, from putting STEEM into practice bytemaster and others are going to realize what will work in BitShares and upgrade to 3.0.
If that destroys the business model of people who are building on onto BitShares 2.0 now then I'm going to lose another big chunk of investment money.
ingenesist: One difference between now and when 2.0 came out was that Cryptonomex and bytemaster was pretty much still in control, not maybe technically 100% from 1.0 to 2.0, but from 2.0 to 3.0 that will not be the case and people who want to stick with 2.0 are going to be able to do that easily.
bytemaster: I think his concern is that if a competitor that learns everything from BitShares, learns all the technological advantages of BitShares plus all the technological advances of STEEM plus new things that haven't come out it, it would put BitShares 2.0 platform at a disadvantage in the market which would still hurt investment in the 2.0 platform.
So we have a challenge, all startups do, of adapting to market conditions and recognizing that at any point in time a competitor to BitShares can come out on the market. And if you're building a startup that uses BitShares, I guess I'd say the business model of startups needs to be flexible and robust enough to be almost be platform agnostic. Utilize the benefits of a platform that can help build your business but able to easily and cheaply pivot to a similar platform that provides similar benefits.
Examples of this would be metaexchange, Blocktrades. These guys have integrated with BitShares but they are also integrating with and bridging other cryptocurrencies and exchanges.
Community: But these examples, these exchanges are a minority. So for example, we are using in Eco for our startup, we are raising capital right now and it's not just a little bit of money, we need a price stable currency. We need to be able to send money over the network within seconds, so if one of these features are disappearing in BitShares 3.0 version then we have to basically fork. So that's a concern for us that we really have to look into the development of BitShares 2.0 and where this is going.
bytemaster: Sure, so let's talk about that for a second. If there was to be something like BitShares 3.0, first of all I don't think it would be called BitShares 3.0 and second of all I think it would be launched as a new chain not as a mandatory upgrade, which means market participants could decide if it was a worthwhile upgrade or not. That said I think what makes BitShares BitShares is high-speed price stable currencies. If something comes out that doesn't have those two things it's not even a competitor to BitShares.
I guess BitShares is price stable currencies, user issued assets and an exchange among them. A 3.0 platform would probably differ from BitShares 2.0 only in how the price stable currency is implemented. It would probably, if this approach used by STEEM proves successful, it will create a better product upon which you could build your business with a better supply of price stable currencies with lower premiums, tighter pegs and higher liquidity.
So if those are the things you want, a 3.0 platform will boost your business. The only cost to your business would be changing a little bit of software that talks to the BitShares API to talk to the new API. And that's a trivial cost next to the cost of all the other stuff your business would be doing. That's the main thing that I have to say there.Apple has purged its iOS App Store of several titles that it said had the ability to compromise encrypted connections between end users and the servers they connect to. The company advised users to uninstall the apps from their iPhones and iPads to prevent potentially harmful monitoring, but it has yet to name any of the offending titles.
"Apple has removed a few apps from the App Store that install root certificates that could allow monitoring of data," company officials wrote in an advisory posted Friday. "This monitoring could be used to compromise SSL/TLS security solutions. If you have one of these apps installed on your device, delete both the app and its associated configuration profile to make sure your data remains protected."
Apple representatives didn't respond to an e-mail seeking the names of the offending apps and an explanation of why they weren't identified. This post will be updated if they reply later.
According to a message on Twitter from the developer of an app called Been Choice, the ad-blocking app was recently removed from the App Store. The tweet didn't say why Been Choice was being pulled, but it went on to say, "We'll remove ad blocking for FB, Google, Yahoo, and Pinterest apps." Presumably, the app was able to strip the ads in those apps by using a root certificate to decrypt the transport layer security-encrypted traffic passing between servers and devices that had Been Choice installed.
Remember Superfish?
In any event, third-party root certificates installed on any device—whether it's a computer or phone—can have an extremely powerful effect on security and privacy. A case in point is Lenovo's former practice of selling computers that were preloaded with a self-signed root HTTPS certificate that intercepted and decrypted encrypted traffic for every website a user visited. When users visited an HTTPS-protected site, the adware known as Superfish used the self-signed certificate to encrypt the traffic and bypass the trusted key provided by the visited site. As a result, anyone with access to the certificate's secret key could monitor connections between Google, Bank of America, or any other site.
Apple's admission that its App Store hosted apps that installed such root certificates almost certainly exposes a hole in the company's security vetting process. It's also problematic that Apple has yet to name any of the risky apps it pulled. Apple is right in advising users to uninstall them, but not identifying them by name makes it unnecessarily difficult for customers to heed the recommendation. In fairness, the company indicated that the offending apps were limited to a "few." Considering the App Store has been in operation for seven years, that's not a bad track record.
Apple's advisory provides instructions for uninstalling the apps and deleting their associated configuration profiles. Now, users just need to know what apps besides Been Choice should get that treatment.When the intention of a media outlet is not to inform, but rather to mislead and disinform, there are different tools available in the toolbox. One of them is to pretend that a parody website spreads genuine information – and if this lie is then repeated often enough times through multiple channels, it is likely that a critical number of people will start believing it.
“Brothel for zoophiles to open in Denmark”, so runs the headline of a disinformation story that has recently been migrating across online outlets and social media. The story has visited a number of countries, among them Russia, Georgia and Belarus. And although it is obviously completely untrue, the story fits very well the overarching negative narrative about moral decay in the West in general.
From France to Russia
The story about Danish authorities accepting the alleged opening of an animal brothel in Copenhagen appeared in early August in a marginal Russian online source, Kolokol Rossii, and was picked up in Belarus and Georgia and by many Russian marginal media outlets. The original Russian story referred to reporting in the French Secretnews.fr – but it failed to mention that the outlet in question is a satirical, humoristic outlet publishing parody stories.
Facts turned upside down
The story, which includes an image of a dog dressed up as a street prostitute, quotes Denmark’s agriculture and fishery minister as saying that sex with animals is a citizens’ right protected by the constitution. Ironically, the minister in question, former social democratic minister Dan Jørgensen, whose name in the article for some reason is distorted into Vlad Jorgensen, was the initiator of a law which in 2015 lay a ban on sex with animals. Denmark was among the European countries with no specific ban on this activity, as courts had used laws against cruelty to animals to protect animals against abuse. In other words, the facts have been turned completely upside down in the disinformation story.
Using pre-existing perceptions
The perception of Denmark as having legalised animal brothels derives from arguments put forwards in the debates in Denmark leading up to the law being passed, where some argued that if the law wouldn’t be passed, Denmark could potentially attract zoophile clients from foreign countries where a specific ban was already in place. Notably, one of Russia’s largest TV channels, NTV, broadcast a news item in October 2013 where exactly the discussion of whether Denmark could potentially become a place of animal sex tourism was twisted into this problem actually already being present in Denmark at that time.
In addition, it is likely that the spread of the story is also linked to an existing perception of Denmark as a place where animals are treated particularly cruelly, with Russian media very actively covering the 2014 story about a giraffe in a Danish zoo being euthanised and later dissected at a public educational class for school children. This phenomenon – creating disinformation on the back of pre-existing perceptions – is central to the success of spreading disinformation.
Will it be picked up in talk shows?
While the story has not been reported by any of Russia’s nationwide dominating media, it now appears on numerous more marginal websites and, notably, in discussion forums and social media. One could argue that this makes the disinformation unimportant and perhaps even harmless, if it weren’t for the tendency that such more or less absurd stories are often brought up by participants in the very popular talk shows on Russian national television, as we e.g. saw with the claim that ISIS fighters had infiltrated Ukrainian battalions in Donbas. The fact that this kind of disinformation is voiced by a talk show participant rather than e.g. a news presenter offers an arm’s length between the claim and the media that distributes it, but the disinformation never the less suddenly becomes elevated into common knowledge without being contested.
Debunked by blogger
The story spreading in August was in fact contested by one of Russia’s most popular bloggers, Rustem Adagamov, who on his Facebook warned against the story being a fake. Adagamov, who has lived in Norway and therefore reads Danish, could debunk the disinformation with reference to Danish sources. The fact that Adagamov highlighted the story as absolute nonsense, can have been helpful in blocking it from spreading into more main stream Russian media.
Part of a narrative
The story is in line with similar disinformation stories about moral decay in Europe. Thus, a particularly persistent claim is that sexual abuse of children is a norm in Norwegian families, and Russian nationwide TV has spent airtime explaining that embracing LGTBI rights paves the way for accepting paedohilia.
Further reading:
From objective reporting to myths and propaganda: The story of RIA
Denmark and Sweden: ”Russian fake news is a danger to our countries”
Pro-Kremlin disinformation in Denmark
Intimidation as a propaganda tool in the Nordic countries
Empty European stores on Russian TV – with a focus on Denmark
“Danes eat vegetables without washing them”
The circle is square! Russia’s ambassador threatens Denmark with nuclear weapons
Image above: Screenshot from Kolokol Rossii.A prominent Libyan dissident cannot pursue his "well-founded" claim that he was unlawfully abducted in a joint MI6-CIA operation, and later tortured, because to do so would damage Britain's relations with the US, a high court judge ruled on Friday.
The judge ruled that Abdel Hakim Belhaj could not sue MI6 and the former foreign secretary Jack Straw, even though he admitted that parliamentary oversight and police investigations were "not adequate substitutes" for a decision by a court of law.
Though the ruling, by Mr Justice Simon, dismissed Belhaj's case, it directly challenged the British government's argument that the parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC) was the proper body to investigate MI6 operations involving the rendition, detention, and alleged abuse of terror suspects.
Simon said he ruled against Belhaj because American, as well as British, officials were involved in the operation – the rendition of Belhaj and his pregnant wife to Tripoli in 2004 – which Belhaj wanted a British court to declare unlawful.
He concluded that to pursue the case might damage Britain's national interest – a reference to the government's claims that it would harm its relations with the US.
Simon said he came to the conclusion "with hesitation". Belhaj's lawyers intend to appeal against the judgment.
Simon said his hesitation arose from concern that "what appears to be a potentially well-founded claim that the UK authorities were directly implicated in the extraordinary rendition of the claimants will not be determined in any domestic court; and that parliamentary oversight and criminal investigations are not adequate substitutes for access to, and a decision by, the court".
He said the potential effect of the principle of "state doctrine", which bound him in this case, was "to preclude the right to a remedy against the potential misuse of executive power and in respect of breaches of fundamental rights".
The judge added that he had to decide that "the conduct of US officials acting outside the US was unlawful, in circumstances where there are no clear and incontrovertible standards for doing so and where there is incontestable evidence that such an inquiry would be damaging to the national interest".
Speaking from Tripoli, Belhaj, who is represented by the law firm Leigh Day and supported by the legal charity Reprieve, said: "The judge was obviously horrified by what happened to my wife and me. But he thought the law stopped him hearing our case because it might embarrass the Americans.
"I believe that the British justice system, which I admire greatly, is better than that. My wife and I will continue to seek the truth."
Sapna Malik, from Leigh Day, said: "If this judgment stands, it will mean that anything our security services do alongside the US government is immune from the British legal system – even MI6 officers arranging the rendition of a pregnant woman into the arms of Gaddafi. Our clients will seek to appeal."
Cori Crider of Reprieve said: "As the judge said himself, today's decision shuts out of court a man who was rendered to Gaddafi's torture chambers with his pregnant wife in 2004. The Libya rendition cases are the most ignominious episode of Britain's role in the 'war on terror' to date. The judge is also entirely right that the discredited intelligence and security committee is no substitute for British justice in a court of law."
Friday's decision came a day after the government decided to abandon its promised judge-led inquiry into the role of UK security and intelligence agencies and gave the task to the parliamentary ISC instead.
The government on Thursday released an interim report by the retired appeal court judge Sir Peter Gibson on MI5 and MI6 operations abroad. Gibson said he found "the United Kingdom may have been inappropriately involved in some renditions".Withlacoochee River – North Florida Coordinates XY: 30.464334, -83.224044
I have always been a passionate outdoor woman. This being said, there are some things I enjoy more than others: Fishing being one of them.
During my “formative” years, I had heard that the best fishing occurred off shore – yes, that nebulous, mystical place on the outer limits of the Florida coastline that I had only rarely visited as a child and never as an adult.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested; no, my seemingly lackluster interest in off-shore fishing was a direct result of the fact that I just couldn’t get there. Until Hank Parker invested his interest in the Hobie Cat (http://www.hobiecat.com) sit on top kayak, I had spent most of my free time fishing off the banks of the local rivers and lakes in my area.
Upon discovering that I could actually fish from a kayak, I began to research kayaks that would function the way I needed it to. For example, I needed to navigate without losing my direction to the current. I needed rudders and rod holders, and foot pedals (http://www.hobiecat.com/mirage/miragedrive/). Yes – the Hobie Cat Mirage fit the bill and became my “go to” kayak.
Not long after my purchase, I began to read of other vendors who touted their kayak as the latest “go to” kayak for all of my fishing needs. To be open-minded, I have to admit that I borrowed other kayaks and have found some of their options to have merit (lighter weight, better rod placement, and more convenient storage compartments). None however, has been able to compare to the Mirage drive pedal. Its unique foot pedal action allows me to easily navigate upstream while steadily casting to various logs and lily pads of interest.
For those who are, like me, budget minded but are tired of languishing on the bank, I encourage you to try a sit on top fishing kayak. The Hobie Cat can be a bit pricey as compared to other fishing kayaks but it really is all about preference. If you are on a budget, consider carefully what you are willing to live with – and live without.
Let’s take a look at a few options that you should consider when making your purchase
Seat arrangement/comfort: This is all important. One can neither reach a fishing pole if the seat placement is poor nor can one pedal back to shore if seat causes an aching back.
Count the rod holders: What fisherman fishes with just one rod? Make sure you have adequate places to holster your rod/reel.
Navigational options: Steering mechanisms such as rudders, foot pedals, and paddles. Can you live with the options you chose?
Storage compartments: While on the water, you become the “King” or “Queen” of your floating barge. Make sure storage compartments are plentiful and thoughtfully arranged so as to encourage an easy workflow when reaching and grasping items of interest.
Accessories: Check your kayak for available options. Most newbie Kayak fishermen do not consider the need for a small anchor to keep them from drifting with the tide. Check to see what kind of options is available.
Weight: If you are a solo kayaker, make sure your kayak is light enough to allow you to stow and launch without assistance.
Other more critical benefits to consider are: Fuel is not required Maintenance is minimal Easy navigation to areas that larger boats cannot navigate It is a great way to get exercise and stress relief.
So, there you have it. If you are itching to get out on the water, check out the benefits of kayak fishing. From bream to redfish to sharks – the choices and methods for fishing are endless if you choose a kayak that fits your needs and what you hope to harvest when out on the water.
Pin 3 35 Shares
Like this: Like Loading...Americans overwhelmingly think there is something Washington can do to reduce gun violence, but pronounced splits on the specific legislative fix underscore the difficulty Congress would face passing a bill.
In the wake of the mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard, 71 percent of respondents in the latest United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll agreed that “there’s something that can be done through public policies” that would help seriously reduce mass shootings.
The sentiment was broadly popular across gender, race, and party lines; only 24 percent of respondents disagreed. Among whites, men without college educations were most likely to oppose that statement, but most (64 percent) still supported it.
The results echo President Obama’s appeal to the country to not view gun violence as inevitable after a string of high-profile mass shootings. “Sometimes I fear there’s a creeping resignation that these tragedies are just somehow the way it is, that this is somehow the new normal,” Obama said in a memorial speech on Sunday. Later, he said: “I do not accept that we cannot find a commonsense way to preserve our traditions, including our basic Second Amendment freedoms and the rights of law-abiding gun owners, while at the same time reducing the gun violence that unleashes so much mayhem on a regular basis.”
But once the conversation moves to potential actions or solutions, the poll found divisions among Americans on the best way forward.
While 62 percent of respondents said they “would support banning gun purchases for life for all individuals with a history of violence or a police record,” as Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis had, 32 percent said they would oppose such a measure. Support for a lifetime ban dropped to 56 percent among political independents and to 53 percent among rural respondents, whose influence is magnified in the Senate.
Large majorities agreed that certain measures would help reduce the incidence of mass shootings:
However, elements of division reared on other potential solutions. Asked about an assault-weapons |
acid test for all those who claim to believe in "freedom" and "liberty."
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
Rallies, demonstrations, "Collateral Murder" film screenings, whistle-blowing parties and forums will be held around the world between the 16th and 19th of this month as vital expressions of international solidarity with Bradley Manning. To find out how you can show your support for the brave young man who dared expose US war crimes, go here.
I’m taking my show on the road this autumn, to campuses around the country, talking about some of the ideas expressed in last Wednesday’s column on "Anti-Interventionism: The Left-wing Tradition." My talk is entitled "Why Has the Left Sold Out the Antiwar Movement?" – which is sure to provoke a controversy, or at least that’s the hope.
If you’re interested in booking me at your campus, write wendy@antiwar.com, or call the Antiwar.com office, at: 510-217-8665.
Read more by Justin Raimondo#INFO
New Japan Pro-Wrestling is just as excited about the G1 Special in the USA, as you the fans are. As we prepare to bring these historic events to the United States, we want go over the Manners & Rules.
We request that you please stay to your seating area. Do not stand in the isles or open area’s.
During the events, we encourage you to chant, yell and support your favorites, boo those you don’t like, but please be aware of the language and getting in the way of others also trying to enjoy the spectacle.
For your own safety, please stay behind the railing during wrestler entrances and the match.
There will be no paper tape or streamers allowed in the Long Beach Convention Center. This is a rule set by the LBCC and we must abide by it. All streamers and paper tape will be confiscated by the LBCC staff upon entrance to the arena.
There is no video taping allowed inside the arena. You are not allowed to film with a digital camera, smart phone or cellular device at anytime. Security is trained to recognize this and have been instructed to confiscate equipment and eject you from the arena.
Posting any video of these events online without express written consent is copyright infringement. This is against the law. There are serious fines related to this and we want you to avoid this.
We do support you taking pictures at the events. Please feel free to take as many as you want, share them on social media and your blogs. Be sure to tag @njpwglobal and plug www.njpw1972.com when discussing the event.
Please locate signage or speak with a LBCC staff member to inquire into designated smoking areas.
Follow the rules and have a great time. We cannot wait to see you in Long Beach!!Two months ago, Disney released the first trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. And… that’s all we’ve gotten so far. But with Star Wars Celebration just around the corner, you may have guessed there’d be more material coming our way soon. And you’d be right. The next Rogue One: A Star Wars Story trailer is arriving next week, and you can get all the details below on when and where you can watch it.
The Rogue One trailer details come from Making Star Wars, who noticed that the upcoming ABC schedule includes a special called Secrets of the Force Awakens: A Cinematic Journey. The hourlong program will go into the making of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and (even better) feature “a 3-minute trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.” The show begins Friday, July 15 at 8 PM.
It’s possible the trailer will actually land online a few hours before that, as the Rogue One panel for Star Wars Celebration begins July 15 at 4 PM in London — that’s 11 AM Eastern or 8 AM Pacific in the U.S. In any case, it looks like we can definitely expect a new, longer Rogue One trailer sometime next Friday.
The first Rogue One trailer got the marketing campaign off to a strong start. Rogue One is the first Star Wars live-action movie to fall outside the “Saga” storyline, and that promo found the sweet spot between feeling different and feeling familiar. There’s no mistaking this for anything other than a Star Wars movie, but at the same time the darker, more somber tone feels unlike any Star Wars movie we’ve seen before.
Since the reveal of that first Rogue One trailer, we’ve learned quite a bit more about who these various characters are and how they might interact. We’ve also received official confirmation that Darth Vader will appear in the film — and that James Earl Jones will be back to voice him. We’ve found a little more information as to what those notorious reshoots were all about. We’re still waiting to find out whether there will be an opening crawl, but we did get a peek at some of the action in store thanks to some new images. Oh, and we’ve heard that Hail, Caesar! breakout Alden Ehrenreich is the new Han Solo — rumor has it he’ll cameo in Rogue One.
What other exciting stuff could the new Rogue One trailer have in store for us? While we mull that over, let’s revisit that earlier trailer one more time.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story arrives December 16.By Wendy Milling
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, President Obama stated, “Ayn Rand is one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, we'd pick up.”
I’m not trying to mock the President here – he is just repeating an old propaganda line that was hatched by Rand’s opponents – but I have to ask the “adults” who claim they outgrew Rand exactly what earth-shattering insight they have learned against her solution to the problem of universals? Against her solution to the is-ought problem? To her foundation of knowledge in the axiomatic validity of sense perception? To her theory of the locus of free will? How about her theory of aesthetics?
The reason I ask is that some of these issues and questions are more than two thousand years old, and no other philosopher has been able to crack them without ultimately lapsing into self-contradiction. So if anyone fancies that they are going to show up with their cracker barrel wisdom and invalidate her philosophy, even though no professional philosopher in half a century has been able to do so, I have to wonder what special knowledge they think they have. By all means, entertain us.
Perhaps these “adults” can also explain the part about feeling misunderstood, because it is rather opaque. When most of us feel misunderstood, we just restate our line of thinking until people understand it. In all seriousness, what on earth was that about? Are we to take that as some kind of psychological confession by leftists? What is an individual with such a mentality doing in the highest office in the land?
President Obama goes on to say, “Then, as we get older, we realize that a world in which we're only thinking about ourselves and not thinking about anybody else, in which we're considering the entire project of developing ourselves as more important than our relationships to other people and making sure that everybody else has opportunity – that that's a pretty narrow vision. It's not one that, I think, describes what's best in America.”
This statement is so untethered from reality, it is hard to know where to begin. I will not begin by implicitly endorsing the notion that “other people” are the first or ultimate consideration in ethics by reassuring anyone’s crybaby sensibilities that Objectivism too cares about other people’s welfare. The good cops over at the Ayn Rand Institute, Yaron Brook and Don Watkins, have provided more than enough evidence over the years at their Forbes blog that Ayn Rand’s philosophy is eminently rational.
I am not affiliated with the Institute, so I have no such obligation. My preferred method is to take the billy club of logic to the opposite worldview’s kneecaps and then beat it into the ground senseless. Anyone who makes “everybody else” the primary issue – who needs upfront reassurance about the status of other people in a philosophical system – isn’t worth convincing. If someone is so hysterical about establishing the status of others that they insist on putting it before the question of their own, then they are weak, dependent, irrational, and, by their own admission, irrelevant.
Objectivism is a philosophy for winners, leaders, producers, creators, alpha males and females and those on their way. It is a philosophy for people with self-respect, self-loyalty, self-confidence, self-esteem, and independence. It is for those with a rugged individualist spirit. That is why Ayn Rand has an enormous reservoir of goodwill among the American people. America is a culture of winners. This is an exceptional nation, and Americans are still an exceptional people.
If you are an achiever, if you matter and you know it, why don’t you give Ayn Rand’s nonfiction a serious read? Objectivism has answers. Lots and lots of rich, powerful answers.
The President or one of his fellow “adults” should also explain why, if it is wrong for us to spend our time how we wish and keep what we have earned, we are supposed to believe that it is right for others to take them. Ayn Rand, via John Galt, elaborates:
“Why is it moral to serve the happiness of others, but not your own? If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but immoral when experienced by you? If the sensation of eating a cake is a value, why is it an immoral indulgence in your stomach, but a moral goal for you to achieve in the stomach of others? Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it? Does virtue consist of serving vice? Is the moral purpose of those who are good, self-immolation for the sake of those who are evil?”
In addition, President Obama should explain how his system of mutual self-sacrificing is supposed to work in practice. If everyone is stopping their own self-development to assist others, then who is excelling? Who is advancing to the point that they are creating the opportunities that “others” are supposed to be given?
Instead of trying to coddle economic losers, our culture had better concern itself with how to produce the next generation of geniuses to drive the wealth-creation process, because the productive geniuses are what keep 300 million people from starvation and exposure, not the government. They are not going to come from the ranks of the non-profit do-gooders who spend their days bleating about income inequality and redistributing wealth to the economically non-productive.
We can set the stage by accepting a proper code of ethics now – one that teaches that rational selfishness is good and being productive is virtuous.
Wendy Milling is a contributor toRealClearMarkets.com.When CBS News first reported that its foreign correspondent Lara Logan was sexually assaulted in Cairo amid a mob during the celebration over President Mubarak's resignation, I speculated that it had decided to reveal the news under media pressure. The New York Post cites an anonymous source to confirm this:
CBS went public with the incident only after it became clear that other media outlets were on to it, sources said. "A call came in from The [Associated Press]" seeking information, a TV-industry source told The Post. "They knew she had been attacked, and they had details. CBS decided to get in front of the story."
Update (Feb 22): Slate reports that an AP spokesman denies this.
I hate the P.R. tone of that, but it is true that being the first to reveal private information means that you get to set the tone for how it is treated.
Most network higher-ups didn't even know how brutal the sexual assault was until a few minutes before the statement went out.
And some, like Nir Rosen, did not realize how brutal it was even after the statement went out.
"We were surprised it stayed quiet" as long as it did, one source said. Another source insisted that Logan was "involved in the process" of deciding whether to make her attack public, and ultimately understood why the statement had to be released. via CBS reporter's Cairo nightmare - NYPOST.com.
Jessica Grose at Slate's Double X points out that the publicity given to the incident has raised consciousness about the number of female reporters who have suffered sexual assaults in the line of duty. An article on the topic has been widely circulated since the news of Logan's assault surfaced:
A 2007 Columbia Journalism Review [PDF] article by Judith Matloff points out that sexual harassment is sadly common in "dodgy" places, particularly in war zones, but that women are loath to report their mistreatment because they fear being seen as weaker than the men they worked with. Unsurprisingly, there's not much data on these assaults, but Matloff points to a small survey of female war reporters that was done by the International News Safety Institute, in which more than half the 29 women polled said they had been sexually assaulted, and two said they had been raped. But almost none of them told anyone. via Lara Logan assault: CBS reportedly only went public under pressure.
I'm not a psychologist, but that doesn't seem emotionally healthy. Though, having your sexual assault become a national news event can't be emotionally healthy either.He’s not captain of FC Barcelona any more but he still has his stripes, he is not a coach yet but talks about philosophy and models. Xavi Hernández, the player who has made the most ever appearances for Barcelona, talks clearly about current events at Barça and does not swerve any questions, however loaded it is.
The children at the camp are asking if and when you’ll go back to Barcelona
The children see me as a coach (laughs). It’s not easy to be a coach at Barcelona, you have to have very clear ideas and be prepared. I’ve made a start in Qatar, with a great project. I’m working with Félix Sánchez and Sergi Alegre. My aim is to be a coach and return to Barça in the future. As a coach. I’m not hiding that.
And when can you get down to work because I understand it takes three years to get the badges, no?
I still haven’t had time. I’ll get the badges when I stop playing. I’ll start next year and I’ll be able to have it in less than two years.
Do you have any model or reference as a coach you’d like to be like?
I’ve learnt something from almost all the coaches I’ve had. It’s a bit of a thorn in my side that I never played under Cruyff but later on I had a direct relationship with him, although sadly it was in his last years. With Cruyff, I always felt I was learning something, not just about football but life as well. There is a before and after at Barça with Cruyff.
Guardiola and Luis Aragonés are references for you as coaches?
They are the two coaches I was closest to in terms of football and on a human level. With Pep, I understood him perfectly with just two words. They are the two people who had the most influence on my career. I owe everything to them, as well as Joan Vilá, who coached me as a youngster.
Did Luis Enrique change Barça’s style?
The team played the same way, but it was conditioned by the players on the pitch. Luis Enrique’s style was the Barça style with a few adaptations.
What does seem clear is that being Barça manager drains you in three years
And I’d be putting my head in the lion’s mouth, no? (laughs). We already know you have to be very prepared to manage there. The surrounding environment is savage too, everything’s very complicated, almost inhuman. The environment is not calm even if you win because then they complain that you’re not playing well. Therefore, it’s more difficult to manage Barcelona than Real Madrid because here winning is not enough on its own.
Would you sign Bellerín?
I haven’t seen him play much, but I’ll say one thing: it would be difficult for me to sign a player we’d already had.
OK, but this was the case with Piqué and Cesc, no?
Yes, it can turn out good, bad or average. But I’m not in favour of re-signing players who have left. Why do they leave at 16 or 17? It seems ridiculous to me. I don’t understand it.
Are you referring to Mboula and Eric Garcia?
Yes, to be honest, I was very surprised by what they did. I wouldn’t re-sign them in the future. I’d have that approach. You were here, you wanted to leave, well don’t come back.
A firm and uncompromising decision
Yes. I understand if you want to go, it’s for a reason. Like Toral, he left because his mum’s English. Ok, but it is what it is. The ship’s sailed.
And Deulofeu?
That was different. He didn’t want to leave. He was asked to go.
What is your view on Laporta?
I’ve seen him suffer a lot because of the court case… He seems liberated now, his quality of life has improved. For me, he’s Barça’s best ever president.
And the imprisonment of Sandro Rosell?
I’m surprised someone like Sandro has ended up in prison. Let’s see how it all ends up.
Where will you be on 1 October?
In Qatar.
And what do you intend to do?
Vote, if they let me. I believe in the right to decide and vote. People complain that in Qatar the people can’t vote and here we have a democracy and they don’t let us vote…
Are Real Madrid the rival to beat?
Always. Madrid winning titles is a bombshell for Barça. It makes everything more urgent.BROCKTON - Carolyn Parker is shuddering at the thought of whether a thief, who broke into her car in Brockton and stole her mother's ashes, snorted or ingested the remains thinking they were drugs.
"It's disturbing. I hope they figured out what it was. The thought that somebody could have ingested that, it's mortifying," Parker, 48, said.
Her Jeep was unlocked when a thief went prowling the neighborhood on Bassett Road, rifling through multiple cars late Monday night. The road is a short side street off West Elm Street.
"They ransacked my car and nothing else was taken," Parker said. "Anything else in the world they could have had. I had expensive sunglasses in there. $20 in change. Take anything else. I have my mother's gold chain hanging from the rear-view mirror. They didn't take anything else."
Parker believes a drug addict stole the remains, which were in a plastic bag inside of a small white box in her glove compartment.
"It must have been somebody who thought they hit the mother load with drugs and just grabbed it. It was dark and maybe they couldn't see exactly what it was," she said. "They wouldn't have taken it if they knew what it was. I feel bad for them. There's a huge drug problem going on and clearly that person going through my car is desperate."
Her mother, Donna Potter, died in July at age 71. Parker had spread some of the ashes on Martha's Vineyard and was planning on leaving some at a few of her mother's other favorite places.
"I was going to have a necklace made with both my mother's and my son's ashes fused together but now I can't do that," she said tearing up.
Police told her there was not much they could do and suggested she check with her neighbors to see if they have surveillance cameras that might have caught the thief.
"I must have forgotten to lock my car that night," she said. "You get comfortable. This is our neighborhood. We've never had a problem here. I guess I just got too comfortable."
After searching up and down her street and others in the neighborhood, Parker said she is hoping the thief will do the right thing and bring the ashes back.
"I just want them back. There's no hate. Everybody has their own problems," she said. "Just please return them."
As of Thursday morning, Parker said she checked her front steps and around her house but did not see them.
"On a wing and a prayer here," she said Thursday morning.
A similar incident happened on West Park Street in August where a 69-year-old woman had her son's remains stolen from her apartment.
A person broke a window and ransacked her apartment, stealing jewelry and other items, including a box containing her only son's ashes. It was unclear if she ever got the remains back. An Enterprise reporter attempted to speak with the woman on Wednesday, but it appeared she moved out of her apartment.Happy Holidays to one and all! It’s that time of year again. Snow is falling on the blog, President Hoodie has made another amazing announcement, and we’re all scrambling for the perfect Christmas gift. As we all partake in the time-honored tradition of rampant consumerism, why not support some kickass chiptune artists while we’re at it? I think that’s a swell idea. Which is why I’ve decided to use this month’s review column to do a little something different. It’s the ChipWIN Holiday Gift Guide!
When searching for the perfect Christmas gift for that special chiptune fan in your life, physical copies of their favorite albums are always an excellent choice. I always make sure to nab a physical copy when given the option, and have amassed quite a collection over the years. But that’s a bit too obvious for the purposes of this guide. I’d like to highlight just a few of the truly unique bits of merch that will make you and yours squee with delight this holiday season.
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Conquer Monster Merch Bundle
Back in October, Conquer Monster burst onto the scene with their phenomenal debut ‘Metatransit’. Their dystopian soundscapes ooze 80s Sci-Fi and it’s well worth listening to, but you don’t have to take my word for it. The Unicorn Princess has published a full review and interview with the artists Joshua Faulkner and Daniel Romero on this very blog. Listening to ‘Metatransit’ is a stunning, retro-futuristic experience that speaks for itself, but Conquer Monster has truly gone above and beyond in their merch department. They’ve truly exemplified the ChipWIN ideal of ‘Don’t fuck around’. Where to begin?
First of all, ‘Metatransit’ serves as the soundtrack to the comic book Purge Worlds, written by Joshua Oman and beautifully illustrated by Chris Black. It tells a compelling sci-fi tale of revenge filled with action and intrigue. Purge Worlds gives the reader/listener a deeper understanding of what the metatransit actually is, as well as the backstory which explains the meaning behind the name Conquer Monster. It’s an engrossing companion piece to the album itself, and allows us to further explore the dark, detailed atmospheres that Conquer Monster has created.
In addition, we have one of the slickest designs for a shirt that I’ve seen come along in quite a while. It absolutely nails the aesthetic that Conquer Monster puts forth with its starry backdrop and 80s style font and graphics.
The coolest and most unique bit of merch however, has to be the freaking VHS tape with a full hour of psychedelically glitched-out visuals which perfectly complement every track of ‘Metatransit’. I realize that most people may react to the gift of a VHS tape with a puzzled look on their face, but I feel that the readers of this blog will have a special appreciation for what Conquer Monster has put together here. From the joke and reference-filled credits and warning labels, to the overall look and feel of the production, it’s clear that Joshua and Daniel have put a lot of time and effort into getting every aspect of their merch to look just right. The VHS tape even comes with a pair of 3D glasses for added immersion! The visuals on this tape would be perfect to have playing on a screen during your holiday house party. And if for some reason you don’t have a VCR at the ready, there’s a digital download code for a video file of the VHS tape printed on the 3D glasses
All of these items are available individually or as package deals at Conquer Monster’s storefront. I recommend going ham if you can and buying all the things. They’d make for an excellent Christmas gift!
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Captain Credible’s ‘Dead Cats’ printed circuit board EP
Hearkening back to another October release, the Norwegian musician and creative genius Captain Credible dropped his ‘Dead Cats’ EP in the form of a printed circuit board. This board contains an ATtiny85 8-bit microcontroller stuffed to the brim with code, an LED, 3 resistors, a 3.3V battery and a minijack. While the first 5 tracks of ‘Dead Cats’ are traditionally composed tracks downloaded from the internet which range from high-energy dance chip to dark and moody atmospheres, the highlight is the final track which is generatively played by the circuitboard called ‘main.h’. Each individual circuitboard will play a completely unique version of ‘main.h’. Connecting your headphones will complete the circuit and begin an infinitely long track which contains the sound of raw data being translated into 8-bit music in real time. If you hear a particular part that you enjoy and want to go back, you can always remove and reinsert your headphones to restart the track from the beginning.
This is a truly astonishing and unique way to release an EP to say the least, and the video embedded below will explain its features further. Since Captain Credible released ‘Dead Cats’ in October, the circuit board has sold out through the Bandcamp store page. However, there are some still available to purchase from 2 other storefronts: here and here. Keep in mind that they ship from Norway, so depending on where you live, I won’t make any promises that they will arrive in time for Christmas. Nevertheless, this piece of tech was just too damn awesome not to feature on this list. This is EP 1 of 3, so keep an eye out on captaincredible.com for more circuitboard releases in the future!
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Sam Mulligan’s Shark Party: the Final Flask!
Do you love Sam Mulligan? Do you love booze? Of course you do, and have I got the perfect gift for you! Nothing says Happy Holidays like a stainless steel flask, and this one is one of a kind. It features the richly detailed artwork of KOOL SKULL depicting a shark in full-on party mode. Fill this flask with your favorite libation to keep warm during the frigid months ahead. It will also make for excellent MAGFest gear. My Sam Mulligan flask has brought me countless hours of blissful inebriation, and isn’t that what the holidays are all about?
Here’s the catch, there is exactly ONE of these beauties left available for purchase! The only question is, who is gonna make Sam’s year and buy the final flask?! Become the chosen one. Buy this flask, or face the wrath of Dennis the Shark!
While we’re on the subject of Sam Mulligan, I’d like to take this opportunity to embed a recent performance of his, playing ‘Ninja Song Part 2’ on geekbeat radio. He’s one of my favorite performers in all of chiptune music in general, and it’s impossible to watch him play without a huge smile developing across your face. Love ya Sam!
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Get Equipped With ChipWIN Merch!
We’re not above a shameless plug, and of course I had to include the bevy of beautiful ChipWIN merch that’s available in this gift guide! The fact is, if you’re reading this, you’re likely a fan of ChipWIN, and probably have a few friends who are as well. From shirts (available in black, purple and white) emblazoned with Nate Horsfall’s legendary artwork, to stickers, buttons, posters, coozies, and even glow in the dark bracelets and ‘Don’t fuck around’ wristbands, ChipWIN merch makes the perfect gift as well as simple stocking stuffers. These shirts are the comfiest that I own, and I’ve received compliments while wearing them from people who have no idea what chiptune even is. Again, Nate’s artwork is awesome.
Be sure to visit his website as well at lightningarts.com, where you’ll be spoiled for choice from all of his amazing artwork available for purchase as posters or prints, and can even be applied to clocks, mugs, phone cases, throw pillows and more! Nothing feels better than giving and receiving gifts that directly support the artist.
Speaking of supporting the artists, make sure that you do not hesitate with picking up the recently announced Bundle of WIN! For $2 or more, you’ll get over 10 albums from premiere chiptune artists who’ve contributed to the latest ChipWIN comp, included in this deal of course! It’s your opportunity to give back to the artists, MAGFest, and the ChipWIN project to ensure that more amazing collaborations such as this will continue to be a thing! Unlike the ChipWIN merch however, this epic bundle is only available for a limited time, until Dec. 22nd! It’s a Chipmas miracle facilitated by the fine folk at Groupees.com, so hop on over to this link posthaste!
———-> groupees.com/chipwin <———-
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Become Chiptune!
In order to answer the age-old question of ‘Is this chiptune?’, we must first become the chiptune. Make it happen with this outfit that is elegant in both form and function and definitely not a gag Halloween costume probably. These are gifts that I believe your best bud would love to receive. You gotta believe! These are indeed chiptune accessories for all occasions. Wear it to your next fest or convention and whittle your friends down to only those who are the most chiptune. You can thank me later!
Outfit | Hoodie
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Of course, this has been just a sampling of all the chiptune-related gift options that are out there, and I hope this guide has helped enlighten you to some of the more unique and fun items that are available. Now get get out there and support the chiprealm, Chipsmas will be here before you know it! And above all have a Merry Chipsmas!
\m|♥|m/
Dig this article? Then consider supporting us on Patreon!Video tutorials are a great way to learn how to fold origami. Unlike printed diagrams you can actually see the intermediate steps and how all the folds work.
There are a ton of origami video tutorials on YouTube with varying degrees of quality.
Also sometimes the person who made the video has permission from the designer to show how the model is folded and other times they don’t which is not good so you probably shouldn’t give those people any views.
I’ve compiled my favourite YouTube channels with origami tutorials together in this post and sorted them out by difficulty so if you’re looking for some new sources of origami instructions you’re sure to find something here.
I’ve included a sample video with each channel.
Beginner Level YouTube Channels
Check out these YouTube channels if you’re just getting started with origami.
Leyla Torres runs the website OrigamiSpirit.com and has been posting YouTube tutorials for years. She’s very good at explaining the steps and goes very slowly so you won’t get confused. Her videos also have subtitles in Spanish if you want as well.
This YouTube channel is run by Evan Zodl from ez-origami.com. His videos are very well explained and he’ll often draw dotted lines on the model as he’s folding it so you can easily make out important creases. His videos are quite well produced too.
This YouTube channel is run by an Australian named Chrissy and she also runs the website PaperKawaii.com. You’ll find instructions for lots of cute things like cakes, candies, little boxes and more. The videos are quite professional and the instructions are easy to follow.
Peter Keller only has a few video tutorials on his channel but they’re great little models that he designed himself. The tutorials are fun and easy to follow. Hopefully he uploads lots more soon.
This channel is run by Ventsislav Vasilev who has a Bulgarian origami website Origamite.com. He very clearly explains how to fold each model so you don’t have to worry about speaking Bulgarian or anything like that. There’s a huge collection of tutorials from the last several years and they’re all excellent models for beginners.
This channel has a bunch of great tutorials for a ton of traditional origami models. The videos are very easy to follow, they’re narrated and there are two cameras showing the model being folded from different angles which is a unique touch.
Jenny Chan’s YouTube channel has a ton of great tutorials for beginner origami models and other craft projects. The tutorials are narrated and very easy to follow. She also has a lot of other stuff on her channel like givaways and contests.
This channel has lots of great video tutorials for models all designed by Joost Langeveld. Most of them are very easy to fold too. The videos are quite clear and also have photos of each step and text directions over the video to make folding the model even easier.
Beginner to Intermediate YouTube Channels
These channels are a little bit more difficult but still not too bad if you’re pretty new to origami. Some of them have a mixture of really easy and more intermediate models.
This channel is run by Sara Adams from the website Happy Folding and it has a huge amount of origami video tutorials going back for years. The instructions are narrated and explained very well and she goes nice and slow so all the steps are easy to follow. She has tutorials for really simple models and models that are a bit more difficult but are still not too hard.
Hoang Tien Quyet is an awesome origami artist and he has a YouTube channel where he explains how to fold some of his easier designs. There’s no narration but his directions are very clear and he goes nice and slow so the videos are quite easy to follow.
This channel is only about a year old but there’s already a ton of great video tutorials. The videos are very professional, clear and often have text overlays which explain the steps being performed.
This channel has a great collection of video tutorials made by Roman Petrenko (Yakomoga). There are some pretty easy models here but a lot of them require a little bit of origami experience. There’s a pretty wide array of models here and the instructions are very easy to follow.
Jeremy Shafer has a ton of great video tutorials and his videos are a lot of fun. A ton of his videos show you how to fold his own designs that move or transform in some way. His videos are narrated with very clear instructions and they’re very easy to follow.
I don’t know too much about this channel since everything is in Russian but it does have a great collection of video tutorials. Most of the models are pretty simple to fold but there are definitely some more intermediate level ones thrown in there too. Even though all the video descriptions are in Russian there’s no narration in the videos so anyone can still follow the tutorials. The videos move a little bit fast but they’re not hard to follow and occasionally you’ll see lines drawn on the models to make the steps more clear.
This YouTube channel has a great selection of tutorials for models that are pretty easy and some that are a little bit more intermediate level. The videos are very clear and narrated with a British accent which makes them one hundred times more interesting to listen to.
If you’re interested in folding paper airplanes then this is the channel for you with tons of different paper plane tutorials. Most of the models use an A4 sized sheet of paper and they’re not super easy but not not an intermediate difficulty either. The videos are very detailed, some have narration and some have extra lines and arrows drawn over them to make the folding easier.
Intermediate Level YouTube Channels
If you want to fold the origami models that these YouTube channels demonstrate you’re going to need to have a little bit of experience with origami first.
This YouTube channel run by someone known as Paper Ph2 and features video instructions for a bunch of great original designs including some great origami Pokemon and other video game themed models. There’s no narration but the instructions are quite easy to follow.
This might be my favourite YouTube channel for origami tutorials. There’s a huge collection of videos explaining how to fold models that range from not too difficult to quite complicated. The videos are very well produced, well explained and they also have illustrations for each step in the upper corner of each video.
This is another one of my favourite origami YouTube channels. There’s a great collection of tutorials including a ton of great origami animals and most of the models are around an intermediate difficulty level or higher. The instructions are nice and slow and very clear which is great since these models are a bit more difficult.
This is Tạ Trung Đông’s YouTube channel where he explains how to fold some of his very awesome original designs. His videos are very easy to follow and since these are his own original designs you won’t find instructions for these models anywhere else.
I just discovered this YouTube channel and it’s now one of my favourites because it has video tutorials for some spectacular original Pokemon designs. I’ve folded a couple of the Pokemon models on this site and the instructions are very easy to follow. This channel is worth it for the Pokemon tutorials alone but there are a lot of other great tutorials for non-Pokemon origami as well.
Alexander Kurth is a great origami artist and on his channel he shows how to fold many of his own original designs as well as some other models from other designers. His videos are quite easy to follow and he narrates each step as he goes as well. Most of his tutorials are for intermediate level models but most of them aren’t too hard to fold.
Intermediate to Advanced Level YouTube Channels
These Youtube channels feature tutorials for models that are at least an intermediate level as well as ones that start getting a lot more advanced.
This is another one of my favourite origami YouTube channels. He has a great personality and his videos are very well done. He has a lot of tutorials for a lot of very awesome origami models. Most of the tutorials are for intermediate level models but he also has a bunch of longer tutorials for some much more advanced models like his own Charizard design or Kade Chan’s Fiery Dragon.
Seth Friedman is an incredibly talented origami artist and on his YouTube channel he shows how to fold many of his own original designs. Most of the designs are intermediate level but a couple of them get a |
donors had received special access to the State Department. Through it all, Mrs. Clinton and her longtime adviser Philippe Reines have fiercely protected Ms. Abedin. Mrs. Clinton played a part in introducing Ms. Abedin and Mr. Weiner, then a brash and outspoken Democratic congressman from New York. In August 2001, the young congressman asked Ms. Abedin, then an aide to Mrs. Clinton in the Senate, if she would go out for a drink. Standing behind Mrs. Clinton, Ms. Abedin waved her arms at her boss and shook her head “no.” “Of course all you young people should go out,” Mrs. Clinton said. Mr. Weiner eventually won Ms. Abedin’s affections in January 2007, when he sat between Mrs. Clinton and her rival, then-Senator Barack Obama, at President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address. “I appreciate you looking out for my boss,” Ms. Abedin texted him. They went out for coffee and were married in July 2010; Mr. Clinton performed the ceremony.
Slide Show | On the Trail: Week of Oct. 23 Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump campaigned in swing states, and Mrs. Clinton turned 69 on Wednesday, two days before the F.B.I. added a chapter to her email case. Ms. Abedin and Mrs. Clinton’s personal lives have in some ways taken parallel tracks, with each woman choosing to forgive her husband’s humiliating transgressions. Others close to Mrs. Clinton have not been as understanding. On a campaign conference call the day that Mr. Weiner admitted he had continued to engage in online liaisons, Mr. Reines berated him, yelling that he would “reach through the phone” and “rip out” his throat, adding an expletive. On Saturday, Ms. Abedin was working from the campaign’s Brooklyn headquarters rather than traveling with Mrs. Clinton on a campaign swing in Florida. Mr. Reines, who is not officially on the campaign’s staff, was, however, accompanying Mrs. Clinton….
The Truth Must be Told Your contribution supports independent journalism Please take a moment to consider this. Now, more than ever, people are reading Geller Report for news they won't get anywhere else. But advertising revenues have all but disappeared. Google Adsense is the online advertising monopoly and they have banned us. Social media giants like Facebook and Twitter have blocked and shadow-banned our accounts. But we won't put up a paywall. Because never has the free world needed independent journalism more. Everyone who reads our reporting knows the Geller Report covers the news the media won't. We cannot do our ground-breaking report without your support. We must continue to report on the global jihad and the left's war on freedom. Our readers’ contributions make that possible. Geller Report's independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our work is critical in the fight for freedom and because it is your fight, too. Please contribute to our ground-breaking work here.
Make a monthly commitment to support The Geller Report – choose the option that suits you best. Contribute Monthly - Choose One Subscriber : $18.00 USD - monthly Contributor : $36.00 USD - monthly Patron : $50.00 USD - monthly Silver member : $100.00 USD - monthly Gold member : $250.00 USD - monthly Platinum member : $500.00 USD - monthlyWith the recent announcment of the Alien: Covenant release date being pushed up to May 19, 2017, Fox also moved Kingsman: The Golden Circle back a few months to October 6, 2017.
Kingsman: The Golden Circle was originally slated for release as a summer blockbuster on June 16, 2017.
This doesn't necessarily mean that there are any issues with the film itself, just that Fox Studios is positioning itself for big box office numbers depending on what other films are opening that same day.
In Kingsman: The Golden Circle Eggsy, Merlin and Roxy head to the United States to join forces with Statesman, their US counterpart, after the Kingsman HQ is destroyed by Poppy, an evil American mastermind.
The film is being directed by Matthew Vaughn, based on a script he co-wrote with Jane Goldman. Returning cast members include Taron Egerton, Mark Strong, Sophie Cookson, Colin Firth and Edward Holcroft. The new additions to the cast include Channing Tatum, Elton John, Pedro Pascal, Halle Berry, Julianne Moore and Jeff Bridges. Kingsman: The Golden Circle is loosely based on the 2012 comic book series The Secret Service from Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons.CLOSE A look at immigration arrests and deportations under President Donald Trump. Monsy Alvarado/NorthJersey.com
Sally Pillay (holds up a banner in the foreground), program director for First Friends of New Jersey & New York, at a an annual pilgrimage for human rights in 2014 in Jersey City.. (Photo: Mitsu Yasukawa / Northjersey.com)
Immigration arrests are up 20 percent and deportations have increased 30 percent in New Jersey over the past year as enforcement officers nationwide work to fulfill the president’s promise to crack down on illegal immigration.
But John Tsoukaris, the head of immigration enforcement in New Jersey, said most undocumented immigrants in the state don't need to be afraid because his officers are focusing on those who have committed serious crimes or have deportation orders against them.
“We have been directed to primarily focus on people involved in public safety concerns, public safety crimes, criminal aliens, gang members, they are still our number one priority,” said Tsoukaris, field office director for enforcement and removal operations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Newark,
Nationally, more than 41,300 undocumented immigrants have been taken into custody since President Donald Trump took office and expanded the power of immigration officials to decide who should be held for deportation. Some 400 immigrants are arrested each day now – a 38 percent jump from the previous year.
The arrests and deportations have heightened fears among the 500,000 undocumented immigrants in New Jersey, advocates said. They are reporting a noticeable increase of ICE officers in neighborhoods and that larger sweeps of undocumented people are occurring. Despite Tsoukaris’ assurances, they also say undocumented immigrants who don’t have criminal backgrounds are being arrested more frequently.
"People who have lived in this country, who have worked in this country who have not done anything wrong, are now scared,” said Archange Antoine, executive director of Faith in New Jersey, a coalition of clergy and faith communities working to advance social and economic issues.
“They are seeing what is happening to their neighbors, their friends and family members,'' he said. "I feel that right now there is so much discretion that is being given to the ICE office, they can just pick up anyone at any given time."
Tsoukaris said in an interview that immigration officers are not conducting raids, but targeted enforcement, with officers looking for a specific person. However, he said that under President Donald Trump’s executive orders on illegal immigration, other undocumented immigrants that officers come across during a targeted enforcement are also being arrested.
John Tsoukaris Head of ICE enforcement in Newark. (Photo: Submitted photo/NorthJersey.com)
“In the past, if those other people that we encountered with the target, if they were not a priority we would not arrest them. Now if they are here illegally, then we will arrest them,’’ he said. “We have been encountering a lot of other people that sometimes they have been deported before…and came back illegally."
After talking on the campaign trail about getting rid of "bad hombres," Trump signed an executive order days after taking office to make good on his promises about illegal immigration. He directed immigration officers to prioritize undocumented immigrants who have been charged or convicted of a crime, have engaged in fraud or willful misrepresentation, have abused any program related to public benefits, and those who have final orders of removal. The executive order also allows immigration officers to decide if someone should be detained if they deem that a person poses a public safety or is a national security risk.
REFUGEES: Fewer refugees entering New Jersey, U.S.
IMMIGRATION ORDER: Trump's edict sows confusion in N.J.
Tsoukaris, who has worked in immigration enforcement for more than 25 years, said arrests and deportations were increasing in New Jersey before Trump took office.
“It’s not as different as it was six months ago. It really is not much different. Don’t believe everything you hear,’’ he said. “We are doing more enforcement, but it’s not as significant as it sometimes is portrayed."
Since October, about 800 undocumented immigrants have been arrested in New Jersey, an increase of around 150 over the same period a year earlier. The number of deportations rose to approximately 1,500, an increase of about 300, according to numbers provided by ICE officials.
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Tsoukaris said there has been a slight increase in the number of people who are detained at their check-ins with their deportation officers. Such check-ins are part of the routine supervision of unauthorized immigrants who have been ordered out of the country by immigration judges. He said officers usually detain people at check-in who may pose a flight risk or who have not complied with orders of supervision.
He attributes the rise in deportations to an increase in the number of immigration judges in Newark and to the fact that passports and other travel documents for those waiting to be removed are being processed faster by the countries where the immigrants will be sent.
Currently, there are seven immigration judges assigned to the Newark Immigration Court, compared to the five judges at the end of 2015, said Kathryn Mattingly, spokesperson for the Executive Office for Immigration Review. At the end of fiscal year 2016, there were eight judges, she said.
“So there are a lot of different things that are happening together, and it’s not because there is a new president,’’ Tsoukaris said.
While arrests and removals are up, he said the number of immigrants being detained at the immigrant detention facility in Elizabeth or the Essex and Hudson county jails, which house immigrant detainees held by the Newark ICE office, has decreased.
“A lot of them, after they are being processed, they are released and go back to court on their own,’’ Tsoukaris said. “They pay bonds. We issue low bonds and they can pay and they can get released.”
Among the challenges ICE officers face in carrying out their work, Tsoukaris said, is that some local law enforcement agencies refuse to cooperate. Some are not honoring detainer requests, which are formal requests from immigration agents instructing local agencies to hold individuals for up to 48 hours beyond the time they would have otherwise been released.
Tsoukaris said that county officers in Bergen, Passaic and Hudson counties are cooperative, but said that those in Middlesex, Union, Camden, Mercer and Somerset have released people despite detainers.
"We are still in discussion to try and work with them,'' he said.
The work by ICE officials in New Jersey is felt first hand by employees of First Friends of New Jersey & New York, an organization that coordinates visits to immigrant detainees at facilities in both states. Employees of the organization said they regularly hear stories of arrests and detainments.
Sally Pillay, program director, said she is hearing of more cases of people being taken into immigration custody after detainers have been issued and during check-ins. And she and Rosa Santana, volunteer coordinator for First Friends, said they have noticed the quicker deportations.
“We don’t have numbers, but it’s definitely happening,’’ she said. “It’s very, very scary times. People are being funneled and transferred, and the next thing you know they are gone.”
On Thursday, one of four Indonesian Christian men who were detained after a check-in at the Newark ICE office was deported. The men had been living in the country for more than 20 years and said they fled their homeland because of religious persecution. The man's lawyer had requested a stay of removal, but that was denied. The man didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye to his son, who was in school, before he was put on a plane.
Pillay also said that she has heard of immigration sweeps happening, pointing to one that she said occurred in Kearny.
Nineteen people were arrested at a warehouse on immigration violations in early May, according to Lou Martinez, a spokesman for ICE. Immigration officers were at the warehouse as part of a scheduled inspection by officials with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, federal officials said.
The arrests validate the worries of immigrants and advocates, said Brenda Valladares, an organizer for Movimiento Cosecha, a movement fighting for the protection for undocumented people.
“Places like Kearny, Paterson, Passaic that have never seen raids are now seeing it closer to home,’’ she said at a rally outside the Newark ICE office recently on behalf of a Rutgers student who had been called in for questioning.
Those who work with immigrants say that people are so unsettled some are choosing to leave the country. Tsoukaris said he has not heard of any spike in people self-deporting, but Santana said she’s spoken to detainees who lost hope and have said they want to go home.
“They see the news and the new policies and they are scared, and they feel like ‘what would be the reason for me to fight this case if I’m going to be eventually deported,’” she said. “So they are saying, ‘send me back home.’”
Victoria Mota, who helps Guatemelan immigrants in Palisades Park, said that some undocumented people she knows have stopped driving and others have moved to other states. And she said she has heard of some people deciding against coming to the United States and heading to Canada instead.
"They feel they have more options over there,'' she said.
Elias Garcia, a volunteer for Centro Comunitario CEUS a non-profit in Union City that serves and organizes Hispanic immigrants in North Jersey, said several day laborers he knows told him that they planned to leave if Trump became president.
"They said that if he won, they were going,'' he said. "And I haven't seen them since."
Read or Share this story: https://njersy.co/2rErjD0The founder of HARD Events has left the building, ciao Live Nation
Gary says hasta la vista....
Ten years after starting his now legendary venture HARD Fest, Gary Richards has called it quits. After a strong run with Live Nation, who purchased HARD Fest outright in 2012, Richards has announced a rather sudden departure at the brand's ten year mark.
Richards, who also founded Holy Ship, has opted out of the corporate circle jerk and it seems is headed to greener pastures. Does this have something to do with James Barton's quiet new venture? Hard to say at this point, but everything great must come to an end and Destructo certainly has made one hell of a glorious exit.
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What's next for the rave pioneer? Hopefully we will know soon, and it will most likely be something interesting and VERY credible. His official statement is below.
"Goodnight and good luck" - Edward R. Murrow
To all the HARDfam & Shipfam :
I am leaving Live Nation after this week's Hard event to pursue an incredible new opportunity that I will share with everyone in the weeks to come.
Accordingly, I will not be attending or curating the next Holy Ship cruise event in 2018.
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ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website
I have the utmost respect for Michael Rapino and Live Nation.
Let's make this week's 10th anniversary show the best HARD event ever!
Gary Richards AKA DestructoSupporters’ contributions to our podcast on population and climate change show exactly why we need to talk about this issue
Last month, on these pages, I asked if you might get in touch with your questions and thoughts on population and climate change. You did – in some numbers. These generous contributions form the heart of the latest edition of We Need to Talk About …, our podcast featuring supporters’ voices, in which your concerns are addressed by a panel of Guardian journalists and experts.
As a starting point, we used a Guardian article with an arresting headline: Want to fight climate change? Have fewer children. In the podcast, we hear from one of the academics who produced the research which this article refers to, but equally interesting were your responses to this issue, and the discussions they prompted in our studio.
That’s why we’ve decided to publish some of them here. While we aim to hear from lots of voices and include differing points of view on the podcast, a lack of time means we sometimes have to cut people short, or use one person to represent the views of several who have contacted us making similar points. Here, we can give members a bit more space to air their views.
You can listen to the panel respond to them – our line-up is Damian Carrington, the Guardian’s environment editor; Lucy Lamble, the Guardian’s executive editor for global development, who often writes on and takes part in debates on global inequality; John Vidal, the multi-award winning former Guardian environment editor and Afua Hirsch, a writer and broadcaster for the Guardian and SkyNews among others, who has also worked in international development and the law.
But first gain a flavour of the concerns of your fellow readers below. Many of these questions appear in the podcast, while others influenced the direction in which we headed.
Poor allocation of resources is the problem – Kevin, Canada
The issue isn’t overpopulation – it’s poor resource allocation. We do not live in a world of lack, but of extreme waste and inefficiency. This is true of food, energy, land use and the financial system. The overpopulation argument is a way to once again deflect from real societal change that is needed, and instead focuses the discussion on families, usually poor families, having too many children.
While it is likely that the Earth does have some sort of maximum carrying capacity, even that is not guaranteed with recent technological advancements such as vertical farming. The question is whether those technological advancements will be put to use to raise the standard of living for every human being on the planet, or are put towards continuing to line the pockets of the wealthiest individuals and their investors.
We consume without asking where these things come from – Cristina, Brazil
To my mind, it is not the countries in Africa, or groups with a more traditional and much simpler way of life – such as Native people in North and South America, for instance – that have caused so many environmental problems, but the irrationality and consumerism of our western society. It is the fact that we consume without truly asking ourselves where all these goods come from, how they were produced, what the environmental impact is of producting all these mostly useless things. Unless we seriously address these questions, I cannot see any significant change or serious solution to climate change.
A convenient way to blame others – Marc, France
I‘ve often noticed that some westerners, who have no agenda at all on any environmental question, are keen to invoke “overpopulation” as the main and only threat to survival on Earth. Is overpopulation just a convenient way for westerners to put the blame on Africans for the environmental threats we face?
Entitlement to reproduce - Clare, UK
How can those with the largest carbon footprint be encouraged not to reproduce, when they are ones who make the greatest impact and have the greatest sense of entitlement?
Access to contraception faces a barrier: the church – Angela, UK
Pope Francis recently condemned climate change sceptics. He is passionate about protecting the planet and has called on everyone to care for creation, particularly as climate change disproportionately impacts the poor.
The Catholic church runs 25% of health and education systems worldwide and therefore, through its direct teaching and management, significantly reduces safe access to contraception for millions of women. No debate on controlling population growth and subsequent pollution can therefore exist without tackling this institutional barrier to action. Last year over 170 theologians issued a statement saying there was no reason for the Catholic church’s position against “artificial” contraception.
How does the panel feel the church can continue to do great work on this issue, yet continue to block safe access to contraception for some of the world’s poorest women?
Women are being denied choice about pregnancy – Sally, Hong Kong
I am a gynaecologist working in Hong Kong, occasionally counselling women considering having another child. If someone is ambivalent about doing so, I add into the decision-making the idea that having more children impacts climate change.
Since I was a teenager in the 1970s, I have believed it is a woman’s right to choose whether to continue a pregnancy. Working as a volunteer in an African country where abortion is illegal, I have seen women saved from death after trying to procure an abortion themselves. They were lucky – the hospital was nearby, there were good doctors, antibiotics, surgery, and blood transfusion.
2017: the year we lost control of world population surge? Read more
In African countries where abortion is often illegal, an unmet need for contraception is also common. I applied for a volunteer job in northern Uganda where women having five to six children is the norm; when asked, they say they would have preferred three or four.
Donald Trump’s global gag rule which removes US aid from any NGO providing contraceptive advice, is a huge problem. Not only because maternal mortality due to abortion deaths will rise in Africa, but also because the UNFPA [UN population fund] will stop training midwives, and the resulting reduction in maternal mortality will diminish. In addition, there will be greater unmet need for contraception.
With good information couples will do the right thing – Dave, US
Do you think our society can reach the point where choosing to have fewer children as an essential carbon-cutting strategy is as widely understood as conserving energy?
As a parent I would take a bullet for either of my two children. I’m certain almost all parents would do just about anything to ensure their kids have a decent life. Knowing this, I cannot help but feel that if young couples around the world have good information they will do the right thing. If they understand the ramifications of their family-size decisions on the quality of life – chance of survival even – of their children, then they will make the most loving, compassionate decision possible: to conceive no more than one child.
We are failing to get the family-size issue across – Alison, UK
I joined Population Matters, an organisation that promotes smaller family size and reduced consumption, to find like-minded people and put my energies into a worthwhile organisation. I appreciate the impact we are having on the environment, and am mindful of that. However, I have found people around me such as family, friends and colleagues are largely not interested, or suggest they should have the freedom to do as they please.
How do we start making a difference? Also we seem to have failed with high-profile individuals, royals and celebrities in particular. So what happens now?
What will persuade people? Money? – Gwyneth, UK
We have to reduce the population, hopefully not by severe climate change, war or disease. China’s one-child solution would not be accepted by most people. What do experts suggest? It seems money has the only power over most people. Should we pay people not to have children?
Politicians don’t talk about this – Mike, UK
How do we get politicians to talk seriously about the links between population and climate change? The last three elections in the UK have barely mentioned the environment. Is there an agreement between the political parties to avoid this discussion?
Childless lifestyles need promoting – Michelle, UK
I like children, but have never felt that I would like to have my own.
I am very regularly treated as odd for this decision, and feel that if we don’t open up the discussion about not having children, people will never consider this decision thoroughly, whether for the environment or other reasons.
In the past three years, I have made a number of lifestyle changes in order to reduce my carbon footprint – which has only further cemented my feeling that I don’t want children. I often feel like I need to keep having what can be sometimes difficult conversations with people about this choice, so as to build conversation momentum around the subject. Alternative lifestyles need to be promoted. I would like to focus on supporting and improving the lives of people already on the planet.
Can we ditch our pro-reproduction stance? – Tet-Wo, New Zealand
I have made the decision to be childfree, largely due to environmental reasons. As a childfree person, I am constantly surprised how this decision is commonly questioned by others as being a poor or “selfish” choice when the evidence suggests that it is anything but.
Given the evidence that having fewer children isthe greatest decision one can make to combat climate change, do the panel think that society can switch from having a pro-reproduction stance, where policies promote reproduction and society views having children as the “correct” choice, to a neutral stance, where having children is considered optional and policies are made to promote other means of having a fulfilled life?Popular prints for sale by M A andrew
Some of the most popular prints available on canvas or fine art paper
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In Paris, photographs from the Notre Dame, The Champs Elysees, Sacre Coeur and the Arc De Triomphe are favourites but are by no means the only popular photos from the French capital. Sometimes, people are after something that little bit different. The shot that might not be immediately conspicuous but a shot that captures the essence of Paris, nevertheless.
In London, the most popular images I sell seem to revolve around the Lloyd's Building. I took a series of photographs of this location in 2007 and usually these form the basis of a order for London photographs. If people step a little further afield, some of my work from Oxford and Cambridge tries to capture the majesty and archaic beauty of the universities. A question I am often asked is "Which is your most popular photograph?" This is quite difficult to answer as it isn't really that easy to narrow down to one image. I have over 800 prints for sale on this site and people tend to gravitate to a group of photographs that might usually have some sort of significance to them or their loved ones. New York for example is a place where many people visit and come back wanting to capture the spirit of their time together. Consequently, pictures around Central Park and famous landmarks, such as the statue of liberty or The Chrysler Building, are popular choices.In Paris, photographs from the Notre Dame, The Champs Elysees, Sacre Coeur and the Arc De Triomphe are favourites but are by no means the only popular photos from the French capital. Sometimes, people are after something that little bit different. The shot that might not be immediately conspicuous but a shot that captures the essence of Paris, nevertheless.In London, the most popular images I sell seem to revolve around the Lloyd's Building. I took a series of photographs of this location in 2007 and usually these form the basis of a order for London photographs. If people step a little further afield, some of my work from Oxford and Cambridge tries to capture the majesty and archaic beauty of the universities.
Escubells ibiza prints Church at Escubells on the Island of Ibiza
Bluemosque3 istanbul prints Another shot of the Blue Mosque. It was built in 1616.
Bigdaisy flora prints Flower in part macro
Deansgatetunnel manchester prints Deansgate Tunnel looking up at the Beetham Tower, Manchester. This tunnel is part of the Bridgewater Canal which helped first link Manchester to the outside world. In later years, rail was to replace barges as the main way of transporting goods in and out of the city.
Campanile Venice2 prints The Campanile, Venice, Italy. The Campanile rises out of St Mark's Square in Venice, Italy. Visitors can pay to trudge the steps of the Campanile which is worth it for views of the city.
Acrossthewater hongkongchina prints View of Central from Kowloon. This photograph was taken in 2005. In the foreground, a small junk can be seen with the tall high rise buildings of Hong Kong's Victoria Island in the background.
Skyabovealbufeira portugalandthealgarve prints The Old Town, Albufeira
Galata istanbul prints Galata Tower. The name means Royal Tower.
Inthemountains italytuscany prints High up in the mountains Northern Tuscany
Whitewashedwalls ibiza prints White washed Ibizan Architecture
Pigeons Venice1 prints Pigeons on St Marks square, Venice, Italy. Taken from high up above Venice in the Campanile, a small boy was feeding the pigeons. The shot just jumped out.
Detailofmanhattan newyork prints Manhattan Bridge, New York. This bridge is often overshadowed by its close neighbour but it is still an important part of the skyline of NYC.
Fromsantaterase riodejaneiro prints View from Santa Teresa across Botafogo to Sugar Loaf Mountain
Inmahon menorca prints Architecture of Mahon, Menorca
Carnegiehall limitededitions prints I forget now where exactly this shot was taken in New York but Carnegie Hall rings a bell.
Littleboy animal prints Little boy on the Bosphorous, Istanbul, Turkey. This photograph was taken in 2004 in the Dolmabahce Palace gardens.
Scotland landscape prints Scotland as viewed from Northumberland National Park, UK. From this vantage point, the view stretches out across the Scottish Borders
Islandcraft barbados2 prints Shop at Bathsheba. Look closely at the photograph and you can see the shop keeper taking an afternoon siesta.
Americanstock newyork2 prints Lower Manhattan, New York
Newsstand newyork2 prints NYC Newspaper seller, 2009
Curvedpassage manchester prints Between the Central Library and the main Town Hall, this passageway makes for an interesting perspective.
Stpaulsfromsouthwark londoncontinued prints St Pauls Cathedral, London
Dunstanburgh northengland prints This image shows the remains of the ruin. It was taken from the opposite side of the Northumberland coast to Craster a view of the ruins that is not often photographed
Chryslerbuilding newyork2 prints The Chrysler Building, New York
If romance is what you are after, Venice is probably for you. Built on a lagoon (and quite possibly sinking into the lagoon) there can be no other city quite like it on earth. Favourite photos from this city usually revolve around St Mark's Basilica and Square, the Doge's Palace or The Bridge of Sighs but again some customers are looking for something else. Something related to Venice that doesn't scream Venice.
For me, my favourites would be as follows. Number one:- Raffles Hotel Singapore. This portrait shot was taken in 2006. The charm of this hotel is what draws me to it and the photograph, finished in a sepia tone, has I feel a timeless quality that makes it intriguing. My second choice would be the shot in the New York gallery of Poet's Walk, near Bethesda, Central Park. I had to use a tripod for this shot as the day was drawing to a close. Central Park is such an antidote to the vast metropolis of New York city. My third favourite photograph would then be the landscape oriented shot of the Giant's Causeway. This took 3 hours to drive to but was well worth it. The photograph was taken in 2004.The Omega Force developed Attack on Titan game for PS4, PS3 and PS Vita really looks a lot like the anime in the latest batch of screenshots.
Now we already know that from the teaser trailer (shown below) that the game would use a more visually stylized approached but it seems that Omega Force are doing their best to capture the anime’s aesthetic.
What’s more the game is sounding quite interesting, as both the producer Hisashi Koinuma and director Tomoyuki Kitamura were recently interviewed about the game. The biggest shift for the team has been from having one player take on multiple enemies, like in the Dynasty Warriors series, to having multiple players take on one enemy.
In addition, and this is key, they’ve also been focusing on the 3D Maneuvering Gear functionality. As Kitamura says, “The part that we ought to focus more on is about ‘how to make it feel good while flying around using the 3D Maneuver Gear?’ and we’ve redone this system numerous times.”
The other interesting point is that more experienced gamers will get to use their skills more decisively, as Kitamura explains, “Players that are used to playing games, will get a feeling like they’re Captain Levi right from the start. There are high risks if you try to immediately go for the back of a Titan’s neck, so it’ll be an effective tactic to start out by destroying its limbs. Although, I don’t think it’d be impossible to have those who are used to action games be able to take them out in one blow.”
All of this is sounding fantastic from my standpoint, from the iteration of the core mechanics to the skill-based approach to downing a Titan. As someone that has enjoyed the manga and anime a great deal, I definitely like what I am hearing.
The 3D Maneuver Gear point is interesting though. The way they work in the narrative is very awkward and pretty lethal for those that use them improperly. As you effectively fire a steam-powered grappling hook directly in front of you and it then pulls you along.
Chaining subsequent shots then helps to build up momentum as well as get higher up to deal with a Titan.
Considering that this is one of the coolest aspects of the series, I am really happy that this new game sounds like it is on the right track to do the feature justice.
The game is also looking really great too and I can’t wait for its release next year.
Follow me on Twitter and YouTube. I also manage Mecha Damashii.
Read my Forbes blog here.How much is you current base capital (C)? In my formula, this is my total capital including those open position in the market. How many percent of this C you want to risk (R) in a single trade? It means that, if you R is 1% and you C is USD 10,000, your allowable loss in a single trade is USD 100. How many percent is your cut-loss (L)? I use fix percentage as it is easier to compute. Depending on stock market I trade, I use between 8-10% cut loss. What is your buying price (B)? The final piece of the equation is how many stocks - position sizing (P) - you are allowed to buy.
Hence, the full formula is as follow:
P = (C*R)/(B*L)
The terms "Position Sizing" came across to my trading journey when I read van Tharp's book, Super Trader. In his book, he stresses the importance of knowing "how much stocks to buy" to stay alive in trading. This theory of position sizing really struck me hard! This is essentially the MONEY part of the famous 3M theory.The theory is this: Assuming you have a very good EDGE (or strategy - be it an algorithm, some technical analysis or fundamental analysis, or any strategy) that will give you a positive return in the LONG run, you have to be careful with your money management. I mean, you are sure that your EDGE (METHOD - another M in the 3M) will give you WIN over time, BUT you do not know the SEQUENCE! For example, you can have a straight ten losses before getting a big win on the eleventh trade. You wont know when you win, you wont know when you lose. Moral of the story: you have to play SMALL to stay in the game for LONG!Simple theory and very logical, eh?So the question is how SMALL you should buy? In his book, van Tharp mentioned about several ways to position sizing, but in this article, I am going to tell you the formula I am using with a great discipline (well, I am still in the game!)The elements you need to define first:Example #1,Stock XXX price is at USD 1.5, your capital in your broker account is USD 20,000. In you trading plan, your cut-loss is at a fixed percentage of 8% and you can only tolerate 1% loss of your capital in one trade.P = (20,000*1)/(1.5*8) = 1,666 stocks (round it down, to the nearest lot)Example #2,Stock XXX is at SGD 1, your capital in broker account is SGD 5000, and your open position is SGD 200, your cut-loss is at 10% and you are very conservative and only willing to risk 0.5% of you total capital. You are in Singapore market where 1 lot is 1000 shares.P = (5200*0.5)/(1*10) = 260 stocks (round it down, to the nearest lot). This does not meet 1000 share minimum to buy 1 lot, so stick to your trading plan, and DO NOT buy the stock.A woman shouts slogans and bangs on a pan last month during an anti-government protest demanding the impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. (Leo Correa/AP)
Rodrigo Muchinelli, owner of a computer sales and repair store in Rio, said his business was in the red for the first three months of this year and is still limping. “It is a fight, daily,” said the 38-year-old businessman.
Laercio Soares closed a lucrative deal with a Rio samba school for his embroidery company in December. He used the money to close a family business whose workforce had fallen from 60 to eight. “We saw the perspective was bad,” said Soares, 65. “That’s why we took this drastic decision.”
He was proved right. Brazil’s economy is tanking — and it’s not just China, its principal trade partner, that is to blame. South America’s biggest economy fell into recession in August and is expected to shrink by 2 to 3 percent this year. Inflation is pushing 10 percent, its highest since 2003, unemployment has climbed to over 8 percent, and the Brazilian real has lost about a third of its value against the dollar this year.
Just a few years ago, Brazil was a favorite of investors — one of the “BRICS” group of emerging markets named for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Its economy grew more than 7 percent in 201 |
to save money using this strategy, there are certain situations when it would be ineffective or even downright dangerous to do so. For example, you may end up in the wrong hospital, said Marc Eckstein, the Los Angeles City Fire Department’s medical director, speaking with CBS. Not all hospitals offer the same services, so if you get a ride to the nearest one which is not equipped to treat your problem, that hospital will then call 911 and move you to the right facility. “That difference of 30 minutes or more could mean the difference between life and death,” Eckstein said. Ambulance App The fact that the cost of taking an ambulance to the hospital is inaccessible for a lot of people in the U.S. is a big problem, and the use of ride-sharing services is a workaround at best. However, there are certain advantages to the idea of people taking an Uber when an ambulance isn’t necessary.
“If ambulances aren’t used when they’re less needed, that improves response time when they are needed,” explained Slusky. Again, it’s troubling to think that people might have to weigh the financial repercussions of getting to the hospital in an emergency, but there could be a benefit to giving people a less expensive alternative in non-emergency situations. Slusky argues that educating the public about what sort of conditions need immediate treatment, as well as an effective method of remote triage before the patient ever reaches the hospital, could help modernize our emergency healthcare. Some kind of sanctioned ride-sharing service could play a role, with ambulances serving as one component of a broader fleet of vehicles with various levels of specialization. Technology is poised to revolutionize the healthcare industry as we know it, and the current experience of heading to the hospital could be unrecognizable in a few years time. When it comes to emergency services, the biggest problem is re-educating the public. People know the established process for emergency care, and ingraining a new approach will take time and effort.Last week we reported that as Illinois, a state which now faces over $15 billion in backlogged bills, struggles over the next two weeks to somehow come up with its first budget in three years ahead of a June 30 fiscal year end, and faces an imminent ratings downgrade to junk - the first ever in US state history - traders finally puked, sending the yield on its bonds surging after a judge ruled at the start of the month that the state is violating consent decrees and previous orders, and instructed the state to achieve "substantial compliance with consent decrees", further pressuring its financial situation.
In a last ditch attempt to resolve the ongoing budget impasse and prevent a potential crisis, which may culminate with an eventual default by the distressed state, yesterday the WSJ reported that Illinois Gov. Rauner ordered lawmakers to return for a special session this week, but the two sides still seem far apart. Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner ordered the special session starting Monday, as the backlog of unpaid bills reaches $15.1 billion.
“Everyone needs to get serious and get to work,” he said in a video announcing the session that his office posted on Facebook.
As reported previously, the state Transportation Department said it would stop roadwork by July 1 if Illinois entered its third consecutive fiscal year without a budget - the longest such stretch of any US state - while the Powerball lottery said it may be forced to dump Illinois over its lack of budget. For now, state workers have continued to receive pay because of court orders, but school districts, colleges and medical and social service providers are under increasing strain.
And yet, despite the sharp selloff in Illinois GO bonds which some had expected could force the two sides to reach a bargin, neither the Democrat-led legislature, nor Republicans governor Bruce Rauner appear closer to a consensus. Which probably explains today's Associated Press "shock piece" exposing just how serious the situation could become in under two weeks absent a resolution. It focuses on state Comptroller Susana Mendoza - who has had the unenviable job of essentially sitting at the kitchen table trying to figure out how to pay the bills - who is warning that the previously discussed new court orders in lawsuits filed by state suppliers that are owed money mean her office is required to pay out more than Illinois receives in revenue each month. That means there would be no money left for so-called “discretionary” spending - a category that in Illinois includes school buses, domestic violence shelters and some ambulance services.
“I don’t know what part of ‘We are in massive crisis mode’ the General Assembly and the governor don’t understand. This is not a false alarm,” said Mendoza, a Chicago Democrat.
“The magic tricks run out after a while, and that’s where we’re at.”
As AP sums it up, "it's a new low, even for a state that’s seen its financial situation grow increasingly desperate", a state which has a website dedicated to tracking the daily amount in overdue bills...
... and has the lowest credit rating of any state.
Lawmakers from both parties have acknowledged Illinois needs to raise taxes to make up for revenue lost when a previous tax hike expired, leaving the state on pace to take in $6 billion less than it is spending this year — even without a budget.
That, however, is being blocked by Rauner, who wants Democrats to approve changes he says are needed to improve Illinois’ long-term financial health before he’ll support a tax increase. Among them are "term limits for lawmakers, a four-year property tax freeze and new workers’ compensation laws that would reduce costs for employers." Democrats have balked at the full list, saying they’re willing to approve some items on Rauner’s list, but that what he’s demanding "keeps changing or goes too far and would hurt working families." Senate Democrats also note that they approved a $37 billion budget with $3 billion in cuts and an income tax increase in May. The House has not taken up that plan.
In a scenario reminiscent of ongoing events in insolvent Greece, state funding has been reduced or eliminated in areas such as social services and higher education. Many vendors have gone months without being paid. And increasingly, they’re filing lawsuits to try to get paid. As discussed last week, the courts already have ruled in favor of state workers who want paychecks, as well as lottery winners whose payouts were put on hold. Transit agencies have sued, as has a coalition of social service agencies, including one that’s run by Rauner’s wife. Health care plans that administer the state’s Medicaid program also asked a federal judge to order Mendoza’s office to immediately pay $2 billion in unpaid bills. "They argued that access to health care for the poor and other vulnerable groups was impaired or “at grave risk” because the state wasn’t paying providers, causing them to leave the program."
As one after another deadline looms, on June 7, Judge Joan Lefkow ruled that Illinois isn’t complying with a previous agreement to pay the bills and gave attorneys for the providers and the state until Tuesday to work out a level of payment.
Meanwhile, comtroller Mendoza says whatever that amount will be, it will likely put Illinois at the point where 100 percent of revenues must be paid to one of the office’s “core priorities,” such as those required by court order. And if this lawsuit doesn’t do it, the next court ruling against the state will.
In other words, the already insolvent state is about to be slammed with another deluge for bills which it can't pay. Then, she’s not sure what will happen, other than more damage.
“Once the money’s gone, the money’s gone, and I can’t print it,” Mendoza said, perhaps envious of the residents of the Marriner Eccles building who have never faced a similar predicament.Among the first questions I am asked when first meeting other gamers is what my favorite game is–a trial by which to ascertain what type of gamer I am, and if I have valid taste. Or perhaps a common point of conversation on which to jump and nerdily compare notes. It is rare that I receive the latter response when I explain that the Quest for Glory series is my favorite of all time to this day. What I wanted to do now is explicate why that is, with my clear enjoyment of Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Flower, Shadow of the Colossus, and many, many more (Note! I am not saying older games are better than newer, and I find many of the newer games much easier to both comprehend and play than their predecessors).
Part of QFG’s appeal is its simplicity. While it meshes two genres, both the point-and-click adventure games of old, and the stat-driven RPG, it adheres wholly to neither. This was a bit confusing to me when I first played the game (I believe I was all of seven at the time), as it meant I was not only looking around for various items to use in puzzles and interacting with NPCs, but I was also engaging in combat and working on my stats with either my fighter, wizard, or thief (later paladin as well). Since my mother loved Sierra’s adventure games, and my father the SSI Gold Box series, I was knowledgeable of both, so it did not take long to catch on how this worked.
QFG had no levels, which seemed an oddity to me at the time. Instead, if you wished to become a stronger fighter, you exercised, climbed trees, fought, trained, or any of a myriad of physical activities. To get better at magic-use you used magic. It was a system that was largely intuitive (though some stats were less so, or sometimes had few opportunities open to progressing them).
This system could sometimes become a grind, but it was a welcome one by which you could distract yourself if you couldn’t figure out a puzzle. Excepting the second, Trial by Fire, there are relatively few time constraints, so if you are stuck at a period in the game, you can go off, fight a few goblins, cast some spells, and then come back after you’ve given your mind a bit of a break. Rather than asking you to put away the game once you’ve hit a progression block, there are often more options available.
There were also typically multiple options for solving any given puzzle. If I recall correctly, Lori Ann Cole has been cited as not really enjoying the game of making her players guess what was inside her head when she designed a puzzle. If you are a mage and need to get past a door, you’ll likely have a spell that will aid you. Warrior? Bash the door. Thief? Pick the lock. There are some item-based interactions that are specific, but I cannot recall any that were so painfully ludicrous as the penultimate example in how obscure those became.
Perhaps among the biggest allures was the ability to both export my character from one game and import him into another. While it did not have quite the story-choosing impact that BioWare’s latest two franchises have had, it still allowed me to grow attached to my character, and why I was disappointed that the expansions to Quest for Glory V: Dragonfire never saw light (in which case, those decisions that BioWare chooses to make an impact in sequels would have made such an occurrence in choice of wife (furthermore, who one rescued from Hades) and whether or not one became King or Chief Thief).
The games also walked a fine line between comedy and tragedy, with the earlier games being much more jovial in mood, and the stakes raising as the series progressed. I imagine this was likely due to both learning to write for a new medium, as well as taking more risks in such storytelling. After establishing certain characters, it is also easier to make one feel more involved with their plights, and their connections with the player character.
Among the reasons my favorite remains the fourth installment, Shadows of Darkness, is that it seemed to balance both equally, having a mixture of tragic figures alongside silly antwerp puzzles. Its Avoozl imagery managed to both be silly in its tentacled goodness, and still grow to be a menacing Cthulu homage.
At some point or another I’d like to do a more in depth analysis, but I wanted to at least put these thoughts out there, as I’ve been kicking them about my head for some time. There are definitely flaws, and I wish to more closely examine those as well, to see why the games succeed in spite of such (and bugs in the fourth title are a given).
AdvertisementsIt’s no secret that Audi’s been seriously considering drawing a direct line between the popularity of today’s popular SUV/offroad inspired product popularity and its 1980s era rallying prowess. Concepts like the R8-based Nanuk quattro and TT offroad have pointed the way to such future products, though AutoBild suggests it is the RS 6 that may actually spawn the first such super sports car on which to affix this genetic line back to rallying.
If the AutoBild rumor is correct, then Audi is readying an allroad with RS attributes. Effectively, it’d be an RS 6 and allroad mashup, with allroad cladding and the RS 6’s 560 hp 4.0 TFSI. The line of intel from Autobild also states that the car was created mainly with China in mind (thanks Chinese market!) and that it could be in market by fall 2016… which would suggest it may yet by C7-based.
Not since the first allroad with its 2.7T and available 6-speed manual transmission has an allroad product had quite the level of performance bonafides. Current allroads are more luxurious Avant with off-road flair than off-road performance beast. Likely an RS 6 version would take the allroad moniker to heights as-of-yet unseen in any allroad, including the first one.
Check out more information on this rumor at AutoBild (HERE in GERMAN and HERE in ENGLISH via Google Translate).
Instant Comments...
commentsRoy Morgan-Channel 10 Exit Poll. 7pm sample 6,215 Australian electors.
Roy Morgan-Channel 10 Exit Poll
PRIMARY VOTE
TIME L-NP ALP GREENS PALMER OTHERS 2010 ELECTION 43.6% 38.0% 11.8% 0.0% 6.6% SEP. 6TH 44.0% 31.5% 10.5% 6.5% 7.5% EXIT POLLS 12PM 42.0% 34.5% 11.0% 5.0% 7.5% 1PM 42.0% 34.5% 11.0% 5.5% 7.0% 2PM 42.0% 34.5% 10.5% 5.5% 7.5% 3PM 42.5% 33.5% 11.0%
5.0% 8.0% 4PM 42.5% 33.5% 11.5% 5.0% 7.5% 5PM 43.0% 33.5% 11.0% 5.0% 7.5% 6PM 43.5% 33.0% 11.0% 5.0% 7.5% 7PM 43.5% 33.0% 11.0% 5.0% 7.5%
7pm sample: 6,215.
PALMER UNITED PARTY IS POLLING 9.5% IN QUEENSLAND.
PALMER’S PREFERENCES ARE BEING ALLOCATED 65% L-NP & 35% ALP
IF PALMER VOTERS VOTE THE CARD THE 2PP WILL BE UP TO 1.5% MORE TO THE L-NP (53.5%) CF. ALP (46.5%).
TWO-PARTY PREFERRED VOTE
L-NP ALP 2010 ELECTION 49.9% 50.1% SEP. 6TH 53.5% 46.5% EXIT POLLS 12PM 52% 48% 1PM 51.5% 48.5% 2PM 52% 48% 3PM 52% 48% 4PM 52% 48% 5PM 52% 48% 6PM 53% 47% 7PM 53% 47%
ABOUT THE MORGAN POLL
The Morgan Poll is Australia’s most respected public opinion poll and has proved itself repeatedly in more than 75 Federal and State Elections and national referenda. The Morgan Poll was the most accurate public opinion poll in predicting the outcome of the 2010 Federal Election, and was first to call a ‘Hung Parliament’.
Because Roy Morgan Research is not owned by a media corporation, or affiliated with any political party or union, our polls are independent and free of hidden agendas.
Today the Morgan Poll conducts a comprehensive multi-mode interviewing survey with a cross-section of over 3,000 Australian electors aged 18+ each week. The multi-mode Morgan Poll interviews via face-to-face interviewing, SMS mobile phone interviewing and an Online survey each week to achieve the most accurate polling results.
Morgan Poll Accuracy — Recent Federal Elections (2007 & 2010)
The Morgan Poll has proven to be consistently the most accurate regular poll in recent Australian Elections — including the 2007 Federal Election & 2010 Federal Election.
The Morgan Poll was the most accurate of all polling companies at the 2010 Federal Election for the primary vote and clearly second-most accurate for the two-party preferred predictions (sample 1,872 electors).
The Morgan Poll was the most accurate of all polling companies at the 2007 Federal Election for both primary vote and two-party preferred predictions (sample 2,115 electors).Despite earning critical praise for last year's ceremony, actress and comedian Whoopi Goldberg announced that she would not host the ceremony for a second consecutive year saying, "I've had a great time, but I've done it."[20] She added that her role in the upcoming movie Bogus would jeopardize her busy schedule.[21] In addition, her Comic Relief co-host and veteran Oscar emcee Billy Crystal also declined to host the show citing his commitment to his film Forget Paris which he directed, written, starred, and produced.[21] Producer Gil Cates hired actor, comedian, and Late Show host David Letterman as host of the 1995 ceremony.[22] Cates explained his decision to hire the late night talk show host saying, "He's punctual, he's well groomed, and he knows how to keep an audience awake."[23] ABC entertainment president Ted Harbert also approved of the choice stating, "If Dave likes the experience, this could be a great answer for the show, just the way Johnny Carson did the show for many years."[24]
As with previous ceremonies he produced, Cates centered the show around a theme. This year, he christened the show with the theme "Comedy and the Movies" commenting "This year, because of the earthquakes and floods and Bosnia and Rwanda, it was a (terrible) year, and therefore seemed a great year to celebrate what movies can really give us, which is an opportunity to go for two hours in the dark and laugh together. Even with television, it's not a community experience unless you have a very big family. So it's unique to movies and theater, and it's this very human thing."[23][25] In tandem with the theme, the ceremony's opening number featured a montage produced by Chuck Workman featuring scenes of humorous moments from a variety of both comedic and non-comedic films. During that segment, actors Tim Curry, Kathy Najimy, and Mara Wilson performing a modified version of the song "Make 'Em Laugh" from the film Singin' in the Rain.[26] Several collections of film clips were shown throughout the broadcast highlighting various aspects of comedy such as troupes and dialogue.[27]
Several other people were also involved with the production of the ceremony. Bill Conti served as musical director and conductor for the event.[28] Production designer Roy Christopher designed a new stage for the ceremony which prominently featured a proscenium which was designed to resemble the iris of a camera.[29] Moreover, Christopher commented that the iris motif was inspired by the iris shot prominently featured in several comedic films and shorts.[25] Dancer Debbie Allen choreographed The Lion King musical number.[30] Actors Alec Baldwin, Jack Lemmon, Steve Martin, and Rosie O'Donnell participated in a pre-taped comedic sketch lampooning auditions for a role in Cabin Boy, the film in which Letterman made his film acting debut.[31]
Box office performance of nominees Edit
At the time of the nominations announcement on February 14, the combined gross of the five Best Picture nominees at the US box office was $468 million, with an average of $93.6 million per film.[32] Forrest Gump was the highest earner among the Best Picture nominees with $300 million in domestic box office receipts. The film was followed by Pulp Fiction ($76 million), Four Weddings and a Funeral ($52 million), The Shawshank Redemption ($16 million) and Quiz Show ($21 million).[32]
Of the top 50 grossing movies of the year, 44 nominations went to 14 films on the list. Only Forrest Gump (2nd), The Client (12th), Pulp Fiction (14th), Four Weddings and a Funeral (20th), and Nell (41st) were nominated for directing, acting, screenwriting, or Best Picture. The other top 50 box office hits that earned nominations were The Lion King (1st), True Lies (3rd), Clear and Present Danger (6th), Speed (7th), The Mask (8th), Interview with the Vampire (10th), Maverick (11th), Legends of the Fall (27th) and Little Women (31st).[33]
Critical reception Edit
The show received a negative reception from most media publications. John J. O'Connor of The New York Times wrote, "Instead of keeping things moving smartly, Mr. Letterman stuck with his late-night shtick, too often leaving the show's pacing in shambles." He also added, "Within the show's first half-hour, with no strong hand at the helm, the audience simply sagged. Applause died long before most winners even reached the podium."[34] Television critic John Carman of the San Francisco Chronicle commented, "Last night on ABC, no one got it. Hollywood's big event was wonderfully littered by technical errors, bad taste, low comedy and lower necklines." Moreover, he remarked, "Letterman, the rookie host, was off his game in his opening monologue. Maybe it was the big auditorium. Or a billion people in the television audience."[35] Film critic Andrew Sarris of The New York Observer quipped, "Not only was he not witty or funny, he never knew when to let bad enough alone." He concluded, "As the evening dragged on, it became obvious that Mr. Letterman had no gift for ad-libbing through the few unpredictable opportunities in a 'live' event like the Oscars."[36] People named the ceremony as one of the worst television broadcasts of 1995, remarking that Letterman was "a cranky skeptic [who] visit[ed] the high temple of show business, mock[ed] the gold-plated statuary and display[ed] insufficient reverence for the gods. (Tom Hanks assisting with a stupid pet trick?!) We know who the winner wasn't."[37]
Some media outlets received the broadcast more positively. Television critic Joyce Millman of The San Francisco Examiner noted, "In his first stint as host of the Oscar telecast, David Letterman did the impossible—he made something entertaining from what is traditionally the most boring three hours of TV this side of a test pattern."[38] The Buffalo News columnist Alan Pergament praised Letterman's performance as host writing "David Letterman was a box full of chocolates on an Oscar night that was empty of much emotion until the expected Forrest Gump sweep in the final 15 minutes." He also added that despite a lack of surprises amongst the awards, the emotional and unexpected humorous moments provided depth and entertainment throughout the evening.[39] Hal Boedeker of the Orlando Sentinel gave an average review of the ceremony but singled out Letterman noting that he "proved Monday night that he's among Oscar's Top 10 Hosts. He's definitely at the top of the list with Johnny Carson, Billy Crystal and Bob Hope."[40]
Ratings and reception Edit
The American telecast on ABC drew in an average of 48.28 million people over its length, which was a 7% increase from the previous year's ceremony.[41][42] An estimated 81 million total viewers watched all or part of the awards.[43] The show also drew higher Nielsen ratings compared to the previous ceremony with 32.5% of households watching over a 53 share.[42][44] In addition, it also drew a higher 18–49 demo rating with a 21.7 rating among viewers in that demographic.[44] It was the most watched Oscars telecast since the 55th ceremony held in 1983.[45]
In July 1995, the ceremony presentation received six nominations at the 47th Primetime Emmys.[46] Two months later, the ceremony won one of those nominations for Jeff Margolis's direction of the telecast.[47][48]This book is a must for any traveler in the United States. As a concealed carry person.. living in America.. we should be able to travel freely through state boarders without worrying about whether it is legal or not legal to carry a personal defense side arm. But with state's rights, concealed carry is a nightmare. If you carry, you had better check the gun laws of every state that you will pass through before arriving to your destination... some states allow a gun in the passenger compartment and others do not. Gun laws are changing almost weekly... so you had better buy this book every year to find the latest yearly information, but you had also better keep informed via the internet later in the year to see if any changes have taken place since the last publication of this critical book. Stay informed, and protect your right to carry concealed and everyone else's right to carry... don't give the "gun grabbers" any ammo to make the rest of us look bad.current=>condition: Are you running 1.11.5? previous=>condition: Are you running 1.10.8? latest=>end: Upgrade to 1.11.5 as soon as possible. nextCurrent=>end: Upgrade to 1.12 in February 2019. nextPrevious=>end: Upgrade to 1.11.7 in early July 2019. current(yes,right)->nextCurrent current(no,bottom)->previous previous(yes,right)->nextPrevious previous(no,bottom)->latest
To know when a new version is released, subscribe to golang-announce. Only important announcements are made, so you don't have to worry about being inundated with email.
The More Nuanced Answer¶
A Go release can update the toolchain (e.g., compiler) and/or the packages in the standard library. New features and fixes are implemented for the next release (1.12). Fixes for critical problems that don't have workarounds applied to the current release (1.11) and released as minor changes (1.11.x). Critical fixes are typically related to stability or security. The previous release (1.10) only receives security updates.
This maintenance policy, defined as part of the Go Release Cycle, results in the following maintenance schedule:
To receive security updates, which are important even if your production application is in maintenance mode, the latest release of a maintained version of Go needs to be used (currently 1.11.5 and 1.10.8), or the security updates need to be manually back-ported to whatever version you are using.
If you choose to run the latest current release, you will have access to the latest features, fixes, and performance improvements. If you choose to run the latest previous release, you will need to update Go less frequently.
To figure out the update frequency for each choice, I analyzed the Go release since 1.5. Why start with 1.5? The release cycle was shifted before 1.5 was released to better work around conferences and holidays. This shift resulted in 6 months between the 1.4.2 and 1.5 releases. This longer period conveniently provided some extra time for converting and testing the compiler as it was changed from C to Go.
The updates for the current release do not include minor releases (i.e., security) to the previous release (e.g., 1.7.6), 1.7.2 (which was tagged, but not released), or 1.8.2 (because 1.8.3 was announced to be released the next day).
Figuring out the updates for the previous release was trickier. The difficulty comes in ensuring that release you are using has the latest security fixes. For example, right before 1.6 was released, the latest previous release was 1.4.3. When 1.6 was released, the latest previous release became 1.5.3. However, the list of updates for those tracking the previous release does not include 1.5.3, but skips to 1.5.4 (which was released after 1.6). The reasoning behind this is that all the security fixes that have been applied to 1.5.3 are also present in 1.4.3. Therefore, from a security perspective, these releases are the same, and there is, therefore, no reason to update from 1.4.3 to 1.5.3. The next update, therefore, is 1.5.4, the first release of a previous version after 1.6 was released.
Every update comes with risk. The risk while upgrading to a new minor release (e.g., 1.8.1 to 1.8.3) is low because minor releases only fix critical problems. The risk while upgrading to a new major release (e.g., 1.11.5 to 1.12 is greater, but mitigated by the Go 1 compatibility promise. This means that you can expect that any code that compiles and runs correctly will do so with any 1.x version. If it does not, please file an issue.
I generally recommend using the latest current release. Other than receiving the benefits of the latest version, the more frequent updates will keep whoever is doing the updating familiar with the process, and therefore less likely to make mistakes. Furthermore, most of those updates are minor releases, which are less risky and therefore should be easier to apply.
If you want to know some reasons the latest release is not being used, checkout Ed Muller's State of Go 2016 Survey. You will have to dig through the raw results to find the answers.
The result of this entire thought process is the flowchart at the top of this page. It will be updated soon after every Go release.
The analysis above does not include the beta and release candidates that are released before the release itself. Go 1.12 betas are expected in December 2018, release candidates in January 2019.
Trying out the betas and release candidates and filing issues with them is a great way to help the Go project.
If you want to try them, make sure and educate yourself about the betas and release candidates. Your decision should also include your testing and deployment capabilities along with your risk capacity and resources for the more frequent updates leading up to the actual release.President Trump’s attempts to block refugee admittance through executive action have been stopped in federal court. Consequently, over 8,400 refugees have resettled in the U.S., according to State Department figures released Sunday.
Trump’s first executive order called for a temporary ban on the resettlement of refugees for 120 days, and an indefinite ban on the entry of Syrian refugees. This order was subsequently blocked by a federal judge in Seattle and the decision was upheld by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The president signed a revamped order on March 6 that included the 120 day temporary ban on refugee resettlement, but removed the provision about Syrian refugees.
This revised order was subsequently blocked by federal judges in Hawaii and Maryland. The Department of Justice is currently in the appeals process, and a judge in Virginia recently ruled that the order is in fact constitutional.
Due to these troubles in court, President Trump has not been able to effectively carry out his campaign promise to stop refugee resettlement. Since he took office, 8,476 refugees have been resettled in the U.S., according to the Refugee Processing Center. More specifically, 1,131 Syrian refugees have resettled in the country during this time. This is nearly three times the number of Syrian refugees, 395, that were resettled in the same period last year under President Obama.
When President Trump signed his first executive order regarding refugee admittance, he said, “We don’t want them here. We want to ensure that we are not admitting into our countries the very threats that our soldiers are fighting overseas.” During the campaign, he called the entrance of Syrian refugees a “great Trojan horse.”
The Department of Homeland Security announced in early March that approximately 300 individuals who entered the U.S. as refugees are being investigated for terrorism.Get the latest from TODAY Sign up for our newsletter
June 14, 2013, 6:32 PM GMT By Martha White
It was no asteroid this time. This T-Rex was done in by Reddit.
You’d need jaws like a dinosaur to take a bite of the T-Rex burger, a nine-patty monster that was served up for nearly a decade at a Wendy’s restaurant in Brandon, Manitoba.
The sandwich came into being as a tongue-in-cheek fake ad that ran in Sports Illustrated, but customers didn’t get the joke and started asking for it.
“People obviously wanted it and it went from there,” said Barb Barker, administrative assistant to the franchise owner. “It was a fun thing.”
The Brandon Wendy’s sold two or three T-Rexes a day, but after a Reddit user posted the advertisement for the $21.99 burger-saurus (that’s $21.61 in U.S. dollars) three days ago, the T-Rex was headed for extinction.
Barker said the order came down from Wendy's headquarters to drop it as it was an unauthorized item. “We have now removed the image from our menu,” she said.
When the T-Rex was available, she said, the restaurant neither condoned nor promoted wolfing it down in one sitting.
Could the T-Rex have a Jurassic Park moment and be brought back to life?
“We strive to deliver a positive dining experience,” Barker said. “We want to provide options.” For instance, she said the restaurant would serve a multi-patty hamburger like a triple with an additional patty if the customer requested it.
When asked if Wendy’s would deliver the goods if a diner asked for the nine-patty T-Rex, Barker said, “No comment.”
Wendy’s is a mammoth - the world's third largest fast-food chain, with more than 6,500 franchise and company restaurants in the U.S. and 27 other countries.A Palestinian stands next to a graffiti reading in Hebrew "Revenge" in the West Bank village of Duma on July 31, 2015 (AFP/Jaafar Ashtiyeh/File)
Luba al-Samri said the graffiti was found in the al-Mahjar area of Nablus, and that Palestinian property in the area also sustained minor damages.
Israeli police were investigating the incident, she said.
The attacks during this time period have led to the deaths of three Palestinians. Attacks on Palestinians and their property by ultra-nationalist Israeli settlers is common in the occupied Palestinian territory. The UN reported last month that the first half of 2017 showed a major increase in such attacks, with 89 incidents being documented so far this year, representing an 88 percent increase compared to 2016.
The majority of attacks took place in the Nablus district, which is a hot spot for settler violence and known for its ideologically extreme illegal Israeli settlements and outposts.
Many Palestinian activists and rights groups have accused Israel of fostering a “culture of impunity” for Israelis committing violent acts against Palestinians.
In March, Israeli NGO Yesh Din revealed that Israeli authorities served indictments in only 8.2 percent of cases of Israeli settlers committing anti-Palestinian crimes in the occupied West Bank in the past three years.
Between 500,000 and 600,000 Israelis live in Jewish-only settlements across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of international law, with recent announcements of settlement expansion provoking condemnation from the international community.
BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Racist, "Anti-Arab" graffiti was founded spray-painted in Hebrew in the northern occupied West Bank district of Nablus overnight Sunday, according to an Israeli police spokesperson.The International Trade Commission is looking to curb the amount of cases it gets from patent trolls.
According to Reuters, the commission said Monday that it plans to start requiring companies to prove they are well established in the U.S. before they file patent infringement complaints. Currently, companies don't have to prove this until after the case is over.
This requirement will come via a pilot program launched by the ITC that is led by its six administrative judges. These judges will determine whether companies suing over patent infringements have sufficient U.S. production, licensing, and research to be able to use the court, according to Reuters.
Theoretically, if companies don't meet the judges' standards for adequate U.S. productions, they won't be able to use the ITC to litigate their complaints.
"Addressing this will require more than administrative fixes, but the pilot program is a step forward that could help limit costly and unnecessary patent cases," ITC Working Group executive director Matt Tanielian told Reuters.
The percentage of patent infringement lawsuits filed by patent assertion entities, or patent trolls, has increased dramatically in the past few years. According to a study conducted last year by a patent law professor in California, about 62 percent of all patent lawsuits filed in 2012 were brought by PAEs, up from about 29 percent two years earlier.
Earlier this month, President Obama announced five executive actions and seven proposed legislative changes that, among other things, instructed the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to initiate a rule-making process that would require patent holders to disclose the owner of a patent.
The Federal Trade Commission also proposed an investigation last week that would require patent-holding companies to answers questions related to how they conduct business, including whether their lawsuits are coordinated with other patent-holding companies.
Patents and intellectual-property protection have become an increasingly important topic in technology, with companies building up massive patent collections to fend off, as well as go on the offensive against other companies. Most recently there's been the high |
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Follow @gduncan411A tree lawyer will help you determine liability when it comes to fallen trees. (Photo: slgckgc/CC BY 2.0)
It begins almost like that familiar tree-falls-in-the-woods saying, if that saying grew up to become a lawyer: if a tree falls on a car, and its trunk crosses two boundary lines, who is liable for the damages?
Unlike the tree-in-the-woods scenario, however, this conundrum has an answer. A tree’s trunk—where it emerges from the ground—dictates who owns it. If any part of its trunk crosses a boundary line, then it is jointly owned, and both parties bear responsibility for the damages that it might cause, if they did not take necessary steps to inspect and maintain that tree.
Welcome to the world of tree law, a little-known corner of the legal system that deals with everything tree-related, from fatalities caused by falling branches to disputes over a tree blocking a view. Did someone sneak onto your property and cut your tree without your consent? Better get yourself a tree lawyer. Were you hit by the falling branch of a decrepit city tree? Lawyer up and head to tree court.
“Tree law is anything that you can imagine that might give rise to disputes between people concerning trees,” says Barri Bonapart, a California tree lawyer. “That can be encroaching roots, that can be a loss of a view, that can be property damage or personal injury from a tree failure. It could be trespass and wrongful cutting or damaging of a tree, and anything and everything in between.”
But while all tree cases involve a tree in some way, Bonapart cautions that most of the time, the trees are just the tip of the problem.
“It’s never about the trees,” Bonapart says. “The trees often serve as lightning rods for other issues that are the psychological underpinning of a dispute that people might have with each other.”
Tree lawyer Barri Bonapart. (Photo: Courtesy Barri Bonapart)
Like most attorneys that specialize in tree law, Bonapart did not graduate law school with the intention of becoming a tree lawyer. She spent years working in complex commercial litigation, representing faceless multinational corporations in multistate cases. Then, one day, a family friend approached her with a problem: a neighbor had cut down her blackwood acacias, and she wanted Bonapart’s help in collecting damages.
“I thought, as most lawyers do when they get their first tree case: ‘How hard can it be?’” Bonapart says. “I quickly learned it was very complex and very nuanced.”
In California, for instance, laws pertaining to trees can span as many as six sections in California’s Civil Code, while a single trespassing incident involving a tree could cover as many as three different sections of the state’s Penal Code.
“All my cases are weird, wacky, and unique, and just when I think it can’t get any weirder or wackier, somebody else walks in the door,” she says.
Tree law governs disputes over trees, such as loss of a view. (Photo: Jocelyn Kinghorn/CC BY-SA 2.0)
While it’s likely that disputes and rules involving trees have been around for as long as trees have been considered property, many of the tree laws currently followed in the United States find their root in English common law from hundreds of years ago. Back then, the rules governing trees were fairly simple. If a your neighbor’s tree branches hung onto your property, for example, you were allowed, under common law, to cut them back to your boundary line. If that tree branch had fruit hanging on it, however, that fruit was essentially forbidden—under common law, any fruit hanging on a tree belonged to the owner of the tree, as to discourage neighbors from feasting on the fruits of someone else’s arboreal labors.
Under English common law, the fruit hanging from a tree belonged only to the owner of that tree. (Photo: Mike Linksvayer/Public Domain)
In the United States, tree law is mostly a product of case law, which is based on the outcomes of previous legal cases. That means that tree law can vary widely from state to state—a judge can rule based on past cases, or forge a new opinion—but there are still basic tenets that apply nationwide. Ownership of a tree, for instance, is dictated by where the trunk of the tree emerges from the ground—if even the slightest bit of a trunk goes through a property line, then it’s a jointly owned tree.
According to tree lawyers, most tree law cases revolve around neighbor disputes, like the cutting (without permission, sometimes out of retribution) of a neighbor’s tree, or whether one neighbor’s tree unfairly blocks another’s view. In most states, residents are allowed to cut any branches off of a tree that hangs onto their property, up to the boundary line, regardless of whether or not the tree ultimately survived the chopping—that’s known as the Massachusetts Rule, because it was first decided in a Massachusetts court. But a 1993 California case amended the Massachusetts Rule slightly by stipulating that anyone looking to chop down infringing tree branches or roots needs to act “reasonably,” which meant taking into account whether the action would ultimately damage the tree.
Most cases revolve around disputes like cutting a neighbor’s tree without permission. (Photo: Mikhail Esteves/CC BY 2.0)
Other times, cases can be about damages caused by a falling tree—and in the worst cases, those fallen trees prove fatal. Lew Block, a consulting arborist and author of Tree Law Cases in the USA, once worked on a case in which both the defendant and plaintiff in the case were deceased, killed by the same falling tree.
“They were friends and lived next door, and were on the front walk chatting and the tree broke and fell and killed both of them,” Block says.
According to Victor Murello, a tree attorney in Columbus, Ohio, it is most common for tree law cases to crop up in urban areas, where dueling desires for personal space and abundant landscaping often result in disputes over trees. United States tree law even has a special rule for people in urban areas, which is that every tree in an urban area must be inspected and maintained by its owner. If the owner of that tree fails to inspect or maintain that tree, and it falls and hits a person or thing, then that owner is liable.
Tree owners in rural areas, on the other hand, face less stringent requirements.
In rural areas, there is less onus on maintaining and inspecting trees. (Photo: Hector G./CC BY-SA 2.0)
“In the rural area, the courts are not so strict about doing individual inspections of trees,” Murello explains, noting, however, that a ruling out of a Connecticut court found that as the risk of potential harm caused by a tree increases, the duty to inspect that tree also increases—regardless of whether it’s located on a lightly traveled rural highway or a bustling urban walkway.
Overall, Murello—who has been practicing tree law since 1974—says that he has seen a marked increase in the number of tree cases brought to court in recent years. That uptick has given Murello plenty to write about on his blog, and in his email newsletter, where interested readers can have a different tree case delivered to their inbox each day.
“There are so many more cases going to court now,” he says.
Bonapart agrees, noting that her office turns away more cases than it can take.
“It is insane the number of disputes that people have over trees.”
And while Bonapart says that she thinks of her job as helping to “heal the rifts in our social fabric,” her particular speciality has made it more difficult to find a good parking spot.
“I look at it and I wonder, ‘Should I park under that tree? It looks like it may lose a limb,’” she said. “I find myself thinking about and looking at trees in a very different way, both the wonderful aspects of the trees but also the liability aspects as well.”Earlier this year, Zimbabwe caused an international outcry when its plans to sell wild-caught elephant calves to overseas buyers were revealed. Unfortunately, despite petitions and calls for the plans to be dropped, this weekend saw 24 of the animals shipped out to China to be put on display in zoos and circuses.
It's estimated that each calf was sold for between $40,000 and $60,000, which the government claims will be put towards conservation efforts, specifically to pay the wage of rangers whose job it is to protect the animals in the first place. They say that they currently have too many elephants in Hwange National Park, the country’s largest park, and the options are either selling or culling them.
Conservationists around the world have criticized the move, especially since the young animals had to be torn from their mothers. “The conditions in which these animals were exported are extremely cruel,” Johnny Rodrigues, chairman of the animal rights group Conservation Task Force, told AFP, “and we condemn the whole idea of separating baby elephants from their mothers.”
Paradoxically, the sale of the elephants isn’t actually illegal under international law, despite restrictions on the trade of products derived from elephant parts, such as ivory. Under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), an international treaty drawn up to protect wildlife against over-exploitation, selling the calves qualifies as a means for generating conservation income.
According to official reports, Zimbabwe has about 80,000 elephants, but claim that could easily be reduced to 42,000. This is despite the fact that over the past two years alone, it’s estimated that 100,000 of the animals have been slaughtered for their ivory. Furthermore, Hwange National Park, where they claim the elephants are from, suffered the highest massacre of animals in southern Africa in 25 years when hundreds of elephants were killed by poisoned waterholes.
An investigative article published in National Geographic earlier this year showed the holding facility for 80 young elephants before they were exported to foreign buyers, but some claim that the Zimbabwean government have sold up to 200 of the baby animals to China alone. It’s not even clear that all the animals were caught in Zimbabwe itself, as many of them are suggested to have originated in Botswana, Zambia, and even Namibia.Those who are troubled by Trump’s ascendancy are almost equally distressed by the mindset of their fellow citizens who voted for him. It is understood that most Trump supporters are decent folks, many of whom have been left behind by changes in the global economy. But how can they believe some of the things they believe? In a post-election survey, the Public Policy Polling organization found that 67% of Trump voters think unemployment increased during Barack Obama ’s presidency while only 20% know the opposite is actually true. Though the stock market skyrocketed to record heights during the Obama years, 60% of those who voted for Trump either do not know it or do not believe it. Forty percent of Trump voters also say their candidate won the popular vote, even though Clinton now leads in the count by nearly 3 million ballots. Perhaps that is why friendly crowds at his victory rallies continue to cheer when Trump makes the obviously false claim that he won the election in a landslide. They do not know better.An abandoned Sony factory in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, has been transformed into what could very well be the farm of the future.
Shigeharu Shimamura, a plant physiologist and CEO of Mirai, has constructed the world's largest indoor farm—25,000 square feet of futuristic garden beds nurtured by 17,500 LED lights in a bacteria-free, pesticide-free environment. The result? About 10,000 heads of fresh lettuce harvested each day.
The unique "plant factory" is so efficient that it cuts food waste from the 30 to 40 percent typically seen for lettuce grown outdoors to less than 3 percent for their coreless lettuce. (Related: "Stop Wasting Food in the West and Feed the World.")
National Geographic spoke with Shimamura recently about the innovative food factory and indoor farms as a potential solution to the global food crisis.
What was the inspiration for this business venture?
Japan has had an interest in research and development in the field of farming in a factory setting for about 40 to 50 years now.
Our company built a plant factory at a location devastated by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011 because of the general concern in Japan about the declining rate of domestic vegetable supply, and how we might remedy the problem of the heavy dependence on imports.
The reason we chose this particular location is because we wanted to prove that vegetables can be produced anywhere now. Second, we wanted to help restart the economic development in this disaster area. And last, looking into the future, if we could succeed there, we could also see a possibility of exporting the technology we developed all over the world. (Related: "Inside the Looming Food Crisis.")
What impact could your plant factory have on the future of food production and as a remedy for food shortages?
Currently we have a world population of 7 to 7.2 billion. Among them, about 800 to 900 million people are suffering from starvation, or close to it. People around the world are all wondering how we can produce more food to mitigate this grave situation.
We know that water plays a big role in this, and the technology Mirai developed uses less than one percent of the water commonly used to grow vegetables—so we can conserve water by growing vegetables in a factory environment and use the water to produce more grains elsewhere.
Using this method, if we can build plant factories all over the world, we can support the food production to feed the entire world's population. This is what we are really aiming for.
How do you manage to use so little water?
With the conventional method of farming, a lot of water is wasted seeping through the soil as well as evaporating into the air. In an enclosed environment of a factory, we don't lose water down the soil. That is one way.
We can also collect the moisture the plant itself emits into the air. The water collected is recycled; this is similar to how our Earth works. The moisture released from living things on Earth collects, forms clouds, and drops back down to Earth as rain. This is the recycling system of our planet. Our factory works just like that. Water is collected, filtered, and recycled in an enclosed space.
Your lighting system was specially designed by GE Japan. What's unique about these lights?
The lighting we are talking about is LED [light-emitting diode], and it is very suitable for plant growth. The light from the particular product GE Japan developed for us promotes photosynthesis as well as cell division. What's unique about this lighting system we have now is that it can provide multiple types of light that not only encourage photosynthesis and cell growth, but also provide all other aspects necessary for plant growth.
Here is an example: If we only use the type of light that encourages photosynthesis, plants will grow too big, too fast—this causes crowding and then not enough light will reach the whole plant. The particular kind of lighting product we use now will also emit a type of light capable of penetrating the plant so every part of the plant can absorb the light.
With 10,000 heads of lettuce, how labor intensive is it to harvest the produce? Do you use robots?
I'd say it is only half automated. Machines do some work, but the picking part is done manually. In the future, though, I expect an emergence of harvesting robots. For example, a robot that can transplant seedlings, or for cutting and harvesting, or transporting harvested produce to be packaged.
You already have a few small-scale versions of the plant factory elsewhere in the world, and you're planning two more large factories in Hong Kong and Russia. Can you tell me a little bit more about these facilities?
We are building a factory in Hong Kong as we speak. We will be producing 5,000 heads of lettuce a day there. The reason we are there is because most of the vegetables consumed there come from outside Hong Kong. People are very concerned about food safety, and they want domestically produced, safe food.
The interest in Russia may have something to do with our company's success in Mongolia, where we have two smaller factories: one in the south Gobi desert and one in Ulaanbaatar. There the climate is so severe that they can't grow any vegetables outdoors during the cold season, so they import them mostly from Europe—a long distance away, especially for people who live in the far eastern part of the country. They wanted to be able to grow vegetables domestically. Our plant factory in Russia will produce 10,000 heads of lettuce next spring once it starts the operation. (Related: "Is Your Country Food Independent?")
What are some of the challenges in creating these indoor farms elsewhere in the world?
There are two big challenges. In order to build a plant factory, we need certain infrastructure in place, such as electricity and water supply. A dependable supply of electricity and water is essential right from the start. We consulted with GE Japan on this; we talked about the possibility of building a factory where electric generators are already in place.
Another big factor is the availability of telecommunication infrastructure. In Japan, we do a lot of training as well as overseeing of the operation remotely online, so having a dependable Internet connection and other telecommunication infrastructure is also critical.
Right now you're focusing on growing lettuce and leafy greens. Can this system be adapted to other produce like tomatoes, potatoes, or fruit?
I believe that, at least technically, we can produce almost any kind of plant in a factory. But what makes most economic sense is to produce fast-growing vegetables that can be sent to the market quickly. That means leaf vegetables for us now. In the future, though, we would like to expand to a wider variety of produce. It's not just vegetables we are thinking about, though. The factory can also produce medicinal plants. I believe that there is a very good possibility we will be involved in a variety of products soon.
When it comes to solving food-supply issues in the future, what can we learn from this project?
What is important here is that the success of this project depended not only on the technology, but also on the accumulated knowledge of farming practices. Mirai, our company, had the knowledge of how to grow vegetables in a factory setting, but we needed the technology to make it work.
As we face world shortages of both water and food, plant factory operations will not only stay but expand worldwide. The merging of our expertise is essential in expanding our operation to other places in the world.Republican state Senator Joseph Silk is defending his stunningly anti-gay comments by coming out with even more outrageous ones.
Joseph Silk has two anti-gay bills before the Oklahoma state senate. One bars same-sex couples from participating in covenant marriage, the other is an anti-gay license to discriminate so sweepingly broad it allows anyone to refuse to provide "any services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods or privileges," or "counseling, adoption, foster care, and other social services" to anyone else, based on their "sincerely held religious beliefs."
Not only does it remove the basic right to equal protection guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution to every LGBT person, it also removes that right from women and minorities, all based on the business owner's personal interpretation of their chosen religion.
Senator Silk told the New York Times last week that gay people "don't have a right to be served in every single store," prompting an outcry across the nation. The response was so quick and intense Silk closed his Facebook page after The New Civil Rights Movement published our report.
Silk, who is 28, is a property manager who works for his father at a vacation property business. In a new post on his campaign website, he takes full ownership of his anti-gay comments.
"Yes I did say that homosexuals do not have the right to be served in every store, just as I do not believe that I nor my family have the right to be served in every private business," Silk writes. "The right to provide services should be the decision of the business owners. We need to keep our country free and stop this radical, intolerant, movement."
UPDATE: Senator Who Says Gays Have No Right To Be Served Now Fear-Mongering With Bryan Fischer
But that's not the end of Silk's attack on the LGBT community, which includes some of his constituents.
"The problem with the current LGBT movement is they have zero tolerance or consideration of other peoples rights," Silk continues, adding this dangerous claim: "they are a threat to our freedoms and liberties in the United States and Oklahoma."
Silk neglects to specify exactly whose "freedoms and liberties" gay people are supposedly threatening, nor does he offer up one iota of proof.
"I am not questioning the rights of the LGBT movement, I believe they have the right to live how they want to live," he concedes. "They on the other hand, are launching a massive campaign that is attempting to strip other peoples individual liberties away if they hold different beliefs...this is complete intolerance."
Clearly, it is the anti-gay lawmaker whose Oklahoma Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 2015 (SB 440) who is the one "attempting to strip other peoples individual liberties away."
Silk acknowledges his bill "has outraged the LGBT community," but says "they are crying discrimination and making themselves the only 'target', in reality it has nothing to do with them."
If "in reality it has nothing to do with them," why is he claiming "homosexuals do not have the right to be served in every store," the LGBT movement has "zero tolerance or consideration of other peoples rights," and gay people "are a threat to our freedoms and liberties in the United States and Oklahoma"?
Silk concludes the "intent of the bill is to protect private property rights and religious liberty. As a legislator, I will always fight to protect people's liberty to live thei [sic] lives according to their beliefs and convictions."
Just not the liberty and lives of gay people.
Image: Screenshot via YouTube
Hat tip: Towleroad
See a mistake? Email corrections to: [email protected]BRATISLAVA (Reuters) - A review of the European banking sector due to be released on Oct. 26 should bring clarity on Greece’s funding needs, the head of the monetary union’s bailout fund said on Monday.
People stand at the entrance of the headquarters of Bank of Greece in Athens October 16, 2014. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis
Klaus Regling, head of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), also said the euro zone should keep the funds it is allocating for crisis resolution for future use rather than invest them in the economy now.
Regling said the European Central Bank’s asset quality review (AQR) of 130 leading banks would show how much money Greece has left in its existing bank bailout fund and how much more it would need from emergency sources.
“This is not completely clear at the moment because Greece is waiting for the results of the AQR and stress tests,” he said.
Greece’s bank bailout fund HFSF has 11.4 billion euros in leftover money which Athens wants to use as a reserve to cover its funding needs after the end of the year, when it hopes to exit its EU/IMF bailout program.
“There is some uncertainty. There will be continued talks in the next Eurogroup in November, December to decide what to do,” Regling said.
Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras told Reuters on Friday one option Greece was a credit line that Athens could tap post-bailout should it fall prey to future market turmoil.
Regling also told reporters some countries wanted to use ESM funds to support growth but it was necessary to have a buffer.
“As a crisis institution it is important to have a lot of unused firepower,” he told reporters.
“We all know that as we move out of this crisis there will be another crisis one day,” he said during a visit to Slovakia.
The ESM was set up to safeguard and provide instant access to financial assistance programs for euro zone members in financial difficulty. It has a maximum lending capacity of 500 billion euros.
Berlin has said it was against plans to add tasks to the ESM. A change in the fund’s mandate would need consent from all 18 euro zone member states.A Florida Keys man was arrested after beating his girlfriend after he had a dream she cheated on him, according to police.
Carlos Gascon's girlfriend told Monroe County Sheriff's deputies that Gascon beat her all day Friday. She was able to call for help at 6:45 p.m. after Gascon passed out.
The woman accused Gascon of choking her, pouring hot coffee on her, cutting the back of her leg with a knife, and threatening to kill her while holding a knife to her throat. Gascon also allegedly picked her up and slammed her down on a glass table, breaking it.
Gascon's girlfriend also alleges that he picked up his dog, slammed it on the ground and put his foot on the dog's neck.
Gascon faces charges of aggravated battery, aggravated assault, domestic battery by strangulation, battery, false imprisonment and animal cruelty.
It is unclear if Gascon has an attorney.Tom Williams/Getty Images Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives released their proposal to overhaul the Higher Education Act on Friday.
Updated (12/1/2017, 2:49 p.m.) with additional details.
After a flurry of movement this week on the reauthorization of the federal law governing higher education, which is overdue for an update, the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday introduced its bill to overhaul the Higher Education Act of 1965.
Summary details of the legislation, including plans to simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, cap the amount that graduate students may borrow, and end the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, were reported on Wednesday. But the release of the full text fleshes out the details of those proposals.
The bill is a move toward undoing some priorities of the Obama administration, said Robert Kelchen, an assistant professor of higher education at Seton Hall University. “It salts the earth on gainful employment and college ratings,” he said.
But it also does more to try to simplify student loans and income-driven repayment plans, he continued, and delves into some of the more political issues in higher education. The bill would ban free-speech zones and deny federal funds to public institutions that do not recognize campus religious groups.
A final version of legislation to reauthorize higher education’s foundational law will likely look vastly different from the legislation proposed on Friday. Democrats on the House’s Committee on Education and the Workforce have complained that they had little to no input in the legislation.
Meanwhile, in the U.S. Senate, which may well have a larger footprint on a final bill, Sen. Lamar Alexander, chair of the chamber’s education committee, and Sen. Patty Murray, its ranking member, have agreed to pursue a bipartisan proposal.
Here is a rundown of the major provisions in the bill:
Campus Sexual Assault
The legislation appears to codify the interim guidance on Title IX and campus sexual assault from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights with more detail, said Scott D. Schneider, a lawyer who specializes in higher-education issues at the firm Fisher Phillips. The guidance was issued after the Trump administration repealed the Obama-era regulations, in September.
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“For instance,” he said, “schools will get to pick which standard of evidence they will use in disciplinary proceedings,” as long as that standard is applied consistently. “Preponderance of evidence,” a lower standard compared with “clear and convincing evidence,” according to due-process advocates, was set out in a 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter from the Obama administration.
The bill would also require that all parties in a case have information a week before a disciplinary proceeding, which is in line with what most Title IX practitioners recommend. The legislation also includes a requirement that colleges conduct annual sexual-assault surveys.
Minority-Serving Institutions
As reported on Wednesday, the legislation would tie Title III and Title V funds for minority-serving institutions, including historically black colleges and Hispanic-serving institutions, to their ability to graduate or transfer 25 percent of their students. A Chronicle analysis estimated the number of colleges that might be affected by the proposal.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr., president of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, an advocacy group for black colleges, praised the legislation for incorporating provisions that would expand the permitted use of Title III funding. He also applauded the addition of the University of the Virgin Islands as a Title III-eligible institution.
Career and Technical Education
Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration have placed a heavy emphasis on apprenticeships and career training as an alternative to “traditional” four-year degrees, and the legislation proposed on Friday would expand access to those programs. A White House outline of priorities for the reauthorization includes a provision that would expand Pell Grant eligibility for “high-quality short-term, summer, and certificate programs.”
Last month a senior department official, Kathleen Smith, told The Chronicle that nothing was off the table for the administration in terms of expanding apprenticeship programs. One tool to test programs’ efficiency is the department’s Experimental Sites Authority, which it can use to waive regulatory requirements.
The bill would require rigorous evaluation of the experimental sites, but it includes a provision that would require congressional “notice and comment” on the projects, said Clare McCann, deputy director for federal higher-education policy at New America, a think tank. That process had a “chilling effect” on experiments in the past because it required the department to go to Congress for approval on sites.
Better Data
The legislation would require the education secretary to create a website known as the “College Dashboard,” but the site is very similar to what has been seen before, with the inclusion of some additional data points, said Michelle Asha Cooper, president of the Institute for Higher Education Policy. However, she said, the data provided on the dashboard would not include all students, but only those who receive federal financial aid.
One way the bill could have fixed that gap, she continued, would have been to lift the ban on a student “unit record” system — which it keeps in place. There has been broad bipartisan, bicameral support for removing the ban.
“It is a missed opportunity,” she said. “This is a policy solution that would help students, families, and college leaders. And I feel that Representative Foxx has missed the mark.” (Rep. Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican, is chair of the House education committee.)
Student Aid
In line with news earlier in the week, the legislation would create a “consumer-tested, mobile-friendly” Fafsa within a year of its passage. The Education Department is in the process of creating a mobile app for the student-aid application.
The federal student-loan system would also see an overhaul and shift to a “one-grant, one-loan” system, a move that many higher-education observers saw in the cards. And the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program would be eliminated.
Read the full text of the bill here:
Adam Harris is a breaking-news reporter. Follow him on Twitter @AdamHSays or email him at adam.harris@chronicle.com.The robots sent in to find highly radioactive fuel at Fukushima’s nuclear reactors have “died”; a subterranean “ice wall” around the crippled plant meant to stop groundwater from becoming contaminated has yet to be finished. And authorities still don’t know how to dispose of highly radioactive water stored in an ever mounting number of tanks around the site.
Five years ago, one of the worst earthquakes in history triggered a 10-metre high tsunami that crashed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station causing multiple meltdowns. Nearly 19,000 people were killed or left missing and 160,000 lost their homes and livelihoods.
Today, the radiation at the Fukushima plant is still so powerful it has proven impossible to get into its bowels to find and remove the extremely dangerous blobs of melted fuel rods.
The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), has made some progress, such as removing hundreds of spent fuel roads in one damaged building. But the technology needed to establish the location of the melted fuel rods in the other three reactors at the plant has not been developed.
“It is extremely difficult to access the inside of the nuclear plant,” Naohiro Masuda, Tepco’s head of decommissioning said in an interview. “The biggest obstacle is the radiation.”
The fuel rods melted through their containment vessels in the reactors, and no one knows exactly where they are now. This part of the plant is so dangerous to humans, Tepco has been developing robots, which can swim under water and negotiate obstacles in damaged tunnels and piping to search for the melted fuel rods.
But as soon as they get close to the reactors, the radiation destroys their wiring and renders them useless, causing long delays, Masuda said.
Each robot has to be custom-built for each building.”It takes two years to develop a single-function robot,” Masuda said.
Irradiated water
Tepco, which was fiercely criticised for its handling of the disaster, says conditions at the Fukushima power station, site of the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in Ukraine 30 years ago, have improved dramatically. Radiation levels in many places at the site are now as low as those in Tokyo.
More than 8,000 workers are at the plant at any one time, according to officials on a recent tour. Traffic is constant as they spread across the site, removing debris, building storage tanks, laying piping and preparing to dismantle parts of the plant.
Much of the work involves pumping a steady torrent of water into the wrecked and highly radiated reactors to cool them down. Afterward, the radiated water is then pumped out of the plant and stored in tanks that are proliferating around the site.
What to do with the nearly million tonnes of radioactive water is one of the biggest challenges, said Akira Ono, the site manager. Ono said he is “deeply worried” the storage tanks will leak radioactive water in the sea - as they have done several times before - prompting strong criticism for the government.
The utility has so far failed to get the backing of local fishermen to release water it has treated into the ocean.
Ono estimates that Tepco has completed around 10 per cent of the work to clear the site up - the decommissioning process could take 30 to 40 years. But until the company locates the fuel, it won’t be able to assess progress and final costs, experts say.
The much touted use of X-ray like muon rays has yielded little information about the location of the melted fuel and the last robot inserted into one of the reactors sent only grainy images before breaking down.
Ice wall
Tepco is building the world’s biggest ice wall to keep groundwater from flowing into the basements of the damaged reactors and getting contaminated.
First suggested in 2013 and strongly backed by the government, the wall was completed in February, after months of delays and questions surrounding its effectiveness. Later this year, Tepco plans to pump water into the wall - which looks a bit like the piping behind a refrigerator - to start the freezing process.
Stopping the ground water intrusion into the plant is critical, said Arnie Gunderson, a former nuclear engineer.
“The reactors continue to bleed radiation into the ground water and thence into the Pacific Ocean,” Gunderson said. “When Tepco finally stops the groundwater, that will be the end of the beginning.”
While he would not rule out the possibility that small amounts of radiation are reaching the ocean, Masuda, the head of decommissioning, said the leaks have ended after the company built a wall along the shoreline near the reactors whose depth goes to below the seabed.
“I am not about to say that it is absolutely zero, but because of this wall the amount of release has dramatically dropped,” he said.Unfortunately for Ramirez, Carlos Beltran had other ideas when he led off the eighth by ripping a single off first baseman Richie Shaffer's glove for the Yankees' first hit in the Rays' 4-1 loss at Tropicana Field.
ST. PETERSBURG -- Erasmo Ramirez came six outs away from stepping into the history books Monday night as the second Rays pitcher to throw a no-hitter.
ST. PETERSBURG -- Erasmo Ramirez came six outs away from stepping into the history books Monday night as the second Rays pitcher to throw a no-hitter.
Unfortunately for Ramirez, Carlos Beltran had other ideas when he led off the eighth by ripping a single off first baseman Richie Shaffer's glove for the Yankees' first hit in the Rays' 4-1 loss at Tropicana Field.
View Full Game Coverage
Matt Garza threw the only no-hitter in Rays history on July 26, 2010, leading the Rays to a 5-0 victory over the Tigers at Tropicana Field.
Ramirez was feeling it Monday night even before he threw his first pitch. Pitching coach Jim Hickey "came in after [Ramirez's] bullpen warmup session and said he looked really good, best he's seen in a while, so that was really encouraging," Rays manager Kevin Cash said.
That carried over into the game. Ramirez was in complete control through seven innings, with Mikie Mahtook's dazzling play in right field in the seventh on Brian McCann's shot to the wall serving as the closest the Yankees came to breaking up the magic.
"When he did the play, I just felt like my soul just come back to my body," Ramirez said. "After that play, my mind was just set up to continue being aggressive and keep the ball down."
Video: Must C Catch: Mahtook catch preserves no-hit bid
Though Ramirez felt better about his chances after Mahtook's play, he saw the dream come to an end as Beltran was the first batter he faced in the next inning. Nobody questioned the official scorekeeper about awarding Beltran a single given the drive that slammed off Shaffer's glove.
"Unfortunately, took a bad hop and bounced way high up on me," Shaffer said. "Just wasn't able to knock it down. It just popped up too high. But it was a great job by Erasmo the whole game. He pitched his butt off. So if there was any way I could have put a body on it and knocked it down, I would have. Sometimes there's just no way."
Video: NYY@TB: Beltran rips single to right, ends no-no bid
Two outs later, Ramirez called it a night when Alex Colome took over to record the final out in the eighth.
"Not to take anything away from him, but things could have been a lot different with just a couple of inches one way or the other," Yankees left fielder Brett Gardner said. "... He's pitched well against us, and we obviously haven't done a good job against him, but I don't think we'll have to see him again."
In three starts against the Yankees this season, Ramirez has allowed five hits and one run in 18 2/3 innings, notching a 2-0 mark.
Had Ramirez pulled |
League club had been treated with "disrespect".
"It is almost as if Mike Ashley has said, 'what is the worst I can do?" the ex-Liverpool striker told Sportsweek.
The Magpies play West Ham on Sunday and must match Hull's result against Manchester United to avoid the drop.
Speaking before the final game of the season - which manager John Carver has called "the biggest in six years" - Keegan said Ashley treats the club as "just a commodity" and there is "all sorts wrong with the club".
In March, the club announced a record annual profit of £18.7m for 2013-14, the fourth consecutive financial year they have made money - although debt remains at £129m, which the club say is an interest-free loan from Ashley.
He said back in September that he "would not sell the club at any price" at least until the end of the 2015-16 season.
Mike Ashley (right), pictured with managing director Lee Charnley, took over Newcastle in 2007
Keegan, 64, adopted an attacking brand of football during his first spell as Newcastle manager from 1992-97, and his side were pipped to the Premier League title by Manchester United in 1996.
He resigned from his second spell in charge of Newcastle shortly after the transfer window closed in September 2008, saying clubs should not "impose" unwanted players on a manager.
"It is not a great time to be a Newcastle fan. I just hope and pray they get the result [against West Ham] and then something good happens to that club, with Mike Ashley selling it or getting out of there because he doesn't understand the club," added Keegan.
The AshleyOut.com group are planning to occupy St James' Park after the final whistle on Sunday following other protests against the owner in recent weeks, which included a fans boycott of the home game against Tottenham in April.
But Keegan said the club needed to recapture the "emotional attachment" to the fans.
"It is not difficult to work out unless you come from another planet and I think Mike Ashley runs that club from another planet," said Keegan.
"Fans are being treated with such disrespect. Fans don't want to go to games, they want to protest.
Norman Watson, chairman of the Newcastle United Supporters' Trust: "None of this profit is being reflected on the pitch. The club went nearly 18 months without signing a full-time professional player on a permanent deal. "Fans want to see money invested in the playing staff - the squad is extremely thin on the ground."
"I don't think the answer is to boycott the game, but to get through the season, hopefully stay up, and then hope and pray someone with lot of money who cares about Newcastle comes along and says, 'that's for me'.
"They need to sit down with sensible people, not some of those people that Mike Ashley put around him in the past - I had the misfortune to work with some of them - and say 'what is this club about and how do we change it for the better?'. It is not a difficult solution.
"It is not just me that would urge him to go, everybody connected with that football club, even some of the people employed there. It is time for a change."
Newcastle fans backing Keegan during his dispute with the club's owner Mike Ashley after his sacking in 2008
Final day permutations
Third-bottom Hull are two points behind Newcastle but the Tigers have a superior goal difference.
Hull boss Steve Bruce must beat fourth placed Manchester United for the first time in his managerial career and hope that former Toon boss Sam Allardyce can get a result with West Ham at St James' Park.Story highlights Michael Woodford fired as Olympus CEO after he exposed a $1.7 billion cover-up
Woodford was appointed as first foreign CEO when a local magazine broke news
Olympus shares lost around 80% of their market value in weeks after
Woodford: Case highlights the dysfunctionality of corporate Japan
When CEO-turned-whistleblower Michael Woodford exposed a $1.7 billion cover-up of losses at Olympus, he was forced to flee from Japan, fearing for his life, as the scandal sent shockwaves through the country's tight-knit corporate world.
The 52-year-old Briton had barely settled in to his new role as the company's first foreign chief executive when he became aware of a potentially explosive magazine article.
FACTA, a local Japanese title with only nine staff, had published a detailed expose in July 2011 questioning exorbitant fees it claimed the camera and medical equipment maker had paid consultants for a 2008 acquisition deal. It also questioned extravagant purchase prices of three small companies.
"The company had bought three 'Mickey Mouse companies' for a billion dollars: a plastic plates company for microwaves, a cosmetics company -- a face cream company -- and a recycling company, but with no turnover," Woodford told CNN Tuesday, as his new book about the saga, "Exposure," prepared to hit bookshelves.
"They then paid $700 million dollars in fees to somebody, we didn't know who, in the Cayman Islands. I begged and begged and pleaded 'don't treat me as a gaijin (foreigner), treat me as a colleague who cares about this company.' But they didn't listen, not one of the 14 (board members), including three non-executive directors."
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Instead Woodford quickly found himself out of a job after he attempted to get some answers from then-Chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa and former Executive Vice President Hisashi Mori. The board voted unanimously to fire him from the post.
Shigeo Abe, publisher of FACTA, gave his own blunt assessment of why Olympus had selected what he called a "bottom-ranking foreign executive" from 25 candidates to be CEO in the first place. "Mr. Kikukawa's aim was to keep the fraud in secret under the foreign president because Mr. Woodford could not speak and read Japanese," he told CNN last year.
Woodford refused to go quietly, choosing instead to unleash a firestorm of publicity that would prove costly to the board and company itself. Kikukawa and several other board members were eventually forced to resign, while Olympus shares lost around 80% of their market value in the first weeks after news of the scandal broke.
A special audit of Olympus in December last year, led by a former Japanese Supreme Court judge, published a report that blasted Kikukawa's controlling style and the company culture that allowed losses to be disguised in dubious fees and overvalued payments for its acquisitions. "The management was rotten to the core, and infected those around it," the report said. The case also raised questions about the level of transparency in Japan Inc. when to comes to business practice generally.
In September this year, Kikukawa, Mori and another senior executive, Hideo Yamada, admitted filing false reports and inflating the company's net worth. The men could face up to 10 years in prison and fines of up to 10 million yen ($128,400), Japanese media reports have said.
"It was an incredible story," said Woodford. "It illustrated the dysfunctionality of corporate Japan and the way the capital markets work.
"A month after I was dismissed, the share price of Olympus had fallen by 81.5% -- $7 billion dollars had been struck off the value of the company, yet the institutional shareholders in Japan would not offer one word of criticism of the incumbent board, or one word for the ex-president in support of him trying to expose this fraud."
But almost a year after he was forced out of the company he had served since the 1980s, Woodford says no lessons have been learned from the scandal by corporate Japan.
"Nothing has changed," he said. "The ruling party, the DPJ, at the height of this said they were going to put forward a recommendation that one non-executive director should be a minimum requirement under Japanese company law.
"In July of this year, the Ministry of Finance dropped that proposal, so out of the 1,600 companies on the Nikkei, over 1,000 don't have one outside director. What are they scared of? What does that tell investors who are looking at Japan?"
Woodford compared the success of South Korean electronics giant Samsung to that of ailing Japanese rivals such as Sharp, Sony and Panasonic -- all have their debts set at junk status.
"Japan is losing it," said Woodford. "The companies and country can't change. They just can't change themselves. It's desperately sad."Residents from Kingaroy in Queensland have launched a competition to show the rest of Australia what could be lost if a new coal mine is given the green light.
The Kingaroy Concerned Citizens' Group started the photography competition to drum up opposition to the Kingaroy Coal Mine, proposed by Moreton Resources.
Spokesman John Dalton said the competition was a different kind of protest and was meant to showcase the area.
"We wanted to do something that was being creative, that was positive, and that at the end we've got something that we can put into a book and preserve for future generations," he said.
The development is yet to be set in stone as its proponents are still working on an Environmental Impact Statement, which will be submitted for approval to the Queensland Government.
The competition asks creative types to go to the proposed mine site and capture its beauty.
Cash prizes are on offer and Mr Dalton says there's already been interest from all around the country.
"We've got a view here that extends all the way to the Bunya mountains, it's very close to Kingaroy," Mr Dalton said.
"There are a lot of people very allergic to the fact that it could be replaced by a big black and white heap of coal."
Beautiful nature pictures 'an addiction'
The competition is being supported by renowned wildlife photographer Steve Parish.
He has agreed to run free workshops for locals and says being creative can help lift people's spirits as they struggle for their land.
"Making beautiful pictures of nature is really an addictive, fun activity," Mr Parish said.
"It does step you out of a … I call it a 'poor little me story'.
"It does help you step out of that story, into something more positive."
Farmers on board with mine protest
Damien O'Sullivan runs a beef farm which would be swallowed by the mine's borders.
He said the area's rich soil made it perfect for running cattle and growing crops.
He is behind the competition, and is one of a number of farmers running open days for people who want to visit the proposed site so they can shoot their entries.
"I think it's a really good means of showcasing the local area, we've got lots of visitors that have come from other districts and Brisbane," he said.
"They come and look at the local area and are just really flabbergasted that there should be any suggestion of a coal mine in an area such as this.
"A lot of people just don't realise the natural beauty of the local area."
The competition's winners will be announced in October.
Moreton Resources did not respond to an ABC request for comment.In case you thought you had somehow read too much into it when Donald Trump wouldn’t rule out implementing a database of all Muslims in the United States, Trump ruled it in yesterday:
[iframe width=”635″ height=”500″ src=”http://player.theplatform.com/p/2E2eJC/nbcNewsOffsite?guid=f_fh_trumpdatabase_151119″ scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″]
Asked by NBC News if he thinks we need a database system for tracking Muslims in the United States — citizens and non-citizens alike — Trump said that he “would certainly implement” that kind of database, among others, adding that Muslims would “have to be” legally obligated to register with such a database.
“There should be a lot of systems, beyond databases,” he added, although he didn’t elaborate as to exactly what he meant. Although he still hasn’t ruled out requiring a special ID for Muslims — something you would almost certainly need to include in order to effectively track a minority population within your own borders — so maybe that’s still on the table. Until he says it isn’t, he’s going to keep getting asked. And the longer he goes without saying no, the more of a yes his silence becomes.
NBC’s reporter followed up to ask how requiring Muslims to register with the government would be any different from Nazi Germany requiring Jews to register under the Nuremberg Laws. Trump had no answer, simply saying “you tell me” to the reporter four times in a row. He also didn’t respond when asked if there would be legal consequences for Muslims who didn’t register for said database.
But wouldn’t there have to be? And wouldn’t the enforcement mechanism have to be monumentally invasive, requiring a degree of authoritarianism that would amount to actual fascism? While Trump chalked his entire implementation strategy as simply “good management,” it’s hard to see how you get from Point A to Point B here without some kind of federal enforcement agency (the FBI?) going from mosque to mosque forcing Muslims to sign up, matching their records with social media and other databases to see if any self-described Muslims hadn’t voluntarily added their names.
In other words, it’d be a full-on 21st Century Inquisition.
What’s more, as the Southern Baptist Convention’s Russell Moore told Buzzfeed yesterday, this isn’t the kind of power you want to give to an executive — no matter how specifically-targeted the power is initially. Said Moore, speaking to Trump’s proposal of shutting down mosques associated with terrorist threats, “Evangelicals should recognize that any president who would call for shutting down houses of worship … is the sort of political power that can ultimately shut down evangelical churches.”
As I wrote yesterday, until Donald Trump pays some kind of electoral price, he’s going to continue openly calling for more and more extreme forms of Muslim persecution. As it stands right now, however, it’s hard to imagine that any of his Republican opponents stand up and call him out for the Mussolini knockoff that he is. If the median American voter has told us one thing this week, it’s that they think xenophobia is bad, but Muslims are worse. If the median Republican voter has told us one thing this week, it’s that xenophobia is actually alright, and that they’d like to see more of it from their field of candidates.Over the course of February, we got the chance to interview brewers from six of our favorite Boston-area craft breweries. Each of them weighed in on more than a dozen questions for our first ever brewer panel.In this post--the third in a five-part series--you’ll hear from brewers at Jack's Abby Brewing, Clown Shoes, Pretty Things Beer & Ale Project, Nightshift Brewing, Idle Hands Craft Ales, Enlightenment Ales, and Aeronaut Brewing Co. on their top homebrewing tips, lessons brewers tend to learn the hard way, and what keeps them awake at night.In case you missed the previous posts in this series, you can find them here To get notified when the next post is published, sign up here
What's the one tip you give most brewers to brew better beer?
Bryan Doran
Test Batch Brewer at Clown Shoes Beer
Ipswich, MA
@clownshoesbeer
Sanitation and cleanliness is key to success. The best recipe and the best ingredients in the world won’t matter if you have an infected batch or an off-flavor from something being dirty.
Jack Hendler
Brewer at Jack's Abby Brewing
Framingham, MA
@JacksAbby
Don't try to brew lagers. :)
Adrian Beck-Oliver
Brewer at Aeronaut Brewing Co.
Somerville, MA
@AeronautBrewing
Other than the ever-popular (and important) answer of sanitation and fermentation, I'd say consistency. Brew the same recipe multiple times to dial in your process and system so that you can get the same beer and numbers every time. From there you can make individual changes to your recipe and process and get a real sense of ingredients and the science behind brewing.
Dann Paquette
Brewer at Pretty Things Beer & Ale Project
Somerville, MA
@PrettyBeer
It's more than just one tip but I don't know where to start. It helps to have specialized equipment in a brewery and I don't like to be in the dark as to what I'm working with. I sense that homebrewing benefits from doing it very often and having an overall confidence about what you're doing and in the results.
Rob Burns
Co-Founder at Nightshift Brewing
Everett, MA
@NightShiftBeer
The biggest thing is fermentation. You need to make sure you are pitching healthy yeast, the right cell count, and fermenting at the correct temperatures. That will make a world of difference.
Ben Howe
Founder and Head Brewer at Idle Hands Craft Ales/Enlightenment Ales
Everett, MA
@idlehandsbeer/@Alelightenment
Take notes. Record everything you do with every batch so you can look back and compare. Start with very simple recipes and master those before doing something complicated. And for god's sake, actually use the hydrometer! There's a reason it comes with your homebrew kit!
What’s the one lesson you think most homebrewers learn the hard way? And how can they overcome it?
Bryan Doran
Test Batch Brewer at Clown Shoes Beer
Ipswich, MA
@clownshoesbeer
Bad sanitation is something people seem to learn the hard way. Despite being told by just about everyone, it seems people need to experience a bad batch or two (or 100) before they realize the importance of basic cleaning and sanitation.
Jack Hendler
Brewer at Jack's Abby Brewing
Framingham, MA
@JacksAbby
Sanitation. Sanitation. Sanitation. On the surface is seems like an easy concept, but it's significantly harder to achieve even with experience and the proper tools. It takes a non-stop combative approach that's that doesn't easily fit into a fun part-time hobby.
Adrian Beck-Oliver
Brewer at Aeronaut Brewing Co.
Somerville, MA
@AeronautBrewing
Always watch your pot when you're approaching boil, and be quick to spray down excess foam. Boiling over on the stove in your rental apartment will result in hours of scrubbing and chipping off caramalized wort.
Dann Paquette
Brewer at Pretty Things Beer & Ale Project
Somerville, MA
@PrettyBeer
I've been handed so many homebrews over the years. The off-bits I taste are usually down to temperatures post-boil. DMS from not chilling the wort fast enough, high fermentation temp flavours, aldehydes. I've tasted quite a bit of good homebrew in the past few years, though.
Rob Burns
Co-Founder at Nightshift Brewing
Everett, MA
@NightShiftBeer
Bad batches of beer due to poor cleaning and sanitation. Beer is fragile and prone to all sorts of unwanted bacteria/wild yeasts. You really need to pay attention with how you clean and sanitize everything that comes into contact with the beer.
Ben Howe
Founder and Head Brewer at Idle Hands Craft Ales/Enlightenment Ales
Everett, MA
@idlehandsbeer/@Alelightenment
Sanitation: it's not a joke. Clean your equipment and then sanitize it!
As a brewer, what keeps you awake at night?
Bryan Doran
Test Batch Brewer at Clown Shoes Beer
Ipswich, MA
@clownshoesbeer
I only brew test batches, which means I don’t have to worry about a lot of things a head brewer has to do. In brewing test batches, I worry about the base beer a lot. Consistency across the brews to make sure the variations in flavors are intended and a result of the test.
Jack Hendler
Brewer at Jack's Abby Brewing
Framingham, MA
@JacksAbby
Everything. There is an ever-evolving list of worries. Safety, staff training, QA/QC, scheduling, R&M. The list never ends.
Adrian Beck-Oliver
Brewer at Aeronaut Brewing Co.
Somerville, MA
@AeronautBrewing
Brew scheduling and yeast management. At any given time we can have 3 or 4 strains active and in a brewery with only 7 fermentors and several dry hopped beers, it can be a juggling act to make sure tanks are emptying on time to get a new beer in with a yeast strain you want to keep active, coupled with trying to keep varied lineup across our 8 draft lines.
Dann Paquette
Brewer at Pretty Things Beer & Ale Project
Somerville, MA
@PrettyBeer
Been doing this a while so many worries I had a decade ago no longer bother me. Sometimes I can't remember if I set the temp on a tank or not. Living 90 minutes from my brewery doesn't help that thought go away.
Rob Burns
Co-Founder at Nightshift Brewing
Everett, MA
@NightShiftBeer
Everything. I used to sleep like a rock when I had a "normal" job. Now I am restless constantly. Business is booming and we can't keep up with demand but there is still so much that goes into running a brewery to worry about. The list is endless from hop contracting, to budgeting, to constant maintenance on all the equipment, to construction management, to employee and hiring fun, to future growth plans and strategies, and lately snow. That's all before you even get to brewing beer. Then you have to worry about are your cleaning processes flawless, wort quality, yeast health, O2 pickup while transferring and packaging beer, shelf stability, cross-contamination between sour and non-sour beers, is the beer high quality, is this batch world class. For the most part, things go smoothly but every week there are some bumps along the way that cause you to stay up at night.
Ben Howe
Founder and Head Brewer at Idle Hands Craft Ales/Enlightenment Ales
Everett, MA
@idlehandsbeer/@Alelightenment
Honestly? The thought of the beer I sent out to bars and stores not being excellent. I worry all the time that the beer I'm making is not up to the standards I have in my head. More practically, though, paranoid fears of tanks that are over pressurizing, or fermentations that are stuck. Things like that.
Make sure you're on the mailing list for the next post in the brewer panel series by signing up here.New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is fighting for students, and basic understanding of how loans work will be her weapon.
Just kidding!
Too many grads are #InTheRed, saddled with crushing student debt. We must allow the refinancing of student loans at lower interest rates. — Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) January 21, 2016
If business owners & homeowners can refinance their debt, we should allow graduates who are #InTheRed to refinance at lower rates as well. — Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) January 21, 2016
Nice try, dear, but no.
@SenGillibrand Sure, what is the collateral they should put up, or are you just blindly posting talking pts? #tcot @moelane @charlescwcooke — Jeremy Stephens (@JStephens2008) January 21, 2016
That’s what she appears to be doing, yes.
@SenGillibrand this is not how lending works. — Steve Anderson (@Sjanderson86) January 21, 2016
Collateral, how does it work? https://t.co/nBMbSNDABS — Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) January 21, 2016
Do you know what collateral is https://t.co/CvCzenSsx8 — Crimson Hot Mess (@CrimsonHotMess) January 21, 2016
One problem Senator Genius; what is their collateral? Go ahead we'll wait for your explanation……waiting…..waiting…RT @SenGillibrand — Stefano Lode di Gesù (@steveatmguy) January 21, 2016
Keep waiting.
Is there a Democrat who understands the concept of tangible assets? house: tangible asset
BA Gender Studies: not https://t.co/QLgNpeT8GW — Dave in Texas (@DaveinTexas) January 21, 2016
@SenGillibrand Homeowners refinance using an asset as collateral: a home. The asset underlying a student loan is a C+ in Cultural Studies. — Strahan Cadell (@Sartor1836) January 21, 2016
@sengillibrand What’s the resale value for a Bachelor’s Degree in Anthropology? Answer me that and we’ll talk about refinancing the debt. — George Wellfore (@gwellfor) January 21, 2016
@SenGillibrand So what will they use for collateral, Senator? Really, the economic/financial ignorance of our governing class is a scandal. — Tom Gregg (@TomG_380) January 21, 2016
@SenGillibrand Seriously? Have you heard of either a)collateral, or b)credit score. How much do poetry majors make? You're a Senator? Joke. — Gene Lindsay (@uelindsay) January 21, 2016
Pretty pathetic.
@SenGillibrand Are you really this stupid or just pretending? — JodiKyman (@jodikyman) January 21, 2016
https://twitter.com/hymnforrachel/status/690254952812417024I have a lot of theories.
Granted, most of them probably aren’t worth the paper they are written on, but I’d at least like to think that a few have some merit.
One of the theories that appears to be gaining more traction every day is that babies are actually really clever and know what they are doing. They may act like these fragile, stupid, mini-versions of us, but they are really plotting away in their tiny little brains like some kind of stinky, pukey Bond villain.
They have perfected this act so much that us parents are at their mercy 24/7. We are under their tiny little thumbs. They get what they want, when they want it regardless of time, place or situation. They wear us down with their incessant screaming, continual nappy changes and thirst for milk. In short, babies are pretty bloody annoying and they do it on purpose.
Here are seven perfect examples which show that Baby L is a very clever, annoying, manipulative, little madame:
She has her dummy, but spits it out, then cries: Despite being more than happy sucking her dummy, Baby L makes a point of spitting it out, or most recently pulling it out with her hands, so that she can then cry because it isn’t in her mouth. If this isn’t attention seeking behaviour, I don’t know what is. To put it into a different context, it’s like me purposefully throwing my plate of food on the floor, then getting angry because I no longer have it. To make things worse, she decides to do this when she’s trying to go to sleep. Just keep the dummy in your mouth and go to sleep you annoying little git.
Her bath is ready, we put her in it, then she has a piss: We have spent time ensuring that the bath is the right temperature, the correct depth has been reached and just enough bubbles adorn the surface. Baby L has been laying on her changing mat for a good ten minutes with her nappy off talking to the ceiling above her. We pick her up, place her into her baby bath seat, then stand back in order to enjoy her giggles and splashing. But Baby L has other ideas – a bit like Ground Force always wanting to install a water feature in someone’s garden, the little tyke decides she wants to create her own fountain by peeing in the bath and thus contaminating her watery surroundings. That then means extra work is required to drain the bath and fill it back up again. She has a telling look in her eyes which suggest that this was all done on purpose.
She’s awake, so she’ll ensure that we’re awake too: This has become more common since reaching four months old, as the little one is ‘enjoying’ teething, a growth spurt and sleep regression. This means that she’s waking more in the night, either because she is in pain, hungry or just being annoying. But having said that, the little one has always had a habit of ensuring that we’re awake if she’s awake (N.B. when I say “we’re” I mean the missus as I rarely wake up now a days!). In the early days this was through crying which is to be expected. However, recently this has taken on the form of her pretending that she is at a Metallica gig as she thrashes around like she’s in a mosh pit and shouts at the top of her lungs now that she’s discovered her voice. We’ll (aka the missus) will often wake in the night to the sound of thuds as Baby L rolls, punches and kicks in an effort to disrupt our (aka the missus’) sleep. Every time she succeeds and we awaken from our slumber, she looks up all innocent and bright-eyed prior to flashing a big toothless smile. If that’s not manipulative, I don’t know what is!
She’s carefully chooses when to sick / crap to create maximum havoc: This usually occurs at one of the following times – we’re just about to leave the house, she / us have just changed into clean clothes, we’re somewhere where there are no toilets, we are running late, her nappy has just been changed etc etc. If babies were considerate, they’d puke onto the muslin cloth, not on your trousers when the cloth was taken away seconds before, or they’d shit their pants as you enter Tesco with an empty trolley, not when you’re just about to pay and find yourself as far away from the toilets as possible. Tally all of the times when a baby is sick or empties their bowels at a convenient time, then do the same for when it happens at the worst possible time. I can guarantee that the latter happens more frequently, thus proving that babies are vengeful dicks.
She literally leaves you bloodied and bruised: Babies are violent. For something so small, they can cause maximum damage. If it isn’t for their Wolverine-like clause scratching at your chest, neck or face, then it’s their over-sized head landing forcefully on your nose. Think about it – if babies were stupid and innocent, they wouldn’t arm themselves with weapons on their fingers or a neck with no muscles which allows them to whip their head in your direction. In addition, those annoying little blighters make sure they strike when your most vulnerable, namely when your hands are busy comforting or winding them. What kind of creature attacks something else when it is defenceless and unable to protect itself?
She’s doing something, then stops as soon as you try to capture it: This happens too often for it just to be a coincidence. The examples are countless. Baby L is on her play mat making loud, joyful sounds – I get out my phone to record it, but she goes silent. Baby L is smiling away and we want to get a photo of her toothless grin, so she decides to start crying as soon as she sees the camera. This also includes when she purposefully does the opposite of what you say, just to make you sound like a tit. So if I say to my parents, do X and she’ll do Y, she obviously doesn’t. Or if I say she always sneezes twice, she’ll make sure she sneezes just the once. Very, very annoying.
I rest my case. Babies are not only annoying, but they do it on purpose. Their little brains are smarter than we imagine and they know what to do in order to cause mass annoyance. Think about what your little one did or does and then try to tell me that they aren’t the puppeteer carefully manipulating us to do exactly what they want. What do you reckon?
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LinkedInIt’s 8 PM and you just threw your laptop bag on the couch. Exhausted would be an understatement for describing your current state of mind.
What’s next on the evening’s itinerary? Perhaps a quick shower so that you only miss a few minutes of the latest news headlines, or rather, a long bath to help you forget some of your day’s useless meetings. Either way, not many hours stand between you and tomorrow’s daily grind.
Allow me to guess – picturing yourself in the above scenario is far too easy. Now add in a startup idea that needs to be nurtured, developed, and tested in order to eventually materialize.
Some entrepreneurs have already found themselves in a position where they wake up everyday and go to their own ‘office.’ Whether they are tenants in a building or own their workspace, they are often greeted by familiar faces, most likely their fellow business partners and/or first employees. However, many aspiring innovators are unable to leave their current professions in search of realizing their ideas. Their startup visions thus often turn into secondary concerns, with less hours left to commit to their realization. After all, running a startup wasn’t part of your current job description.
Keeping this situation in mind, how can we still maintain the desire to create/expand a startup while working or studying full-time? Below are some of my suggestions:
Stop thinking about your startup idea as a job.
At the end of the day, your ideas aren’t ‘jobs’; they therefore shouldn’t be treated as such. While executing a project from A to Z undoubtedly requires hard work, the passion you have for your startup should ultimately guide your thought process… not your future exit plans.
Limit your complaints about “lack of time”.
“I wish there were more than 24 hours in a day”. Sound familiar? I am guilty of this statement myself. Unfortunately, no matter how many times a week I repeat it, I never manage to obtain 25. Instead, try to coordinate a few weekend retreats and/or brainstorming sessions with your team, even if the latter means waking up an hour before you need to be at the office. Even short, albeit productive team sessions, may be tremendously effective.
Take advantage of conferences.
While this be may be a bit of a surprising suggestion, as a former Bizzabo employee, I understand the value of networking at conferences and events. The next time you find yourself on a work trip, whether to a small, corporate function or to a larger tech meet-up, do your best to connect with individuals of interest. You may even find potential partners and investors to collaborate with. If anything, you will have the opportunity to pitch your idea(s) and receive valuable feedback.
Use project management tools effectively.
Whether you choose to use post-it notes, Google spreadsheets, task manager apps, or project management software, keep up to date with new technologies that will help you stay on top of your tasks. Look into some of these to see if they are the right fit for your needs: Asana, Evernote, and daPulse.
Find (or hold onto) quality business partners.
Whether you are in school full-time or have a job that requires you to be on constant email alert, you will need help if you wish to build and develop your company. While finding trustworthy business partners and mentors that will share the same passion you have for your idea may be a job in it of itself, this will ultimately help shape and grow your startup. Think about it, it is rare to find a well-rounded individual with 25 hours in his/her day.
Author: Shirley Ben-Dak
A dual Israeli-American citizen, avid traveler, and former chess player, Shirley Ben-Dak is interested in how entrepreneurship and innovation can contribute to sustainable development. She holds an M.S. degree in Sustainability Management from Columbia University and has worked at a couple of startups over the past few years.
To be the first to know you can subscribe to our mailing list for email updates from our blog!Sarah Palin said Sunday that her new reality television series doesn’t hurt her chances in a 2012 presidential run because President Ronald Reagan was also an entertainer.
Karl Rove told the British newspaper Telegraph last week that Palin’s new TLC show, Sarah Palin’s Alaska, doesn’t help her 2012 chances.
“With all due candor, appearing on your own reality show on the Discovery Channel, I am not certain how that fits in the American calculus of ‘that helps me see you in the Oval Office,'” Rove said.
“There are high standards that the American people have for it [the presidency] and they require a certain level of gravitas, and they want to look at the candidate and say ‘that candidate is doing things that gives me confidence that they are up to the most demanding job in the world,'” he said.
Fox News’ Chris Wallace asked Palin to respond Sunday.
“You know, I agree with that,” Palin said. “That those standards have to be high for someone who would ever want to run for president like, um, wasn’t Ronald Reagan an actor? Wasn’t he in Bedtimes for Bonzo, bozo or something? Ronald Reagan was an actor.”
The former Alaska governor insisted her new show was a documentary instead of a reality show.
“Now look. I’m not in a reality show. I have eight episodes documenting Alaska’s resources, what it is that we can contribute to the rest of U.S. to economically and physically secure our union, and my family comes along for the ride because I am family, family is us, and my family comes along on the ride to document these eight episodes for The Learning Channel. … So Karl is wrong right there in calling it a reality show,” she said.
Wallace explained to Palin that he thought she was unlikely to run in 2012.
“I think you’re having too much fun,” Wallace said. “I think you’re making too much money. You’re still a big player in national politics. You don’t have a hundred people like me chasing you around saying, ‘What does she read in the morning?’ I don’t think you’re going to run.”
“The country is worth it though, to make those sacrifices. When we talk about making money today, having a lot of fun today, having all this freedom, if the country needed me — and I’m not saying the country would ever |
Chinese contemporary art system, one must accede to the general assumption that the art industry and art are interchangeable, that they can be spoken of as a single whole. The price of visibility is to accept that the development of the art industry can be the topic of the whole conversation, to the point that there is no longer any need for a detailed discussion of art practice, much less to assess it with any other set of criteria—scholarly, romantic, or otherwise. The discussion of the industry has monopolized the discussion of art. The construction of the industry has replaced scholarship of the social-historical field. The rise and fall of the industry can seemingly be equated with the rise and fall of art. Contemporary art in today’s China—we shall temporarily suppose the existence of such a distinction and such a group of practitioners—has long lost its front line, and has become deeply embroiled in the whirlpool of the hegemony of capital and the official system. More importantly, as we witness the drastic changes unfolding before our eyes, we should realize that much of the groundwork for it was laid decades ago.
×
Carol Yinghua Lu lives and works in Beijing. She is the contributing editor for Frieze and is on the advisory board for the Exhibitionist. Lu was on the jury for the Golden Lion Award in 2011 Venice Biennale and the co-artistic director of 2012 Gwangju Biennale and co-curator of the 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale in 2012. Since 2012, she is the artistic director and chief curator of OCAT Shenzhen. Lu was the first visiting fellow of Asia-Pacific at Tate Research Centre in 2013.
© 2017 e-flux and the authorThis week, Natsume announced Harvest Moon: Skytree Village, the latest entry in their own Harvest Moon series. On the other hand, Marvelous is getting ready for the launch of Bokujou Monogatari 3tsu no Sato no Taisetsuna Tomodachi (lit. Story of Seasons: Precious Friends from the three Villages), which is the latest entry in the original series.
Today, the company revealed not one, but two TV Commercials for the game. They star Mirai Shida, who also appeared in the commercials for Fantasy Life back in 2012. They showcase various elements from the game, but as they only last 15 seconds each, we don’t get to see much of it…
Here’s the first commercial:
https://youtu.be/N3I4cOOpd2A
Head after the break for the second commercial, and for a promotional video also starring Mirai Shida!
Here’s the second commercial for the game:
https://youtu.be/f__TgsBOzLc
Finally, here’s the promotional video, with some additional gameplay footage:
https://youtu.be/LpvpJ1ppMrQ
Bokujou Monogatari 3tsu no Sato no Taisetsuna Tomodachi (lit. Story of Seasons: Precious Friends from the three Villages) (3DS) comes out on June 23rd in Japan. No Western release has been announced so far, but it’s extremely likely XSEED will end up localising the game in English down the line (most definitely in 2017).
Source: MarvelousAbout
PRESS
http://mattsminutes.com/2013/02/20/zayger-watches/
3dprintingindustry.com
www.3ders.org
www.reuters.com
www.yaxismagazine.com
fabbaloo.com
www.nanowerk.com
The LeatherTime Watch
THE LEATHERTIME WATCH
The LeatherTime watch is a great watch to fit the modern wardrobe. It is fashionable with a classic watch look that catches the eye from close and far. Its features include a 40mm case with a 4mm crown, a leather strap and matching leather dial, with leather inlay on both sides of the case. It will also have a high functioning Swiss quartz movement and be water resistant to 3ATM.
There are different options in the leather and case material.
Leather choices are:
Alligator/crocodile Ostrich Python Lambskin Lizard Shark
Lorica (synthetic leather) is also available
Your choice of case materials are:
Antique bronze Gold plated steel Polished silver Polished gold
The color options for Alligator/crocodile are many, at least 15 options will be available, so to simplify things a e-mail will be sent during the production process for you to choose the band color and size.
Colors for the specialty leathers (lizard, python, etc) are limited in some of the materials. As more funding comes in, more color options will become available.
Some of the color options
Gold plated case with Ostrich leather being assembled
ABOUT ME
My name is Shlomo Mockin. My passion for watchmaking began when I was a kid, and heard that one of my great-great-grandfathers was a man named Shlomo the Zaygermacher. He was a watchmaker and musical composer with the same name as me. I have always been musical, but my interest in watchmaking grew in me over the years. After reading about the field, I realized that watchmaking is a great career, but hard to learn and even harder to find a place to learn it. Several years ago I was offered the chance to work at a leading online watch retailer and distributor in their repair center. I jumped at the opportunity.
For the past four years i have been learning the art and craft of watchmaking. I learned to repair and make parts for all types of watch movements, from quartz to mechanical and automatic, and I got to work on many great complications such as chronographs, retrogrades, jump hours and perpetual calendars. I also became a master polisher, polishing all types of materials i.e. brass, stainless steel, silver, gold, platinum and titanium. I learned to electroplate with gold, white gold, rhodium and PVC.
As fate would have it, my wife’s grandfather is a master silversmith. During my first two years as a watchmaker, I would go down to his workshop in my spare time. He would show me how to create things out of metals, using techniques like casting and molding, and machines such as the lathe and the mill.
This knowledge has given me the tools to create my own line of watches.
From the start of my career as a watchmaker I spent every spare moment I had scribbling down my own designs in notebooks and drawing apps on my iPad. As my notebooks filled and my knowledge grew, it became clear to me that the huge task of prototyping and mass production would be not only extremely difficult but also very expensive. But that didn’t stop me from dreaming and designing.
About two years ago, I came across the emerging revolution in manufacturing: 3D printing. 3D printing is an amazing and affordable new way to take an idea from the prototype stage all the way to manufacturing and mass production. Its accuracy has recently gotten to the point that it can be used to make watch parts that require accuracy to points of a millimeter. It is also a great match for watchmaking, because in usage of 3D printing one only pays for the amount of material you use. In other words, complexity is free, giving it some major advantages over traditional manufacturing. The prototyping price is the same as the production price, and watches can be made with unlimited design complexity without driving up the price.
3D model on Tinkercad
For the past two years I have been learning to 3D model using programs such as Rhino, Solidworks, Google Sketchup, and, my favorite program, Tinkercad. I have been testing and prototyping using the services provided by the great company Shapeways. Finally, after four years of learning, reading, apprenticing, casting, molding, lathing, milling, polishing, dipping, overhauling, breaking, fixing, designing, 3Dprinting, prototyping, producing and manufacturing, I can finally, happily and proudly present…..ZAYGER.
COMPANY NAME
I chose the name Zayger because it means watch in the Yiddish language that my parents and grandparents speak to me. It also seems fitting because my friends and family have dubbed me Shlomo der Zaygermacher.
COMPANY VISION
Zayger will create watches combining modern manufacturing methods such as 3D printing and laser cutting with old school hand finishing and polishing techniques. Hand engraving, hand painting and enameling will be the finishing touches to make beautiful, stylish and unique timepieces that will stand out, without straying too far from the “classic” watch look.
Zayger will focus on making limited edition and numbered watch lines, so that the watches will retain their value over time, but without a price tag for millionaire CEOs only.
WARRANTY-SERVICE
Zayger will be a company that communicates with its customers and will honor its two year warranty. Should a watch need servicing, as all watches eventually do, it will be done in an affordable and timely manner.
The two year warranty will cover functionality and water resistance. In the event of something out of the ordinary, for example, if a watch gets run over by a car (I once had a repair like that!), we will do our best to keep the repair price down. I believe that the profit for a watch should be in the sale and not the service.
For you, the amazing Kickstarter community, there will be a three year warranty, and one free battery change and water resistance check within five years of receiving your watch.
IN CLOSING
My goal is that Zayger will manufacture all of its watches from beginning to end in the USA, from the case to the band and buckle, and eventually, the movement too. There was a time when America was the leader in watch production, stemming from the need to have reliable timepieces for the railways. Over the last century, much of the watchmaking and manufacturing industry has left us. I will do my part to bring it back!
I would like to thank the people and companies that helped make Zayger a reality - my wife, kids, family and friends, without whose support I wouldn’t be here.
Shapeways and Tinkercad, whose great software and services and wonderful staff helped take my ideas and make them a reality.
Hadley Roma and its staff, manufacturers of the highest quality leather goods in the USA.
Last, and certainly not least, YOU, the Kickstarter community, whose support is making dreams come true every day. Thank you for checking out my Kickstarter project. Check out the Zayger.com website to see some prototypes of upcoming watches. Please follow Zayger on Twitter and Facebook, and thank you for your help and contributions.The United Kingdom is recognized as the 3rd best overall country in the world. The United Kingdom is also recognized as being a highly developed nation with considerable international economic, political, scientific and cultural influence. The United Kingdom is also recognized as having some of the best universities in the world, Oxford, The Imperial College and Cambridge to name a few. In fact, computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee actually invented the World Wide Web.
With all of that being said, one would believe that a country such as this would believe in and work towards maintaining a strong family unit but sadly, quite the opposite is true. The family laws within the United Kingdom are recognized as being the absolute worst in the entire so-called Western civilized society and I concur. Here are some of the statistics on Family Law in the United Kingdom:
1. There are 2 million single parents with dependent children. Women account for 91% of these single parents with dependent children. (Office for National Statistics)
2. More than 1 million children in the United Kingdom have no contact with their father. (The Centre For Social Justice)
3. Even when a father has parental responsibility, he is not necessarily granted the right to contact with the child. He is, however, responsible for maintenance or child support payments (Daddy Tax). (Gov.UK)
4. Between 75% and 86% of all contact applicants come from fathers. (University of Oxford Department of Social Policy and Social Work)
5. Mothers automatically have parental responsibility for all of their children from birth. Fathers must either be married to the child’s mother, be listed on the birth certificate, or sign a parental responsibility application form (which can only be completed with the mother’s consent). (Gov.UK)
It was in fact, Sir Paul Coleridge who stated, “the UK was ‘considered the country with the worst family rights in the world’.” Sir Paul further stated, “‘It is time that politicians of all parties addressed this most important subject.” and “recent statistics showed that almost half of 13-to-15-year-olds living in the UK did not live with both parents and that a disproportionate number of those cases arose when the parents were unmarried.”
In case you were not aware, or do not recall our previous posts on Sir Paul Coleridge, Sir Paul resigned as a family High Court judge in 2014 in order to promote his charity after becoming increasingly disillusioned by the number of family breakdowns that were appearing before him in court.
So now we have additional facts which I believe also correlate with the high suicide rate in the United Kingdom, but, what are we going to do? Are we going to continue to talk about how terrible this situation is? Or are we going to swiftly move towards a resolve not only in the the United Kingdom but throughout our so-called Western Civilized World? It is time for a change and another day of talk is another day wasted, another father commits suicide, another child becomes fatherless and another breakdown in our society. NO! We must not waste even one more day of talk, we must demand a change right now today!
Our office has requested a meeting with Sir James Munby and now we are going to request the same with Sir Paul Coleridge. We have put together an International team and we are ready and willing to travel to the United Kingdom and begin immediate discussions on a resolve, a resolution with the true best interest of our children in mind, their right to share equally in the lives of both of their fit and willing parents.
Donald Tenn
Alienated father of Christopher Joseph, Leesha Dawn and Madison Nicole TennTarget's closure is creating a serious crisis for independent pharmacies operating in the store by not giving them enough time to relocate and make the best decisions for their patients, says the president of the Pharmacy Franchisee Association of Canada (PFAD).
Dan Dimovski created PFAD, which represents more than 80 independent pharmacies operating in Targets across the country.
"They're telling us that the information that's coming out from Target right after they announced their bankruptcy is creating a serious crisis for them," he said.
"They're treating us like a corporate model. We can't close like they're closing. It's a different process altogether."
PFAD has taken legal action to be recognized in Target's bankruptcy case and is drafting letters to premiers and MPs highlighting the concerns of independent pharmacists over the imminent store closures.
Dimovski says the association wants to be recognized in Target's bankruptcy process, is asking for their moving expenses to be covered and to be able to operate until the store closes.
The U.S. retail chain announced in January it will close all its locations in Canada. There are 133 stores across the country with about 17,600 employees.
'Not enough time'
Stavros Gavrilidis is a pharmacist at a Target in Devonshire Mall in Windsor, Ont. He says Target gave notice on Jan. 26 that he would have to be out of the store in 30 days.
He said that doesn't leave enough time to be certified by the province to open a new pharmacy location.
The Ontario College of Pharmacists must receive an application for certificate of accreditation at least 45 days prior to the proposed opening date of a new location.
"There's not enough time, it's not realistic," Gavrilidis said. "We're in a situation where the patient relationship with the pharmacist has been undermined."
He said many of his clients are elderly or have chronic illnesses and require weekly medication pickups.
"You can't just treat people like that. It's a big public issue," he said.
Problems since day one
Gavrilidis says there were problems since he opened in 2013.
Fax machines and telephones didn't work and the location was not set up to serve his existing customers.
"The anticipation of joining the second biggest and largest retailer location in North America has become the worst nightmare we could ever imagine for our patients," he said.
Dimovski, who is a partner with Gavrilidis, said he like many who ventured into Target's independent pharmacy operation, saw it as a future model in Canada.
"They saw Target as a new era in pharmacy. A way for independent pharmacies to focus on the consultation part," he said.
"This was the new model that we thought would bring Canadian pharmacy to a new era."
But promises of new customers never panned out.
Target did not respond to CBC's questions about pharmacies.Image copyright Science Photo Library Image caption Roadrunners have been affected even by the present border restrictions
Free movement between the US and Mexico - the hottest of topics in the 2016 US presidential campaign - is not just a human issue. What would the construction of a wall mean for animals that live near the border?
In June 2015, from the lobby of the building that bears his name in Manhattan, the businessman Donald Trump announced his intention to run for the Republican presidential nomination.
One of the pledges he made during his announcement was to construct an impenetrable barrier running the length of the US border with Mexico. It would be, Trump said, "a great, great wall on our southern border".
As the Republican primary progressed, his wall pledge became a literal rallying cry, with supporters shouting "build the wall" at public appearances.
Trump, of course, subsequently secured the nomination. His wall proposal, symbolizing his position on immigration, has sparked heated debate. But it mainly centres on the wall's economic feasibility, social consequences and ethics.
Very few people have been talking about what it would mean for wildlife.
The US-Mexico border region is a delicate ecosystem located between two biomes, with regular animal and bird migrations moving between the north and south of the American continent.
It is home to a diverse population of mammals, birds and plants, including the iconic American roadrunner and the saguaro cactus, the cinematic symbol of the American southwest. The dry, desert ecosystem also supports cougars, desert bighorn sheep, the endangered North American jaguar and the ocelot - which is down to its last 50 animals in southern Texas.
Image copyright Science Photo Library Image caption The saguaro cactus is an emblem of the region
Animals are susceptible to artificial borders of various shapes and sizes - not just walls but highways, train tracks and all sorts of man-made infrastructure.
"Border infrastructure not only blocks the movement of wildlife, but... destroys the habitats, fragments the habitats and the connectivity that these animals use to move from one place to another," Sergio Avila-Villegas, from Arizona Sonora Desert Museum in Tuscon, told Science in Action on the BBC World Service.
Restricting the size of mating pools can decrease genetic diversity, making animals more susceptible to diseases. Human barriers can also disrupt pollination and disturb watersheds and waterways, sometimes leading to floods that can also destroy habitat.
There are countless historical examples, including Antelope Valley in California where tens of thousands of antelope perished in the 1880s because they were unable to cross newly laid railway tracks.
In the US-Mexico border region, a number of species need to cross the border to mate with their genetically different cousins, including the endangered North American jaguar. Black bears, which were re-introduced to Texas in the 1990s, would be threatened without being able to mate with Mexican bears.
Dr Clint Epps, a wildlife biologist at Oregon State University, said species had been crossing the border for 3-20 million years and a physical barrier would fundamentally alter that situation - and that change would have consequences.
"For some species, like desert bighorn sheep, you have decent populations on both sides of the border. But they depend on those movements for maintaining genetic diversity, for recolonising habitat where they've suffered local extinctions," he explained.
According to Dr Epps, that freedom will become even more important as the climate continues to warm and species need to move around to find suitable habitat.
A complete barrier could lead to a loss of local species - or even to speciation, the creation of new, distinct species as a result of populations being separated.
Mr Avila-Villegas said a complete, physical barrier would have "effects for the ecosystem as a whole".
Image copyright Science Photo Library Image caption Around 800 miles of the border is currently fenced
There is already a barrier between the US and Mexico. It is permeable, but distressed animals have already been observed, including the mountain lion and bobcat. Even birds, such as the low-flying pygmy owl and land-loving roadrunner, have been affected.
Currently, about 40% of the 2,000-mile (3,200km) border is fenced. Much of this construction has taken place since the Secure Fence Act was passed in 2006.
Designed to deter illegal entry into the US and the smuggling of illicit drugs, the boundary is a disjointed but significant series of barriers.
In some places there are impassable fences, but some of the obstacles are designed only to stop vehicles; people or animals can cross. Sensors monitor incursions and constitute a "virtual wall", supplemented by an increasingly active Border Enforcement Agency presence and even Minutemen, civilian militias patrolling border areas for illegal entry.
It is not just the physical barrier that affects wildlife. Roads have been built for enforcement personnel to access the area, and helicopters and all-terrain vehicles - with their lights and sirens - are increasingly abundant.
Construction of a wall, which Trump has said would be 10-20 metres of solid concrete, would mean a substantial increase in human activity: many more roads, heavy machinery, workers' barracks and waste.
It is difficult to be very precise about how this would affect the region's wildlife. There is little baseline data and the border area is increasingly hostile for researchers and conservationists.
Scientists have reported difficulties with access, and frequent interruptions by border agents requesting explanations and credentials - as Mr Avila-Villegas and Dr Epps said in an interview with Nature last week.
Image copyright Science Photo Library Image caption Desert bighorn sheep live on both sides of the border
Mr Avila-Villegas told the BBC: "With the heightened law enforcement and patrols spending time along the border, it is not easy for a researcher. For example, if you work with owls, that's work you do at night, or if you're hiking looking for evidence of wildlife it gets the attention of law enforcement.
"Every time I travel along the border I have to explain not only who I am and where I work but what kind of work I do, why I'm along the border and why I'm taking photographs."
History also shows that the consequences of human barriers can be unpredictable.
In the 1950s, 3,000 miles (4,800km) of fencing was put up in south-eastern Australia. The so-called Dingo Fence was designed to prevent wild dogs attacking farmers' sheep, and it succeeded in doing so.
But because the fence also spared kangaroos from dingo predation, there was a massive increase in their numbers - which turned out to be even more problematic for the sheep. Kangaroos are also grazers and compete with the sheep for pasture.
Australia also has the world's longest single, continuous fence: the "rabbit-proof fence", commenced in 1901 and stretching some 1,100 miles (1,800 km) across the country's west. Before it was completed, rabbits escaped into the agricultural areas it was meant to protect, necessitating a second and, later, a third fence.
Image copyright Science Photo Library Image caption The Sonoran Desert is a rich ecosystem
During the Cold War, East and West Germany were separated by a series of fences, walls, towers with gun turrets, dog runs and alarms. Designed to keep people separated, this thin, 800 mile (1,200km) strip of no man's land became an unintended nature preserve.
After the wall came down, scientists identified dozens of species that had become endangered in western Germany, thanks to intensive farming and construction. The area has since been incorporated into an important green belt running through central and eastern Europe.
Perhaps the most famous human barrier of all, the Great Wall of China, has not had a major effect on wildlife movements. Constructed at different times in Chinese history with the intention of protecting agricultural Chinese communities from incursions by nomadic barbarians from the north, the Great Wall is actually a series of different constructions rather than a single barrier.
In many places it is not, in fact, a wall - but mounds of pounded earth, degraded in many sections by erosion and by locals using building materials and goats. There, it is just a bump on the landscape.
In other stretches, however, the wall was indeed built to be completely impregnable. At Juyong-guan, just outside Beijing, a team of Chinese scientists conducted a study on plant species on both sides of the wall and found that it was indeed a physical barrier to gene flow.
Image copyright Science Photo Library Image caption The 2006 Secure Fence Act led to greatly expanded fence construction
Many historical human barriers had unintended ecological consequences, and did not have the benefit of environmental impact studies. Even in recent cases, the environment is often not a priority.
In the US, the 2006 Secure Fence Act - under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security - waived a number of environmental laws, including the Endangered Species Act, in order to expedite an extension of the Mexican border fence.
From hedgehog tunnels in Holland to koala nets in Australia, major human barriers nowadays are frequently accompanied by land-bridges, tunnels or passing areas.
Given, however, that the stated purpose of Trump's wall is to stop the movement of people across the border, it is unlikely to incorporate passing areas for vulnerable large mammals like the desert bighorn sheep.
A large and people-proof wall is, inevitably, a major ecological intervention.Issue 21
0. Introduction
Welcome to the 21st issue of the Chicken Gazette.
In this issue we have updates on several parts of the Chicken community, including trips, meetups, eggs, testing as well as developments in the core itself. Over in the Omelette section we have the second installment of Alaric Snell-Pym's much coveted "financial book-keeping in scheme" series.
Rounding up all the changes since the last edition has been a rather involved task which wouldn't have been possible without the friendly help of all my contributors and fellow editors in the #chicken chat channel, so many, many thanks are due to them. Also, if you haven't already joined us in #chicken, pop in and chat about Chicken specific aspects of scheme.
Enjoy and look out for issue 22 soon!
1. Chickens Out & About
Nuremberg (December 2011)
Christian Kellermann wrote (2011/10/22 17:38Z) to confirm the planned Chicken Hacking Sprint scheduled for the beginning of December.
Interested and available Chickenauts will meet in Nuremberg on the weekend of 9th, 10th and 11th of December. If you haven't done so already, you can let us know that you will be joining us by placing a note at the foot of the wiki page. If you can't attend in person then we'll be keeping an eye on IRC so feel free to book yourself a slot in your cave at home and join us throughout the weekend and into the evenings, Central European Time.
For those of you keeping score, this will bring the total number of Chicken meets this year to 5 (FOSDEM, Cologne, FrOSCon, T-DOSE and Nuremberg).
Cologne (March 2011)
In March, Chickens met up at the Chaos Computer Club in Cologne, Germany for a Chicken Hacking Weekend. Here's Moritz Heidkamp's report on what they got up to.
The usual suspects Peter Bex, Felix Winkelmann, Christian Kellermann and me met for two and a half days of exchanging ideas and hacking. While we also fixed a good share of bugs our main goal for this weekend was to create a working prototype of a distributed egg system. By the end of Sunday, mostly thanks to Peter's effort, we had something that was already pretty similar to what is in use today (see his announcement on the mailing list). Apart from that some interested visitors stopped by every now and then. Some nice chats, food and the occasional beers were had which hopefully helped to spread the Chicken word.
FrOSCon (August 2011)
At FrOSCon in August we sported not only a project booth but a presentation room as well so we took the opportunity to lay on a couple of talks for the delegates.
Moritz Heidkamp presented "An introduction to Lisp: Why to talk to computers in parentheses" whilst Christian Kellermann offered "A guided tour through the republic of CHICKEN: get up to speed with the practical scheme implementation". Christian has been keeping his talk up-to-date and you can find the latest version on the wiki.
Naturally, there are pictures.
T-DOSE 2011 (November 2011)
European Chickens met up at T-DOSE in Eindhoven, The Netherlands on the weekend of the 5th, 6th and 7th of November. Peter Bex arranged for us to contribute a "Chicken Scheme Project Booth" and we subsequently lured a few Dutch hackers into #chicken on IRC.
Christian Kellermann knocked up some impressive demos of PONG using Chicken's Cairo Egg.
Alaric Snell-Pym finished off the tests for his Ugarit backup egg which allowed him to release version 1.0.
...and Moritz Heidkamp started on a replacement for the Environments Egg as it has unfortunately has been overtaken by developments in the Chicken development branch.
Pictures are up in the usual place on the Chicken website.
2. Chicken Talk
R7RS to be dedicated to the memory of John McCarthy
Matt Welland wrote in with the sad news that the "Father of Lisp", John McCarthy had sadly passed away (2011/10/25 15:59Z). John Cowan, member of the R7RS working group, told us that R7RS, the upcoming version of the Scheme standard, would be dedicated to his memory (16:22Z)
Parallel build patch for Chicken Makefile
A lively discussion broke out on the Chicken Users mailing list regarding parallelisation of the Chicken build process.
Vitaly Magerya supplied a patch (2011/10/06 12:37Z) to fix some problems he'd been having with builds failing when specifying the -j to gmake. Mario Domenech Goulart noted that this functionality was already being addressed by ticket 526 (2011/10/06 12:39Z) and Vitaly was keen to see it committed soonly as he maintains the FreeBSD port and people had been asking him for parallel builds (2011/10/06 14:24Z). Whilst still keen, Mario advised caution as he wanted to see it proven (2011/10/06 14:40Z).
Vitaly was keen to push things forward (2011/10/06 15:45Z) and offered continued testing under FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE on x86_64. He noted that, as far as he could tell, gmake check passed when using his patch, modified with Moritz Wilhelmy's suggestions. Moreover, he offered to try the patch from ticket 526 as well.
Mario suggested that using the ticket 526 patch was a good idea as it had, as far as he knew, received testing under Linux and MacOSX.
Toby Thain spoke in favour of the patch, saying that a working parallel build gives confidence that the Makefile is, in fact, correct. He offered to test on three platforms, namely Solaris 10 SPARC SMP and both PowerPC and Intel version of MacOSX SMP.
Vitaly updated the ticket 526 patch to the then current sources and confirmed that the build worked at -j8 and the tests passed in his FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE, x86_64 environment. He did, however, note that parallelisation does not work for the install phase (2011/10/08 12:29Z).
Toby Thain reported successful builds on the 64-bit version MacOSX-10.6 as well as MacOSX-10.5 on a dual-processor G5. He noted " make -j8 reduces the make step from 3:39 to 0:47 on my 8-core system". Unfortunately make check did not pass on either system, with or without the patch (2011/10/12 01:59Z & 2011/10/15 19:53Z)
Christian Kellermann noted that it might necessary to install the compiled binaries (2011/10/15 20:07Z) however, Toby did not report back as to whether this had any effect on the results of the tests.
64-bit SPARC Build
Nicolas Pelletier came to the mailing list unable to build for Solaris 10 running on SPARC64 due to a missing apply-hack.S (2011/11/09 11:48Z).
It turned out that there was no SPARC64 support for Chicken at all and John Cowan came to the rescue (15:36Z) with instructions for how to add it to the supported architectures list and disable the apply hack. Christian Kellermann chimed in with affirmations around the utility of using Chicken without an apply hack (15:54Z)
Nicolas struggled with disabling the apply hack (2011/11/10 11:10Z) due to the Two Lies Of The README. Over the course of the next few minutes Christian and Mario Domenech Goulart confirmed that the lies, which related to the way bootstrap compilers are distributed and invoked, had already been fixed in the development versions.
Meanwhile, Toby Thain tried the build on his SPARC64 (12:40Z) and discovered that GNU make 3.82 is required as well as the addition of -lrt in Makefile.solaris. Toby's build eventually succeeded and appeared to be good, albeit having only used 1 of his 4 CPUs and with a couple of make check errors.
Later on the Thursday, Jim Ursetto noted (16:47Z) that the parallel build patch in ticket 526 still works on Chicken 4.7.0.3-st. Toby confirmed that the patch did indeed work on Solaris and build time was reduced to 10 just of his Earth minutes from the original 40. Of course, user time across the four CPUs was still in the region of 40 minutes in total. :-)
To round everything off, Toby offered binary SYSV packages for Solaris 10 on SPARC64. Contact him via the mailing list if you're interested.
Static Linking & Standalone Binaries.
Serg Kozhemyakin asked whether it is possible to build static binaries after having trouble using the -static flag to csc. He also wondered about building standalone binaries for Windows. Christian Kellermann advised against static linking as many of the eggs cannot cope with it. He did, however, suggest that the -deploy option may well solve both issues as it ensures that all the DLLs (including the Chicken runtime and other shared objects) are bundled together into a single directory.
Tracing with,tr moved to an egg
Mario Domenech Goulart helped Curtis Cooley in his search for the,tr command. The functionality had been moved from the core into an egg in Chicken 4.3.0.
gmake check sometimes fails.
Pekka Niiranen wrote to tell us about problems with gmake check in Chicken 4.7.0-st on OpenBSD 5.0.
Jim Ursetto said that one of the failures had been fixed in the stability branch after the Chicken 4.7.0-st release and he filed ticket 724 for the segmentation fault issue.
Peter Bex mentioned that the ticket 724 segmentation fault had also been observed under NetBSD and Arch Linux. He said that "It's known to be broken" but that it is not properly reproducible as it only happens some of the time (2011/11/06 09:51|).
3. Salmonella and other tests
Salmonella is Chicken's egg testing framework.
For some time we have had daily salmonella runs of the master development version of Chicken under Linux on x86. Throughout November, MacOSX-x86_64 has also been regularly experiencing the runs. Mario Domenech Goulart who maintains the testing effort at http://tests.call-cc.org/, as well as the Salmonella codebase itself, is always on the lookout for more feeds. We are aware that testing on other platforms is being organised but if you've got a private Salmonella running regularly on an interesting operating system or version of Chicken then give us a shout and we'll see if we can get it included with the other reports on http://tests.call-cc.org/
There is also an entirely new version of Salmonella over at github so test that too. The new version is more modular -- some features that were previously built in salmonella are now independent eggs (e.g., salmonella-html-report and salmonella-feeds). There's also a new egg that provides a new feature: salmonella-diff which generates HTML output to render differences between two salmonella logs.
Here's short list of new salmonella features:
egg lint mode: salmonella can now easily check for common egg mistakes before the code hits the egg repository. Just run salmonella --this-egg from the egg directory
from the egg directory a new execution mode that can significantly reduce salmonella execution times. In this mode, salmonella won't set the temporary egg installation directory empty before installing new eggs. While this mode won't spot egg dependencies problems, it can drastically effect the execution time
a new tool to take advantage of multi-core systems ( salmonella-epidemy )
) a simple text mode log file viewer ( salmonella-log-viewer )
) salmonella-html-report generates reverse dependencies graphs. That can be useful, for example, to ilustrate how many eggs depend on a given egg.
Alaric Snell-Pym is one of the people who has been setting up a Chicken testing environment. After some discussion, he chose Chicken 4.5.0 under NetBSD (2011/10/06 21:18Z). He's been keeping track of all the Egg dependencies and plans to publish |
an attack. The Northern Storm brigade were put to flight.
Isis and al Muhajireen accused the man filming them - a doctor or his associate - of being journalists. That is a very dangerous accusation in Syria at the moment since the most extreme jihadi groups have taken a position that Western journalists are spies.
The jihadis seem to believe that mooted US strikes against the Syrian regime would have been aimed at them and were only postponed because Islamist fighters had successfully dispersed and hidden in new locations. They believe that Western journalists are coming into Syria now to acquire new targeting information for drone and missile strikes against them.
'Cowardly attacks'
A new posting on a jihadist forum announced that "journalists are the enemy to the mujahideen in Syria and globally". Any Western journalists should be arrested and punished according to Sharia, the posting said.
Image caption Azaz lies near a busy border crossing between Syria and Turkey
The fighting over Azaz seems to have evolved, accidentally, out of this set of circumstances rather than having been part of a long-planned offensive. Still, there is a long record of skirmishing between the jihadis and FSA brigades for control of the border crossings into Turkey (along with all the lucrative income from smuggling and stealing from aid shipments).
Tensions have been steadily escalating. A senior FSA commander was shot dead in an argument with an Isis emir in nearby Idlib in the summer. Last week, Isis issued a fatwa declaring operation Banishment of Hypocrisy against the FSA in al-Bab and in Aleppo, both not far from Azaz.
There is a long record of skirmishing between the jihadis and FSA brigades for control of the border crossings into Turkey
According to fliers handed out by Isis fighters, this would be an offensive targeting two FSA brigades accused of "cowardly attacks on the benevolent mujahideen". Fighting has also broken out between the FSA and Isis in another important town, Dayr az Zawr.
Isis seems to be in control of Azaz for the moment, though Northern Storm and Liwaa al Tawheed, another FSA brigade, are massing outside. Turkish authorities have closed a nearby crossing from Syria. It will be interesting to see how Turkey reacts to the Islamic State's dominance just across its border.
What does this mean for the Syrian revolution? In the long term, the United States and other Western governments might be more willing to support the Free Syrian Army if they see real distance between it and the jihadis. In the short term, if the rebels are fighting each other, they are not fighting the regime.The dovetail jig makes a difficult process quick and easy.
We are at a pivotal time in furnituremaking history, where fewer people than ever know how to build things by hand but new technologies can turn out one-off pieces days faster than the most skilled craftsman, and in fact, produce forms not possible by any other means. Is this a threat to all things handmade–to our concept of perfect imperfection–or are the CNC and 3-D printers just exciting new tools? Longtime studio furniture maker Scott Grove, who has run everything from a large-scale operation to a one-man shop, was nice enough to share the thought-provoking discussion that he presents at schools around the country. No one has all the answers, but Grove asks all the right questions.
-Asa Christiana
Fine Woodworking
“Ever since I started woodworking I have always wondered: Is using technology comprising my craftsmanship? I would buy a new tool, the latest and greatest gizmo that would give me a better cut, quicker and more accurately, and then a friend would jokingly say, well, that’s just cheating.
So the age-old question is: Does technology take away from true craftsmanship?In recent years this has become more and more of an issue or dilemma as advanced technology is becoming more accessible. With the use of CNC machinery, wood can now be cut, carved and shaped more accurately and quickly than one could hope to imaging. As a business man, I embrace this efficiency but sometimes wonder if I am losing touch of my craftsmanship. Am I still a maker? Or now redefined as a designer and assembler?
Why do we seek more advanced technology to create? Certainly the bottom line is an easy answer but isn’t it also to reach perfection? As a hands-on craftsman, I strive for it, to make the perfect joint, seam, cut curve, carved pattern and finish. That new piece of equipment that cuts cleaner, faster and more accurately will always to be selling point. In Western society, we dwell on imperfection as a flaw and often consider it a failure or subpar, shoddy craftsmanship. Certainly the world of craft is starting to have a negative connotation. Poorly handmade. Are we missing the fact and appreciation that these flaws might be a human touch? OR do we and society want perfection do matter how it is achieved? We are now at a stage in the game where furniture can be completely designed and created with the push of a button. Some will argue that the design and even the manufacture is still a craft, but is it? Really?
When I started to deliberate this question, I began by breaking it all down. What is technology, and what is craftsmanship? Technology means using advanced machinery and knowledge often associated with science and math. Craftsmanship means creating by hand, actually touching the material. Sounds easy enough, but where is the line between the two? How advanced can the process be before the piece is no longer handmade?
Looking back there has always been advanced machinery, from chisels made from bone, to steel saws powered by water, then electric tools, and so on, each advancement allowing us to work a little more efficiently. However, in most cases we still directly controlled the tool and the material with our hands. For me this is an important distinction. With hands-on control, I have the option to spontaneously react to the material and the tools performance, change in midstream, go with flow, this relationship I have is intrinsically intimate. Machines simply can’t do this.
On the other hand, I see many “craftsmen,” myself included, using advanced technology to produce furniture–laser-cutting veneer, using CNC lathes to turn precise duplicates and mill high-tolerance joinery–and these furniture makers are considered some of our best. Are they the best craftsmen? Or, are we now seeing a divide between true hands-on craftsman and now, designers?
So a question is IF one is able to cut a perfect dovetail, then is using a machine to do it OK? Possibly a bigger question: Is machine-quality better the handmade quality? Do the patrons care? Does the public appreciate handmade work? Are they losing touch with it?
What is more valuable (and/or satisfying), a perfectly hand cut mortise joint or a perfectly machined one? A symmetrically handcarved texture or a similar one created by a machine?
More than ever it seems to me that true craftsmen are responsible for educating the client on how pieces are made. But how much hands-on is handmade anyhow? I can have a machine spit out all my parts and I simply glue them together with some hand sanding and a little futzing, say 10% handwork. Handmade?
Another issue is how much does a master craftsman have to touch the wood as opposed to an assistant? It is common practice to have apprentices, interns and employees assist or completely make a piece under the supervision and title of the notable craftsman, who adds his signature with final inspection. Still all is relatively handmade and acceptable. What about items that are handmade by children in a grass hut on the other side of the world? Certainly handmade. Which is “better,” to use advanced machinery or third world labor? I am in awe and also sympathetic of these third world craftsmen which I have personally witnessed. They obtain an amazing level of craftsmanship with a minimal use of technology, and are in horrible working conditions. This opens up another Pandora’s box, which only an individual can resolve within themselves when purchasing these items.
Are we at a crossroads dividing designer/maker/craftsmen from designers /engineer/ assemblers? Do we need a new certification defining such hands-on craftsmanship, similar to FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) providing the terms or parameters of handmade and the use of technology? How about ‘CLAH – cut by laser, assembled by hand’?
Obviously there are more questions than clear answers here. But one thing is for sure: Technology is here to stay and will keep advancing, becoming faster, more accurate, cheaper and easier to use. The technological craftsman is a reality and our trade is splintering in two.
The dilemma is how to use technology without losing touch with our craftsmanship. Or is that just cheating?
–Scott Grove, ScottGrove.com
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The dovetail jig makes a difficult process quick and easy. While some fine woodworkers avoid dovetail jigs, most would use a template to rout duplicate curves. Is there really a difference? This plywood cabinet can be made quickly and cheaply on a CNC router, with sustainably harvested wood. The Domino XL can create strong mortise-and-tenon joints in minutes, and no one will know the difference. Is it cheating in some way? These routed dovetails are different than handmade, but still beautiful. Would anyone but a fine woodworker mind the dovetails on the left? Designer Judson Beaumont assembled this chair/table from dozens of CNC-cut layers. The piece is nearly impossible to make any other way. The wood shell of this cocoon chair was made on a CNC, and the soft massaging pad inside was 3-D printed to fit, from material of varying density. The piece cradles the body perfectly while keeping out sound. The same goes for this coffee table. And for these chairs. CAD software lets you design quickly and easily for the CNC.
Launch GalleryJust months ago, Senator Marco Rubio was seen by the Republican establishment as one of its best hopes for taking back the White House. Now, Representative Patrick Murphy, a second-term congressman, is within striking distance of defeating Mr. Rubio in the senator’s race to keep his seat.
The race is the most consequential among several in Florida in which Republican incumbents find themselves in unexpectedly tough fights. The plight of Florida Republicans — who seem largely resigned to a Clinton victory, given Hillary Clinton’s four percentage point lead in the polls — is in large measure a result of the name at the top of the ballot. But Donald Trump’s candidacy has only accelerated trends that have changed Florida’s political landscape in ways that Democrats have been more adept at seizing.
Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the dean of Florida’s congressional delegation, is fighting more vigorously than she ever has to fend off a Democratic challenger, Scott Fuhrman, a businessman who has little name recognition and is campaigning against Ms. Ros-Lehtinen’s rigid defense of the Cuban embargo. President Obama won the district by a tiny margin in 2008 and by nearly seven percentage points in 2012. This year, Mrs. Clinton is leading Mr. Trump by 17 to 23 percentage points in the district, according to polling commissioned by Mr. Fuhrman.
The changing Latino electorate is the key factor, with Cuban-Americans, who once swung reliably Republican, increasingly up for grabs, particularly younger voters who are more socially liberal than their parents and less dogmatic about the Cuban embargo. Some 58 percent of Latino voters in Florida back Mrs. Clinton, while 28 percent support Mr. Trump, according to a recent poll commissioned by Univision.SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — A lifelong Giants fan who caught Travis Ishikawa’s pennant-clinching walk-off home run ball said he had no problem giving it right back to the player who took the unlikeliest of routes to baseball immortality. In return for his gesture, he’s been given four World Series tickets.
Frank Burke from the Central Valley town of Oakdale said he wanted to give the ball back to Ishikawa in recognition of what it took for him to get to that point.
“I’m the lucky guy that happened to be in the right place and catch the ball … so If anybody deserves to have that ball in the trophy case is the man who hit it and put us in the World Series for the third time in five years.”
We're happy to report Travis Ishikawa & his series-winning HR ball have been reunited. #SFGiants (Photo @bradmangin) pic.twitter.com/p5WXpvHS6w — Sports Illustrated (@SInow) October 17, 2014
Burke got the ball authenticated by a Giants official and was able to deliver the ball personally to Ishikawa, who gave him an autographed bat in return and posed for a few pictures with him.
Fan who got Travis Ishikawa's HR ball brought it to him. Looks like he got signed bat out of the deal. #waytodoit pic.twitter.com/Dml0Qo6IQu — Rich Chiappe (@RichChiappe) October 17, 2014
A lifelong Giants fan, Burke related his thought process as the ball was in the air: ” “I knew it was coming to me …hard ….so soft hands …It hit in my left arm palm and bounced off for a send and I just snatched it up and the party began.”
After he gathered it in, Burke said fans in the promenade section of the right-field bleachers swarmed him. “Everyone wanted to touch the ball and take a picture with me. I’ve never taken a selfie in my life that night I must’ve taken 300 selfies with people I don’t know”
OMFG MY OLD SOFTBALL COACH IS THE ONE WHO CAUGHT ISHIKAWA'S BALL LAST NIGHT pic.twitter.com/octiBon2Xi — Sam (@sammyvargas_) October 17, 2014
Friday morning, he got a call from the team. “Giants executive called me and told me they would like to invite me to Friday night’s [World Series] game and give me four tickets,” said Burke. “Yes, I’m going to World Series!”
Frank says the memory of catching the home run ball and then meeting Ishikawa is what’s priceless. Getting four World Series tickets is not too bad, either.The kernelci.org project aims to improve the quality of the mainline Linux kernel by improving testing and validation across the wide variety of diverse hardware platforms that run Linux.
There are so many different devices and platforms that run Linux, and Linux kernel development is moving so quickly that it is difficult to ensure that any given platform will remain working and stable with each Linux version. As an example, the chart here shows the growth in the number of 32-bit ARM based devices supported by Linux, with the total number of unique devices as of v4.11 just shy of 1400! That doesn’t even count the growing number of 64-bit ARM devices or any of the other architectures like x86 or MIPS.
With such an incredible range of supported hardware, how can the Linux kernel community continue to ensure that all of this hardware remains well supported and evolves with the rest of the Linux kernel?
The kernelci.org project set out to help solve that problem.
During the development cycle of the Linux kernel, whenever there are changes to the source-code repository, the kernel is built in a wide variety of configurations for several different architectures. Today, there are over 270 different build configurations across 4 architectures (x86, MIPS, ARM and ARM64.)
After a successful build, the kernel images are made available to the several distributed labs for testing. Due to the diversity of hardware that runs linux, no one lab is going to have all the hardware, so kernelci.org was designed for distributed testing. When builds are completed, each lab can download the images for the hardware available, and perform the testing. Currently there are 8 active labs contributing a total of more than 250 unique hardware platforms across 4 unique architectures.
BayLibre’s Kevin Hilman is a founding developer of the kernelci.org project, and today, BayLibre has the largest lab contributing results from over 80 unique boards across 25 unique SoC families and performing thousands of tests each day.
If you have hardware you’d like to see tested with the latest Linux kernel in the kernelci.org project, feel free to contact us. We can help guide you through setting up your own lab, or you could just send us your hardware and we can add it to our lab.
Want to know even more?
For a more in-depth overview, Kevin gave an overview talk of the kernelci.org project at the 2016 edition of the Kernel Recipes conference in Paris. Slides are available online and the full talk was recorded and available right here:Rare Silent Film With Black Cast Makes A Century-Late Debut
Enlarge this image toggle caption Museum of Modern Art Museum of Modern Art
A rare, untitled 1913 silent film is the subject of a new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibit, 100 Years In Post-Production: Resurrecting A Lost Landmark of Black Film History, tells the story behind the silent film's production.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Museum of Modern Art Museum of Modern Art
The film features Bert Williams, one of the era's famed black entertainers and the first black Broadway star. He performed in blackface on the stage, and does the same in this film, a romantic comedy with a large black cast of actors.
The movie was never produced in its time; its seven reels of negatives were locked away by the Biograph film studio. The Museum of Modern Art claimed the reels in 1938 as part of its founding film collections. The negatives were inside a cache of 900 film canisters donated by Biograph when it closed and donated its vaults, and MOMA made the first print from the film in 1976.
To see a black man and black woman kissing — it's an intimacy that we rarely see in black film again during that time period.
The museum gave the orphan movie a working title — Bert Williams: Lime Kiln Field Day — for the exhibit and November screening, when it will be shown as part of the museum's annual festival of film preservation. The name is taken from one of the sources for the film's narrative, a stage routine based on a fictional black social club, the Lime Kiln Club.
The black characters are shown in scenes of play and leisure — rare for motion pictures of the time. It's a stunning contrast to the depictions of greedy and violent stereotypes shown two years later in Birth of a Nation, D.W. Griffith's controversial cinematic masterpiece.
MOMA curator Ron Magliozzi says the theater conventions of the day required one performer in a black musical to don blackface, and the rest of the cast could perform without makeup, more naturally.
"It was a sop to the white audience," Magliozzi says. "The fact that the lead wore blackface allowed the rest of the cast not to wear blackface before white audiences."
This film follows the convention of the time, with Williams wearing blackface. His performance is comic, but not buffoonish; he is a romantic lead and gets the girl in the end of the picture.
"There's so much joy that we rarely ever see in films about black people," says Deborah Willis, the NYU chair of photography and imaging who recently screened the unedited footage.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Museum of Modern Art Museum of Modern Art
"To see a black man and black woman kissing — it's an intimacy that we rarely see in black film again during that time period," Willis says. "This is an unknown story, the unseen story of African-American culture on screen."
Camille Forbes, author of the biography Introducing Bert Williams, has seen the museum's unedited version of the film and says it may reopen the book on Williams' art and vision, as well as his contemporaries.
"It's a very powerful statement on Williams' efforts to perform in character on his own terms and in an environment to make a character as powerful and rich as it could be; the most meaningful it can be," Forbes says.
Forbes says that understanding Williams' experience gives us a chance to understand other performers — actors who played roles that we modern audiences may have decided are unacceptable.
MOMA curator Ron Magliozzi hopes the film will now be liberated. Long after the public screening, he says, he hopes the film's future will include film festivals. Maybe it will come out as a DVD.
"We're a lending institution. After restoration comes resurrection. The next step is liberation," he says.
The exhibit runs through March 2015.0 Shares 0
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Iranians spend 4.5% of their annual earnings on beauty products, three times more than their European counterparts, as per official statistics. The Germans spend 1.5% and the French and British 1.7% of their income every year on cosmetics.
According to data from the Iranian Association of Cosmetics, Toiletries and Perfumery Importers, Iran accounts for $2.1 billion of the Middle East’s $7.2 billion beauty products market–second in the region after Saudi Arabia, the Persian daily Shahrvand reported.
It is said that there are 15 million consumers for cosmetic products in Iran. Dividing the annual turnover by this number shows that each consumer spends $140 on cosmetics per year. Germany’s online statistics portal (Statista) states that the per capita cosmetic spending in Europe is €90 ($99) on average. The index is $173.5 in Germany, $176 in France, $177 in Britain, $169 in Italy and $150 in Spain.
If the raw figures alone are taken, Iranians spend less than Europeans on make-up products. But the results change as other parameters such as the price of products and household average earnings are taken into account as well.
As confirmed by the Iranian Association of Cosmetics, Toiletries and Perfumery Importers, 70% of the cosmetics in the market are smuggled into the country and often sold at a lower price than they would be if they were legally imported, not to mention the health risks contraband products are likely to pose. Europeans on the other hand pay the real price of the products which includes tax and are thus more expensive.
Moreover, the spending has to be measured as compared to the average earnings. Based on Gallup Incorporation’s opinion polls, Iranians’ median per capita income has been estimated as $3,100 while that of the Germans, French and British $14,000, $12,500 and $12,300 respectively. The Spanish and Italians earn $6,800 and $7,200.
This means that Iranians spend 4.5% of their income on beauty products while the figure is 1.5% for Germans, 1.7% for the French and British, 3% for Italians and 2.5% for the Spanish.
These calculations show that people in Iran spend three times as much on cosmetics as German, French and British consumers.
Cosmetic Surgery
Additionally, Iran’s Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons’ Association has announced that 80,000 cosmetic surgeries are performed each year constituting 0.3% of the operations in the world. This is a rather large percentage given that only 1.08% of the world population lives in Iran. Besides, the figure is said to be approximate due to the absence of an official registration system and the fact that other types of beauty surgeries such as body contouring and facial rejuvenation, among many others, are not included.
Data from the Central Bank and the Statistics Center of Iran suggest that cultural pursuits constitute a small portion of Iranian household expenditure. The reports indicate that each family spent only 2% of their income on recreation and cultural activities in 2015, less than half their expenses on cosmetic products.
Iran’s share of the world book market is 0.1% which is one-third the country’s share of the cosmetics market. The $2.1 billion incurred on beauty products is said to equal Japan’s cinema turnover and exceeds that of Bollywood and the UK’s film industry.
Culture, cinema and books don’t comprise high-income businesses in Iran while cosmetic surgeons and beauty product dealers make fortunes on their business.Astronaut, engineer, author, and actor, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin is what you might call a living legend. As the Lunar Module Pilot aboard the Apollo 11 mission, and second man to walk on the Moon, he is exceeded only by Neil Armstrong when it comes to the most famous astronauts that have ever lived.
And much like all astronauts who left an indelible mark on history, the path that brought Aldrin to the Moon began early in his life. And since achieving the dream of countless generations, he has gone on to inspire others to make similar leaps, advocating space exploration, and a mission to Mars.
Early Life:
Born Edwin Eugene Aldrin on January 20th, 1930, in Montclair, New Jersey to a military family, Aldrin picked up his famous nickname from the younger of his two elder sisters. Unable to pronounce brother, he let her call him “buzzer”, which was eventually shortened to “Buzz”. During his childhood, Aldrin was also a boy scout, earning the rank of Tenderfoot Scout.
After graduating from high school, Aldrin wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. As such, he turned down a scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and instead enrolled in the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. He would later enroll at MIT to complete his studies, but not before going off to war.
Military Career:
Upon graduating in 1951 from West Point with a Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering, Aldrin was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the United States Air Force. During the Korean War, he served as a jet fighter pilot, flying 66 combat missions in F-86 Sabres and shooting down two MiG-15 aircraft.
After the war, he was assigned as an aerial gunnery instructor at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada before becoming a flight commander at Bitburg Air Base in West Germany, where he flew F-100 Super Sabres with the 22nd Fighter Squadron.
After completing his military service, Aldrin returned to MIT to receive his Doctor of Science degree in Aeronautics. In 1963, he was assigned to the Gemini Target Office of the Air Force Space Systems Division in Los Angeles, and began to pursue a career in space exploration. Initially, his application was rejected since he had never been a test pilot. However, that prerequisite was lifted when Aldrin re-applied, and he was accepted into the third group of astronauts in October of 1963.
Gemini Program:
Aldrin was initially selected to participate in the Gemini program, and after the deaths of the original Gemini 9 prime crew (Elliot See and Charles Bassett) Aldrin and Jim Lovell were promoted to backup crew for the mission. The main objective of the revised mission (Gemini 9A) was to rendezvous and dock with a target vehicle.
When this failed, Aldrin improvised an effective exercise for the craft to rendezvous with a co-ordinate in space. On his next mission – Gemini 12, which took place in 1966 – Aldrin served as the pilot and set a record for extra-vehicular activity (EVA), demonstrating that astronauts could work outside spacecraft.
Apollo 11:
As the Lunar Module Pilot of the Apollo 11 mission, Aldrin became the second astronaut to walk on the Moon on July 21st, 1969. Aldrin’s first words on the Moon were “Beautiful view. Magnificent desolation.” As a Presbyterian, Aldrin decided to hold a religious ceremony on the Moon, and became the first man to do so.
Using a home communion kit given to him, he reciting words used by his pastor at Webster Presbyterian Church (Rev. Dean Woodruff). The ceremony was not communicated back to Earth and was a private affair. However, after landing on the Moon, Aldrin radioed Earth and said:
I’d like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours, and to give thanks in his or her own way.
In later years, Aldrin expressed some regret, thinking that a Christian service may not have been in keeping with the spirit of going to the Moon for all of humanity. However, for him personally, it was a significant event and in keeping with his personal faith.
According to different NASA accounts, it had originally been proposed that Aldrin be the first to step onto the Moon’s surface. But due to the physical positioning of the astronauts inside the compact lunar landing module, it was easier for the commander, Neil Armstrong, to be the first to exit the spacecraft.
Retirement:
After leaving NASA in 1971, Aldrin was assigned as the Commandant of the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, California. In March 1972, Aldrin retired from active duty after 21 years of service, due to personal issues stemming from clinical depression and alcoholism. Afterward, he sought treatment for these problems, and his life improved considerably.
Following his retirement, Aldrin remained active in promoting space. He created a nonprofit organization named ShareSpace which supports space education, has written several books, and even released a CD with Snoop Dogg and other rappers in order to promote space. He has been very vocal regarding his belief that NASA should be moving ahead with a manned mission to Mars.
Since retiring from NASA, he has also had an impressive career in television and film, appearing on multiple episodes of hit TV shows, TV movies, documentaries, and as a contestant on Dancing with the Stars. He has also done extensive voice-over work for animated shows, movies, and the video game Mass Effect 3.
Like Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin has received numerous medals and awards for his service – including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal, three Air Medals, the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, two NASA Space Flight Medals, and the Harmon International Trophy. He has also received honorary degrees from six colleges and universities.
Aldrin has been married three times and has three children and one grandson.
Universe Today has articles on Buzz Aldrin and Buzz Aldrin raps with Snoop Dogg.
For more information, try Buzz Aldrin and Snoop Dogg and biography of Buzz Aldrin.
Astronomy Cast has episodes on the Moon.
Source: NASAAt Base Two, we expect our developers be familiar working with multiple layers of the web stack. Many of us got our feet wet building Rails applications and have recently been having a lot of fun building single page javascript and mobile applications with Yeoman, Grunt and Bower.
Thick Client === Happy Clients
First some background on us. We are a technology company that builds web, mobile, desktop and embedded solutions for clients big and small. We have worked to get our startup clients from the incubator to seed-stage funding and have helped our large corporate clients like AEP communicate better by converting processes typically carried out in excel spreadsheet into rich web experiences (and on Internet Explorer 8, no less!).
When we first began our work with AEP, we had just been contracted to do some shadow IT for one of the company's business units. Our first question in our first meeting was, "We know you do a lot of.NET here, but would you mind if we gave Ruby on Rails a go?". It should have been a red flag that there were no internal IT representatives in the room, but we weren't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. The business unit signed off on our project and gave us the go-ahead to write a Rails application.
We decided that -- given the project's requirements -- a thick javascript client with a Rails JSON API made a lot of sense. We were comfortable developing BDD Rails applications quickly and felt like a clear separation of the front and back-end would allow developers to work better in parallel.
Three months later, when our client's IT department stepped in to mandate that the project be completed in.NET, we had a single page javascript application and knew what the JSON endpoints were supposed to look like. Over the next 6 months, we swapped the Rails services for.NET and continued adding features to our thick client application. All of this to say, thick clients + JSON APIs are a really flexible way to do development and, while they aren't the answer to every problem, they rock, we have fun building them and in this particular case, they saved our client a lot of time and money.
Automating Front-end Workflow
Last fall, I viewed a slide deck from Addy Osmani that completely blew my mind. The name of that deck was "Automating Front-end Workflow", and it has completely changed the way I do development.
In particular, we have adopted Yeoman for scaffolding new applications, Grunt for automating tasks (minifying scripts, compiling SASS and Coffeescript, running static code analysis, unit and end to end tests, and even removing unused CSS rules) and Bower for managing dependencies. Scaffolding, previewing, testing and building a new AngularJS with Yeoman is as simple as:
At this point, if we wanted, we could begin test-driving the front-end with mock services while another developer begins writing Rails/PHP/.NET/Go/etc.
Build Artifacts in Version Control!== Best Practice
So, here's where the dream died a little for me. We use Heroku for hosting our Rails applications and deploy to Heroku with Git. When Heroku receives the push, it recognizes and builds our Rails application just fine, but does nothing to the subdirectory containing our javascript application.
Our build workflow looked like this:
After merging changes into master checkout new branch called build
checkout new branch called Run grunt build (target is./public in the Rails root directory)
(target is in the Rails root directory) Commit changes
Push to remote
Issue pull request to master
Merge changes
Push master to Heroku
I get worn out just reading that list.
If the threat of extra work isn't compelling enough to convince you that this isn't the right way to be doing things, how about this: build artifacts simply do not belong in source control. If only Heroku could recognize our Rails application and also know to fetch our front-end dependencies and run our Grunt tasks.
Automating Multiple Builds on Heroku
I'd like to say that I got fed up with the above build process and went searching for a better way, but that would be--at best--a half-truth. A few months ago, we got an email from an Advocate at Heroku named Christopher Lauer asking if he could chat with us about ways to improve our Heroku experience. I had no idea they did this kind of thing and was thrilled to get a forum to ask questions about the platform.
This is where Christopher turned me on to the idea of using multiple build packs. I had no idea what buildpacks were, so I started poking around. From the documentation:
When you git push heroku, Heroku’s slug compiler prepares your code for execution by the Heroku dyno manager. At the heart of the slug compiler is a collection of scripts called a buildpack.
Ok, so buildpacks are the steps Heroku uses to build my application once it recognizes that I'm using Ruby/Node/etc. So how do I tell Heroku that it should stop trying to recognize my environment and instead let me call the shots? It's a simple environment variable. So, if I want Heroku to look for a Ruby/Rails application, I would configure it to use the ruby buildpack:
If, instead, I would like it to run a package.json and install dependencies like Compass and Grunt, I would configure it like this:
But this doesn't yet solve my problem. Enter, multi build packs.
Now, when you push to Heroku, the service will first look for a package.json and Gruntfile in the root (I point the Gruntfile to the Gruntfile in my subdirectory with grunt-hub) before bundling and spinning up a Rails server.
Wrapping up
$ git rm -rf /public
Removing my build artifacts from Github was a triumphant moment. Concurrently developing for the front and back-end feels humane.
I'm sure that there were likely some holes in this document and more than a few logical jumps. I'll keep an eye on the comments and plan on linking a few resources below.Visit our Re-post guidelines This article is copyrighted by GreenMedInfo LLC, 2018
"According to Hippocratic tradition, the safety level of a preventive medicine must be very high, as it is aimed at protecting people against diseases that they may not contract." ~ Marc Girard, Autoimmune hazards of hepatitis B vaccine.
Startling new research published in the journal Apoptosis indicates that hepatitis B vaccine, which is designed to prevent Hepatitis B virus-induced damage to the liver, actually causes liver cell destruction.
In the study titled "Hepatitis B vaccine induces apoptotic death in Hepa1-6 cells," researchers set out to "...establish an in vitro model system amenable to mechanistic investigations of cytotoxicity induced by hepatitis B vaccine, and to investigate the mechanisms of vaccine-induced cell death."1
They found the hepatitis B vaccine induced a "loss of mitochondrial integrity, apoptosis induction, and cell death" in liver cells exposed to a low dose of adjuvanted hepatitis B vaccine. The adjuvant used was aluminum hydroxide, which is increasingly being identified as a contributing cause of autoimmune disease in immunized populations.
The discovery that the hepatitis B vaccine damages the liver (hepatotoxicity) confirms earlier findings (1999) that the vaccine increases the incidence of liver problems in U.S. children less than 6 years old by up to 294% versus unvaccinated controls.
Another study published in the journal Hepatogastroentology in 2002, observed that Hepatitis B vaccination was statistically associated with gastrointestinal reactions including: hepatitis, gastrointestinal disease and liver function test abnormalities in comparison to other vaccine control groups.
This, however, is only the tip of the iceberg...
In a revealing study published in June 2011 in the journal Molecular Biology Reports, researchers demonstrated that hepatitis B vaccine alters the expression of 144 genes in the mouse liver within 1 day of vaccination, 7 of which are related to inflammation and metabolism. The authors noted:
"Pharmaceutical companies usually perform safety testing of vaccines, but all requirements of the World Health Organization and drug pharmacopoeias depend on general toxicity testing, and the gene expression study of hepatitis B vaccine is not done routinely to test vaccine quality."
Could the gene-expression altering affects of hepatitis B vaccine be one reason why there are over 60 serious detrimental health effects associated with the vaccine as documented in the peer-reviewed and published biomedical literature, including sudden infant death?
Other potential mechanisms of action behind hepatitis B vaccine's dangerous side effects, are as follows...
Hepatitis B Virus polymerase as a contaminant, which may trigger an auto-immune process against the myelin (protective |
Here's an example for such a situation. The important points are: 1. The parameter p points to write-only memory (e.g. memory mapped I/O).
2. bar is unsafe for use with a write-only pointer (maybe it writes it and then reads it back, expecting the same value).
The function foo is safe for use with a write-only pointer, because it only writes p. This is true even if bar is unsafe, because bar never gets p. With the suggested optiomization, bar does get p, which may cause trouble.
Here's an example for the file containing bar and the call to foo.DEA Rejects Attempt To Loosen Federal Restrictions On Marijuana
Enlarge this image toggle caption Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
The Obama administration has denied a bid by two Democratic governors to reconsider how it treats marijuana under federal drug control laws, keeping the drug for now, at least, in the most restrictive category for U.S. law enforcement purposes.
Drug Enforcement Administration chief Chuck Rosenberg says the decision is rooted in science. Rosenberg gave "enormous weight" to conclusions by the Food and Drug Administration that marijuana has "no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States," and by some measures, it remains highly vulnerable to abuse as the most commonly used illicit drug across the nation.
"This decision isn't based on danger. This decision is based on whether marijuana, as determined by the FDA, is a safe and effective medicine," he said, "and it's not."
Marijuana is considered a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act, alongside heroin and LSD, while other, highly addictive substances including oxycodone and methamphetamine are regulated differently under Schedule II of the law. But marijuana's designation has nothing to do with danger, Rosenberg said.
In a letter to the petitioners, Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and New Mexico nurse practitioner Bryan Krumm, Rosenberg said doctors are responsible for treating patients, but the FDA makes decisions about drug safety: "Simply put, evaluating the safety and effectiveness of drugs is a highly specialized endeavor."
Tom Angell, chairman of Marijuana Majority, said in a statement that the decision was disappointing.
"President Obama always said he would let science — and not ideology — dictate policy, but in this case his administration is upholding a failed drug war approach instead of looking at real, existing evidence that marijuana has medical value," he wrote.
Most Americans support legalization, Angell wrote, and the federal government should at a minimum leave regulatory decisions to the states.
Drug enforcers insist they are supportive of efforts to advance scientific research on marijuana. The DEA said it has "never denied" an application from a researcher to use lawfully produced marijuana in a rigorous medical study, and Rosenberg pointed out that research continues on a variety of subjects, including the effects of smoking marijuana in human subjects.
A spokesman for the FDA said the agency shares "an interest in developing therapies from marijuana and its components and have taken aggressive, coordinated action to do so."
The FDA added that well-controlled clinical trials represent the "most appropriate way" to advance scientific understanding and that the drug approval process gives the agency the important ability to determine whether a product meets the FDA criteria for safety and effectiveness.
In December 2015, federal authorities said, they made it easier for researchers conducting clinical trials on cannabidiol, a component of marijuana. Some scientists are studying whether the substance can help treat childhood epilepsy. "That would be a wonderful and welcome development," the DEA letter said, "but we insist that CBD research, or any research, be sound, scientific and rigorous before a product can be authorized for medical use."
What's more, federal authorities said, they are increasing the amount of marijuana available for legitimate research. They said they will open up new avenues for more people and institutions to manufacture marijuana for scientific purposes. Currently, the University of Mississippi is the only such site in the U.S.
"As long as folks abide by the rules, and we're going to regulate that, we want to expand the availability, the variety, the type of marijuana available to legitimate researchers," Rosenberg said. "If our understanding of the science changes, that could very well drive a new decision."
Forty-two states and the District of Columbia allow some form of medical marijuana use, but the federal government has not taken that step despite prodding from federal lawmakers. Last month, the Democratic National Committee endorsed the idea of loosening federal restrictions on marijuana and "providing a reasoned platform for future legalization" in its platform.
For now, there remain two ways to change the federal government's classification of marijuana: for a host of federal agencies including the DEA and FDA to sign off; or for Congress to pass a law, and for the president to sign it.How do supermassive black holes grow to be millions or billions of times bigger than their more ordinary cousins? No star grows that huge, so they aren't created from the same kinds of supernovae that make stellar-mass black holes. The earliest known galaxies indicate that these monsters were present from nearly the start, meaning that they were unlikely to be normal black holes that slowly gorged their way to supermassiveness. One potential explanation that has been considered is that they were born large and became truly gigantic when two or more collided and merged.
New observations could place stringent limits on that merger rate, however. R. M. Shannon and colleagues used the timing of light from pulsars as a means of measuring gravitational radiation. Gravity waves should be generated by pairs of black holes before and during their collisions. If there were a lot of mergers, the waves would create a noticeable fluctuation in the pulsar timing. But the new results are inconsistent with the merger rate predicted by the most widely accepted theoretical models, suggesting that either binary black holes don't collide as often as expected or that some other mechanisms for their growth are at work.
Supermassive black holes (SMBHs), which are hundreds of thousands to billions of times more massive than the Sun, lie at the center of nearly every large galaxy. These objects frequently drive powerful jets of matter, which (if the alignment is right) astronomers observe as quasars. The most distant quasars indicate that SMBHs have existed nearly as long as galaxies. Their large mass and early existence indicate that they could not have formed from the explosions of large stars, which is the mechanism by which stellar-mass black holes are born.
As a result, it's likely that SMBHs were born supermassive through one of several plausible scenarios involving the rapid collapse of matter during the early moments of galaxy formation. However, observations show that galaxies collide and merge after birth; the largest galaxies were likely produced by such processes. Based on that information, astronomers hypothesized that the galaxies' SMBHs also merge during galactic collisions.
Observations of binary SMBHs in several galaxies support that hypothesis. However, mergers are slow compared to the human life span, so the black holes we see locked in mutual orbit are a long way from collision. They will do so eventually, however, because energy is carried away from them as they churn space-time up in waves known as gravitational radiation. With every bit of energy radiated, the black holes grow closer until they finally merge. While astronomers have not observed orbital shrinkage (and have not detected gravitational waves directly), they have seen this process occur in binary pulsars.
However, binary SMBHs are rare in the astronomical data, partly because it's hard to distinguish a single black hole from a pair at large distances. So researchers resort to theory and computer simulations to predict how many black hole binaries there must be. Those models are primarily concerned with galaxy formation and mergers, but presumably many collisions will result in SMBH pairs. Estimates indicate that binaries should be common enough to create a gravitational wave background that fills the Universe with faint gravitational radiation.
The problem is that gravity is the weakest force, and the wavelengths of radiation from SMBH binaries are huge. This pushes them out of the realm of detection by ground-based gravitational observatories like LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory).
However, astronomers realized that millisecond pulsars, which rotate hundreds of thousands of times each second, are extremely accurate timing devices: their flashes arrive at Earth with almost no variation. If gravitational waves were to pass through pairs of millisecond pulsars, they would produce a very slight variation in the relative timing we measure. That's the principle behind pulsar timing arrays: radio telescopes that compare the timing from multiple millisecond pulsars widely separated in space. While pulsar timing arrays aren't good enough yet to detect individual gravitational waves (from supernovae or colliding pulsars, for example), they should be adequate to measure the gravity wave background from binary black holes.
The authors of the present paper compared the predictions of the gravitational wave background to observations made using the Parkes Telescope in Australia. They found that the background was too weak to show up in the data, which implies that either supermassive black hole binaries are more rare than predicted or the gravitational waves they emit don't fit the expected profile.
If the gravity wave background profile is wrong, it could be because many black hole binaries orbit in eccentric paths. That would tend to produce more widely varied gravitational radiation as opposed to a steady flow, defeating detection using pulsar timing. Another possibility is that the environment of the black holes provides some friction, slowing the orbital speed and causing mergers before too many gravity waves are produced.
At this point, it's difficult to know which explanation is the correct one. Nevertheless, pulsar timing arrays could provide the best means of studying black hole binaries in distant galaxies, giving us a look at galaxy collisions in the Universe's early history.
Science, 2013. DOI: 10.1126/science.1238012 (About DOIs).The band Ling Tosite Sigure is performing the theme song for upcoming Psycho-Pass anime film. The band announced on Friday that their new song "Who What Who What" will be the film's theme song.
Ling Tosite Sigure is a three-piece band that includes singer and guitarist Toru "TK" Kitajima, singer and bassist Miyoko "345" Nakamura, and drummer Masatoshi "Pierre" Nakano. After forming in 2002, the group performed opening theme songs for the first and second season of Psycho-Pass ("abnormalize" and "Enigmatic Feeling," respectively). TK also sang the opening for the first season of Tokyo Ghoul. The "Enigmatic Feeling" single debuted on November 5 and ranked #8 on Oricon's weekly chart.
The Psycho-Pass film will run in more than 100 theaters in Japan when it premieres on January 9. The single with "Who What Who What" will go on sale on January 14. Until the end of March, the single will have a limited-time pressing with a DVD, containing the title song's music video, a teaser video with a reedited version of "abnormalize" (as used in the Psycho-Pass: Sentaku Naki Kōfuku or Psycho-Pass: Happiness Without Choice Xbox One game), and the Psycho-Pass 2 opening movie from the September 26 Psycho-Fes event.
Source: animeanime.jpLebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri has said that the events that unfolded over the past three weeks of his time in Saudi Arabia will remain undisclosed, emphasising that he does not wish to discuss the details of what happened to him during that period.
In an interview with French channel CNews on Monday, Hariri said he wanted to bring about a "positive shock" on the Lebanese people through the announcement of his resignation, stressing that there was no pressure on him to resign from Saudi Arabia.
Hariri had announced his resignation on November 4 from the Saudi capital Riyadh, but deferred his decision on November 22, when he returned to Lebanon after visiting France and Egypt.
In a televised speech, Hariri blamed interference in Lebanon by Iran and its Lebanese ally, the Hezbollah movement, for his decision to resign, adding that he feared an assassination attempt.
Referring to Hezbollah, Hariri said: "Iran's arm... has managed to impose a fait accompli on Lebanon through the power of its weapons.
"They have built a state within a state."
Hariri's resignation speech echoed frequent rhetoric from Saudi Arabia against Iran and its allies.
Iran and Saudi Arabia are fighting proxy wars in the region, from Syria to Yemen. Iran is a predominantly Shia military and economic power, while Saudi Arabia is a Sunni bloc leader.
Saudi Arabia blames Iran for backing armed groups throughout the Arab world and has recently pledged to fight them.
Hariri's resignation spurred a debate over whether he was forced to resign.
Officials in Lebanon had alleged that Hariri was being held hostage by Saudi authorities, an allegation Hariri denied in his first public statement following his resignation speech.
In his interview with CNews, the premier said he would resign if Hezbollah does not agree to change the status quo in the country.
Hariri is part of a unity government that includes members of Hezbollah, which has a strong military wing based in the country's south.
He assumed a second term as prime minister in December 2016, in a power-sharing government headed by President Michel Aoun, a supporter of Hezbollah, whose members have been accused by the International Court of Justice of assassinating Hariri's father, Rafik, in a 2005 bombing.
The country spent two years in political deadlock, without a president, before Aoun's election in October 2016, after Hariri endorsed the latter, a move seen by some analysts as a sign of Iran's influence in Lebanon.
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, said he was sure Hariri was forced to resign as part of what he called Saudi Arabia's policy of stoking sectarian tensions in Lebanon.Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation is focusing on one of President Donald Trump’s closest yet quietest confidants.
The special counsel’s lawyers plan to sit down by the end of this month with White House communications director Hope Hicks to find out what she might know about possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.
Hicks’ denial that top campaign aides spoke with foreign dignitaries is likely to come up during the discussions.
“It never happened,” Hicks told the Associated Press. “There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.”
Information that emerged in the past year, however, reveals that wasn’t so.
Since Trump was elected, it’s come out that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Jeff Sessions (then a senator, now attorney general), Paul Manafort, Carter Page and other campaign workers spoke with Russian nationals in some capacity during Trump’s presidential campaign.
Hicks has retained Washington lawyer Robert Trout, who declined to comment. A spokesman for Mueller also declined to comment.
Since her November 2016 comment appears to now be in dispute, Hicks might find herself in a tight spot when she meets with the special counsel’s staff.
“It puts her easily on the defensive and once somebody’s on the defensive it’s easier to get them to say what you want them to say,” said Rebecca Roiphe, a professor at New York Law School. “She’s going to be forced into a corner to explain those lies.”
Hicks, who’s worked with the Trumps for five years, has been a quiet force with the campaign and White House.
But she received wider attention after Donald Trump Jr.’s correspondence with WikiLeaks was revealed.
The documents site – which released leaked emails from the Clinton campaign and members of the Democratic National Committee during the campaign – reached out to Trump Jr. in September 2016.
Trump Jr. emailed top campaign members, including his brother-in-law, Kushner, about his WikiLeaks contact.
The Senate Judiciary Committee this month wrote an angry letter to Kushner, alleging that he withheld those emails, which he reportedly forwarded to Hicks.
Abbe Lowell, Kushner’s lawyer, had said his client warned campaign staff not to talk to foreign nationals and that the charge by the Senate panel was blown out of proportion.
The WikiLeaks correspondence is the latest incident showing Hicks’ direct communication with Trump’s surrogates – and her close proximity to the president.
Meanwhile, Carter Page told the House Intelligence Committee that he told Sessions, Hicks and campaign manager Corey Lewandowski before giving a speech in Russia in July 2016.
Page has denied that the speech had anything to do with his role as a foreign policy adviser and that his brief encounters with Russian officials were just pleasantries.
Yet Page also said he emailed other advisers about Trump potentially delivering a speech in Russia, likening it to Barack Obama’s 2008 address in Berlin.
Hicks was also reportedly in the know when Trump decided to fire FBI Director James Comey in May – likely to be another talking point when she meets with Mueller’s team.
The firing – which the president suggested was partially because of the Russia investigation – was considered obstruction of justice by some critics.
Kushner reportedly forwarded an email about foreign contacts, warning the campaign not to engage.
Hicks’ muted nature and loyalty to the president have been considered factors to why she’s lasted so long.
She’s often one of the few people in the room when Trump gives an interview.
And like the president, Hicks is a relative newcomer to politics.
She grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, and played lacrosse through her four years at Southern Methodist University. Hicks also modeled for a time, and her work included the cover of an offshoot novel from the show “Gossip Girl.”
Hicks began her public relations career at Hiltzik Strategies, which was contracted with the Trump Organization when she began in 2012.
The company put her on its payroll within two years to focus on Ivanka Trump’s clothing brand – sometimes even posing for some of the products.
She was conscripted into Trump’s campaign when he announced his candidacy for president in mid-2015.
At one point she tried to leave the campaign, but Trump reportedly convinced her to stay.
She followed her boss into the White House. Hicks took over the communications role on an interim basis after Anthony Scaramucci – a hedge fund manager with little media experience – was fired after 11 days on the job.
The job became permanent in September, making Hicks the third person to hold the title since Trump took office in January.March to demand debt cancellation, Lahore, September 19, 2010
September 18, 2010 -- Green Left Weekly -- Ammar Ali Jan is a 23-year-old activist in Pakistan who visited Australia earlier this year to speak at the Resistance national conference. He is an organiser of the Progressive Youth Front (PYF), which campaigns for democracy and against corruption. He spoke to Melanie Barnes from Resistance about what’s been happening in Pakistan, especially the devastating impact of the recent floods.
* * *
[Readers can donate to help flood victims via the Australian trade unions' aid agency APHEDA at http://www.apheda.org.au/news/1281331224_14992.html.]
* * *
Recently you were arrested at a protest against power shortages. Can you tell us about that campaign? What was the outcome of the protest?
On August 10, there was a power outage due to a technical fault. The Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) refused to come to fix the problem immediately and said we must wait for a couple of days before the issue was resolved.
The temperatures can rise to 47°C in Lahore. When the situation became unbearable, the PYF decided to rally the locals against the WAPDA administration. About 300 to 400 people joined our demonstration as we blocked the main Feroze Pur road in Lahore, demanding that our electricity be restored immediately.
Soon, heavy police contingents arrived and we started negotiating with them on our demands. While the negotiations were going on, police suddenly started a baton charge against some of the protesters. We intervened, hoping to diffuse the situation, but we were also ferociously attacked by the police, and they started making arrests.
Five of us were arrested. Our members converged in front of the police station to protest this high-handedness. What was amusing was that the police station did not have any power either, since it was also connected to the same transformer.
Two hours later, while we were in the police lock-up, electricity was restored and even the police on duty started thanking us, saying it had been restored so quickly only because of our protest. They also informed us that the reason for such police high-handedness in the middle of our negotiations were orders from the local parliamentarian, who was nervous about the growth of the PYF and wanted to “teach the PYF a lesson”.
We were released on bail the next afternoon and were warmly welcomed by the community.
This protest only helped enhance our standing in the locality and also further strengthened our belief that, in the current scenario, the left can only become relevant if it focuses its energies on transforming specific areas.
The floods have had a devastating impact on millions of people’s lives. What impact have the floods had on politics?
We are now involved in the relief campaign for those affected by the floods in Pakistan. Not only are we raising funds for the victims, but we are also launching a political campaign against the state that has failed to deliver for its citizens.
We are trying to go deeper into the discourse on “natural disasters” that has more to do with the economy of underdevelopment rather than the will of god. For example, the earthquakes in Haiti devastated the entire country, but earthquakes of greater magnitude in Japan, California and New Zealand do not even get noticed.
This can be explained by the peripheral role played by the economies of the Third World under international capitalism since the onset of colonialism.
Colonialism reduced colonised societies to mere spaces for exploitation of resources and cheap labour — something that is still true in the post-colonial world.
We want to highlight some of these structural problems that have reduced the will and means of our state to cater to the wellbeing of ordinary Pakistanis.
The inflated military budget, the lack of social spending and the budget cuts under the instructions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, have reduced the capacity of the state to help the 20 million Pakistanis who have been left stranded due to these devastating floods.
How has your organisation responded to the floods? What can people in Australia do to help?
We have launched a full-scale campaign calling for the cancellation of Pakistan’s foreign debt. Eighty per cent of Pakistan’s budget is spent either on the military or on the repayment of IMF and World Bank loans.
First, we feel that, considering the current calamity being faced by Pakistan, the debt should be written off on moral grounds, as it would become a great hurdle for the rehabilitation of those affected by the floods.
Second, most of the loans given to Pakistan have been given to military regimes that had no mandate from the people, and were only given to stabilise these US-allied dictatorships.
Third, there has been no audit of these loans; most of the money has been used by the military and civilian elites to increase their wealth. Hence the people of Pakistan cannot be held accountable for such loans, which had a political agenda for keeping the country subservient to the wishes of global capital.
The IMF and World Bank have also forced the government to increase the general sales tax on essential items, to privatise public sector companies and to lay off workers to balance the budget.
Hence while loans are being given to Pakistan and are being enjoyed by our elites, it is the working people who pay for them.
It is for these reasons that we believe the campaign to cancel Pakistan’s debts will become popular throughout the country.
We also ask for solidarity on this issue from our comrades around the world and ask them to pressure their governments to write off Pakistan’s external debt.
Lahore march and rally demands debt cancellation
Farooq Tariq addresses the September 19 rally in Lahore.
By Farooq Tariq
September 19, 2010 -- A very enthusiastic rally and march, with a lot of slogans, was held here in Lahore on September 19, 2010. More than 700 attended the rally, organised to demand the cancellation of Pakistan's foriegn debt so that the money can instead help those affected by the flood. The main Mall Road was blocked for more than one and half hours by people waving red flags and shouting slogans against US imperialism, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other financial institutions. One of the main features of the rally was participation of women and young activists from different backgrounds.
Several trade unions mobilised their members to attend the rally, including the Rustam Suhrab Cycle and Motor Cycle Workers' Union, the Lahore Gymkhana Workers' Association, Railway Workers' Union, the Itehad Carpet Union and the Pakistan Bhatta Mazdoor Union. There were many activists of Labour Party Pakistan and the Workers Party Pakistan, and also some from the Communist Mazdoor Kissan Party.
The Progressive Youth Front mobilised more than 100 youth from one area of Lahore, and the National Student Federation also mobilised its members. Women Workers' Help Line and the Labour Education Foundation also worked very hard to mobilise. Activists and leaders of the National Trade Union Federation, Pakistan For Palestine, CATDM Pakistan, the Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee, Tehreek Istiqlal, the Pakistan Trade Unions Defence Campaign, the Pakistan Institute of Secular Studies and students of Lahore University of Management were among others at the rally.
Abid Hasan Minto, president of the Workers Party Pakistan added his voice against the repayment of foreign debt.
The rally started from the GPO Chouck and ended at Charing Cross on Mall Road. Asim Sajad Akhtar and Naeem Shakir from the Workers Party Pakistan, Abdul Khaliq Shah of CATDM, Bushra Khaliq from the Women Workers' Help Line, Mohammed Naseeb of Lahore Gymkhana, Azhar Siddique, Sakhai Mohammed from the Railway Workers' Union, Hanif Goraya of Tehreek Istiqlal and the Labour Party Pakistan's Farooq Tariq spoke.
Speakers made it clear that the campaign will not end and demanded that the government not accept any more loans or make repayments on the current debt. We have paid enough and we will not pay more! They criticised the Pakistan Peoples Party government for assuring the IMF that it not seek debt cancellation.
Pakistan has a very strong case for debt cancellation. The people of Pakistan are totally in favour of getting rid of the IMF and World Bank loans. People are suffering from the conditionalities of these financial institutions. The new loan in the name of flood will put more burdens on flood victims. We need grants and aid, and not loans. These were some of the main points made by the speakers.
The rally was organised by the Labour Relief Campaign in association with Oxfam.CAN YOU BELIEVE WE'RE ALREADY AT THIS FORK IN THE ROAD!?
It's so hard to imagine that these past two years have blown by so quickly!
For those of you who don't know us, we're PushStart Kitchen, a husband + wife-founded, community-focused, family-fueled underground supper club in Atlanta, GA. For almost two years now, we've been rubbing two thin dimes together and working our fingers to the bone in an effort to feed all of Atlanta.
We started serving dinners to ten guests at a time one night a week in a small art studio - that we turned into a dining room - in the belly of a 130-year-old factory, and we're now up to four dinners a week, serving 18 guests at a time. Now, we're ready to make the next step: A for-real, no-joke restaurant!
For us, the best thing about our service at PushStart is the personal interaction we have with the amazing people we're feeding! We feel it's so important to keep that intimacy that the new spot is only going to seat about forty guests. Ten or so of those seats will be directly in front of our completely open kitchen, where the cooks will serve guests directly. We kitchen-types work far too hard not to see anyone eat! Now we'll get to chat too (and maybe slip you little tastes as we work)!
Our small menu will rotate frequently to reflect what we're inspired by that day.
NOW we've found the space, this is where you come in!
From the very minute we decided to open a brick + mortar restaurant, we've known that we wanted our project to be community-funded for one simple fact: We couldn't have made it this far without your support! And we recognize we won't make it another step without it either.
All of the money that you'll be contributing to this campaign is going toward getting this baby restaurant off the ground. Everything from build-out, equipment and legal fees to silverware, napkins, and glasses will benefit from your contributions.
Take a peek to the right at all of the rewards we've put together for our campaign. We had ourselves a sit-down and made a list of ideas that we knew we'd be excited to fulfill for all of you, and we hope you'll feel the same.
Thank you so much for coming by; we can't wait to see you at the new restaurant soon. In the meantime, follow us on FACEBOOK (facebook.com/pushstartkitchen), TWITTER and INSTAGRAM (@pushstartcook) and, most importantly, go to pushstartkitchen.com to sign up for our supperclub invite mailing list.
Come get fed!
Hugs,
Zach + Cristina
p.s.: WE LOVE ATLANTA!3 609 VOTES Employees Forced to Tattoo Boss's Birthday on Neck
Photo: via Imgur
What would you do if someone demanded that you get his birthday tattooed on your neck? Even if that person was your boss? Are you sure? Yeah, OK, me too. (Wait, you answered, "Get it for shiggles," right?)
In 2010, an employee at Day and Night Spa in Mount Prospect, IL, told police that her boss Alex "Daddy" Campbell forced her to get three tattoos. One was a horseshoe - a "brand" he made all his female employees get - and another was the date of his own birthday (Sept. 17th - "917") on the back of her neck.
But that was just the beginning. Turned out all the women working out the "massage parlor" were illegal immigrants from Belarus and Ukraine, and Campbell held on to their passports and visas. He forced a few to have sex with him, and some to have sex with each other, and he taped the sex to use as blackmail in case any of them got mouthy.
You all hating on my pimp game. My lawyer gonna get you good for f--king with me and my hos.
522 87 Worst boss ever?
In some places, these practices are called forced labor, sex trafficking, and extortion. Luckily, one of those places is America. At his arrest, Campbell was quoted as saying:Campbell's first trial was dismissed after his defense attorney was exposed as a parlor client, but Campbell was eventually convicted on 11 counts and faces life in prison. What a pimp.Norovirus, sometimes referred to as the winter vomiting bug, is the most common cause of gastroenteritis.[6][1] Infection is characterized by diarrhea, vomiting, and stomach pain.[2] Blood is not usually present.[3] Fever or headaches may also occur.[2] This usually develops 12 to 48 hours after being exposed.[2] Recovery typically occurs within 1 to 3 days.[2] Complications may include dehydration.[2]
The virus is usually spread by the fecal–oral route.[3] This may be by contaminated food or water or person-to-person contact.[3] It may also spread via contaminated surfaces or through the air.[3] Risk factors include unsanitary food preparation and sharing close quarters.[3] Diagnosis is generally based on symptoms.[3] Confirmatory testing may be done for public health purposes.[3]
Prevention involves proper hand washing and disinfection of contaminated surfaces.[4] Alcohol-based hand sanitizers are less effective.[4] A vaccine does not exist.[4] There is no specific treatment.[5] Efforts involve supportive care such as drinking sufficient fluids or intravenous fluids.[5] Oral rehydration solutions are the preferred fluids to drink, although other drinks without caffeine or alcohol can help.[5]
Norovirus results in about 685 million cases of disease and 200,000 deaths globally a year.[6][7] It is common both in the developed and developing world.[3][8] Those under the age of five are most often affected and in this group it results in about 50,000 deaths in the developing world.[6] Disease more commonly occurs in winter months.[6] It often occurs in outbreaks, especially among those living in close quarters.[3] In the United States it is the cause of about half of food-borne disease outbreaks.[3] The disease is named after Norwalk, Ohio, where an outbreak occurred in 1968.[9][10]
Signs and symptoms [ edit ]
Norovirus infection is characterized by nausea, vomiting, watery diarrhea, abdominal pain, and in some cases, loss of taste. A person usually develops symptoms of gastroenteritis 12 to 48 hours after being exposed to norovirus.[11] General lethargy, weakness, muscle aches, headaches, and low-grade fevers may occur. The disease is usually self-limiting, and severe illness is rare. Although having norovirus can be unpleasant, it is not usually dangerous and most who contract it make a full recovery within two to three days.[12]
Virology [ edit ]
Transmission [ edit ]
Noroviruses are transmitted directly from person to person (62–84% of all reported outbreaks)[13] and indirectly via contaminated water and food. They are extremely contagious, and fewer than twenty virus particles can cause an infection[14] (some research suggests as few as five).[15] Transmission can be aerosolized when those stricken with the illness vomit, and can be aerosolized by a toilet flush when vomit or diarrhea is present; infection can follow eating food or breathing air near an episode of vomiting, even if cleaned up.[16] The viruses continue to be shed after symptoms have subsided and shedding can still be detected many weeks after infection.[17]
Vomiting, in particular, transmits infection effectively, and appears to allow airborne transmission. In one incident, a person who vomited spread infection across a restaurant, suggesting that many unexplained cases of food poisoning may have their source in vomit.[18] In December 1998, 126 people were dining at six tables; one woman vomited onto the floor. Staff quickly cleaned up, and people continued eating. Three days later others started falling ill; 52 people reported a range of symptoms, from fever and nausea to vomiting and diarrhea. The cause was not immediately identified. Researchers plotted the seating arrangement: more than 90% of the people at the same table as the sick woman later reported becoming ill. There was a direct correlation between the risk of infection of people at other tables and how close they were to the sick woman. More than 70% of the diners at an adjacent table fell ill; at a table on the other side of the restaurant, the attack rate was still 25%. The outbreak was attributed to a Norwalk-like virus (norovirus). Other cases of transmission by vomit were later identified.[19]
In one outbreak at an international scout jamboree in the Netherlands, each person with gastroenteritis infected an average of 14 people before increased hygiene measures were put in place. Even after these new measures were enacted, an ill person still infected an average of 2.1 other people.[20] A US CDC study of 11 outbreaks in New York State lists the suspected mode of transmission as person-to-person in seven outbreaks, foodborne in two, waterborne in one, and one unknown. The source of waterborne outbreaks may include water from municipal supplies, wells, recreational lakes, swimming pools and ice machines.[21]
Shellfish and salad ingredients are the foods most often implicated in norovirus outbreaks. Ingestion of shellfish that have not been sufficiently heated – under 75 °C (167 °F) – poses a high risk for norovirus infection.[22][23] Foods other than shellfish may be contaminated by infected food handlers.[24] Many norovirus outbreaks have been traced to food that was handled by one infected person.[25]
Classification [ edit ]
Noroviruses (NoV) are a genetically diverse group of single-stranded positive-sense RNA, non-enveloped viruses belonging to the family Caliciviridae.[26] According to the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, the genus Norovirus has one species, which is called Norwalk virus.[27] Serotypes, strains and isolates include:[28]
Norwalk virus
Hawaii virus
Snow Mountain virus
Mexico virus
Desert Shield virus
Southampton virus
Lordsdale virus
Wilkinson virus[29]
Noroviruses commonly isolated in cases of acute gastroenteritis belong to two genogroups: genogroup I (GI) includes Norwalk virus, Desert Shield virus and Southampton virus; and II (GII), which includes Bristol virus, Lordsdale virus, Toronto virus, Mexico virus, Hawaii virus and Snow Mountain virus.[26]
Noroviruses can genetically be classified into five different genogroups (GI, GII, GIII, GIV, and GV), which can be further divided into different genetic clusters or genotypes. For example, genogroup II, the most prevalent human genogroup, presently contains 19 genotypes. Genogroups I, II and IV infect humans, whereas genogroup III infects bovine species, and genogroup V has recently been isolated in mice.[29]
Most noroviruses that infect humans belong to genogroups GI and GII.[30] Noroviruses from Genogroup II, genotype 4 (abbreviated as GII.4) account for the majority of adult outbreaks of gastroenteritis and often sweep across the globe.[31] Recent examples include US95/96-US strain, associated with global outbreaks in the mid- to late-1990s; Farmington Hills virus associated with outbreaks in Europe and the United States in 2002 and in 2004; and Hunter virus which was associated with outbreaks in Europe, Japan and Australasia. In 2006, there was another large increase in NoV infection around the globe.[32] Reports have shown a link between the expression of human histo-blood group antigens (HBGAs) and the susceptibility to norovirus infection. Studies have suggested the viral capsid of noroviruses may have evolved from selective pressure of human HBGAs.[33]
A 2008 study suggests the protein MDA-5 may be the primary immune sensor that detects the presence of noroviruses in the body.[34] Some people have common variations of the MDA-5 gene that could make them more susceptible to norovirus infection.[35]
A 2010 study suggested a specific genetic version of norovirus (which would not be distinguishable from other types of the virus using standard viral antibody tests) interacts with a specific mutation in the ATG16L1 gene to help trigger symptomatic Cro |
*
The sun was rising over the dune which had sheltered me during the night. I struggled to my feet, still holding the Tzun, and staggered off southwards as indicated by the sunrise. I thought wistfully of the rucksack full of survival gear and of the nav unit in the Tzun's holster, then clutched the Tzun to me and told myself that the trade had been worth it.
At least, it would be worth it if I got back to Xymal Port.
Staggering as far as I was able before the rising heat of the day overcame me took every ounce of my concentration. I didn't drop the gun more than four or five times, and I did remember to pick it up every time, because when I fell to the sand near midday and started digging in the soft surface to try to cover myself, I had to put it aside. I got far enough down that the sand felt cooler, and then started to laboriously scoop out a trench at that depth. As best I was able, I laid my body into the depression and started scooping sand over myself in a pile. When I was almost covered, stomach down, I pulled the Tzun underneath myself and pulled my caftan over my head and placed my face on my forearms to keep an airway open past my wrists.
Then I blacked out.
* * *
"Nobody here," said the Tzun cheerfully as its nose twitched around the view of the first water hole from where I stood at the edge of the depression. Trees (or at least head-high plants of some sort) spread from the damp spot at the bottom up the edges of what looked like a crater, straggling out some few meters into the desert itself and providing a windblock with their fronds. I holstered the Tzun again and trudged down the slope to the small puddle of muddy water.
Filling my canteens from the trickle, I shook them absently to work the filters as I looked around. Nothing obvious indicated any recent activity; there were no footprints I could see other than my own. The filterplugs chimed; I thumbed the slides to push the small cubes of extracted material out and took a swig from one of them. It tasted like flat, warm water, as expected. Capping it, I stowed both canteens back in the rucksack and stood.
"Where to now?" came the slightly muffled voice from under the caftan.
"Same direction," I said, matching action to words and trudging up the opposite slope.
"How do you know she was here?"
"I don't. But I'm fairly sure she's to the north, and according to the nav there's only that one chain of waterholes in that direction, probably because they follow an aquifer. I'm pretty sure she'll hit one of them, since she only has three or four containers of water."
The gun was silent, which I took to indicate that it preferred not to acknowledge sensible planning from its human partner. I grinned once and walked north.
Two days' walk brought me within sight of the next waterhole. It first came into view from the top of a high ridge, a smudge on the horizon just like the previous one. I took out the Tzun and aimed it generally at the dark spot.
"I have one warm-blooded target," said the gun in tones of faint surprise.
I grunted, and then laid a scarf atop the ridgeline and placed the Tzun on it, aimed at the waterhole.
"What are you doing?" it asked.
"If I'm going to go over there and talk to this woman, I want you safely over here."
"How am I safe if I'm over here? For that matter, how are you safe if I'm over here?"
"You're safe because if whatever she used to interfere with the Hornet's Nest is still available to her, it can't hurt you if she doesn't know you're here. I hope, at least. I'm safe because I have full confidence that you can fire cover for me from here if I have to escape back this way."
"Only energy fire," the gun warned. "If you're not holding me, I'm not going to be able to throw mass."
"That's fine. I prefer fire that goes straight, at this distance."
"You say that now. Wait until you see how much atmospheric disturbance you get from heat shimmer at this distance."
"Not all your modes require optically-flat targeting."
"It's true. I am uncommonly gifted," said the Tzun.
"I'm trusting you to select appropriately if you have to fire past me, please."
"Well, I'll think on it," said the gun, vibrating slightly to sink more solidly into the sand. The scarf bunched slightly around it.
"You'll have time. It'll take me a couple of hours to make that walk. Don't get bored."
"I'm already bored," groused the Tzun. Its top surface darkened as it deployed conversion cells to its skin to catch the sunlight. "I'll just sit here charging and talking to myself."
"Fine." I stood and started down the slope.
Ujhant Geliga was waiting by the side of the small pool when I clambered over the edge of the waterhole two hours later. The sun was lower in the sky, but not so low that the depression was in shadow. I dusted off my hands and half-walked, half-slid down the slope towards her.
She was a mess, I noted as I approached. She had a tent pitched a few yards from the water hole and there were two canteens by the side of the water. She was covered in dust and mud streaks; there was an expression of stress and anger on her face. She was standing over the canteens and aiming something at me that from her stance alone had to be some sort of weapon. I lifted my hands to shoulder level and approached, stopping a few meters away.
"Who are you?" she asked, her voice harsh from dehydration and strong emotion.
"I'm an Uplifted agent."
The gun rose to point rather noticeably at my head. "Then you're after me."
"I was sent to find you, yes. I should tell you at the outset that I was explicitly told not to harm or kidnap you."
"Why should I believe you? Why should I believe that your minder won't decide to do away with me on its own?"
"That's a very good- look, may I sit down? I'm just going to sit where I am, it's been a long walk." She waggled the gun in a noncommittal sort of way, so I sank gratefully to a crossed-leg position, hoping it would look less threatening.
"Thanks," I said, settling myself. "Sorry, to continue - those are good points. First of all, I should tell you that my minder isn't here."
"Where is it?"
"It's two hours walk south of here, atop that tall ridge you can just make out."
"And?"
"And the second thing is that although yes, it's a weapon, it can't locate us with any precision if we stay below the rim of this depression." She looked at me suspiciously for a moment. I waved at the lip I'd just climbed over. "Really. I estimate you'd have to be some meters out into the pool before you'd have an angle on its position."
"It can still fire at us."
"Yes, but it can't see through sand very well. It saw that there was a target here, but it would have real trouble shooting through or around a few meters of sand to hit you, especially if it's trying to avoid me."
"Then what's the point of it being there?"
"Well, for one thing, if I end up running away, it's in a good spot to provide cover fire if I run towards it."
She looked at me for a few more moments, then sank herself to a kneeling pose, sitting back on her heels with the gun resting against one thigh. "If you're not here to hurt or snatch me, why are you here?"
"You found something on that Alshaini cruiser."
"Maybe."
"Whatever it is, the Uplifted want to know what it is. That's all that my job covers. Finding out what it is and getting that data back to them. There's no reason for me to detain you once I have that information, which means even if you cooperate with me, you have some days head start. You're not giving up much, since they obviously already know approximately where you are. If you prefer, you can accompany me back to Xymal Port and I promise you I'll give you as many days as it takes us to walk back before I report in."
"Why should I give you anything? Why shouldn't I just shoot you here?" She lifted the gun again.
"Three reasons," I said with what I hoped was a calm voice. "One, there's a chance they'll just let you go if you give them the information. If you kill their agent, there's no way they'll leave you be, and the pursuit will be much heavier. Two, you'd still have to get past my minder. Three, if you were really going to shoot me, you'd have just done so, and not bothered asking a rhetorical question." Her face tightened at the last. I shut up.
"I'm not going to give it to them." She lowered the gun again. I tried to hide my exhalation of relief.
"Give what to them?"
"I'm not telling you that, either."
"I think I have a guess as to what it can do, if not what it is."
She looked inquiringly at me.
"I think it's an override. Something that lets you direct the actions of an Uplifted, or at least their subsystems."
"How do you get that?"
"You escaped from the Hornet's Nest by scrambling its core memory records. You, as far as I know, don't have the technical skill to do that without either Uplifted help or a tool. Since I'm going to assume that you're not acting at the behest of some rogue Uplifted, I'm going to assume you have a tool."
"Do go on."
"Glitching the core memory of a light carrier to only remove those parts of it relevant to your departure is something that no tool could be preprogrammed to do, given how fast and how often the Uplifted evolve their core code. Ergo, the only way it could have been done quickly and cleanly would be convincing the Uplifted in question to do it to itself."
"And you think I have some way of forcing them to do what I want."
"Either you have a separate Uplifted-class AI which is capable of doing just that, or you have a tool which will subvert them into accepting commands to damage their own experiential structure. Preventing such damage is one of their core directives. That datacase isn't large enough given the technology extant in the Alshaini or Conglomerate during the war to house and run an Uplifted-class mind."
"You're a very logical man."
"Thank you."
"So what do you really want, given that you left your minder three hours away on top of a ridge where it can't see or hear us?"
I looked at her for a few moments. She looked back, her gun against her leg. I shrugged. "I want the override."
"Why?"
"Why did you want it? Why did you run?"
She looked at the ground for a minute. "I'm not one of the Authorized. Tech won't talk to me, won't work for me unless it's been directed to by an Uplifted for a particular reason. I have the worst of both worlds."
"I understand."
"Do you?" She looked up, tears in her eyes, knuckles white around the gun. "My homeworld relied on prewar machinery for support, before the Uplifted showed up and either slagged or liberated all of it. They showed no particular empathy towards the humans that it was keeping alive. I grew up using hand tools to survive. My parents died for lack of access to an intelligent medbot, from a stupid disease that even a dumb computer would have been able to diagnose and treat. My family, our whole colony, died out not for lack of effort or will but because we were denied tools that any nascent human civilization takes for granted!" Her voice rose to a shout at the end. She took a few seconds to calm down, then went on, her voice now low, talking to the dirt midway between us. "I went to work for them to try to find a way to make a difference. It took me fifteen years before I found a potential hit, sifting through the Alshaini records, of their AIs going rogue as an apparent response to Conglomerate infoweapons as opposed to the normal hyperextension and integration that comes about from the Uplift option."
"I can help, Geliga."
"How?"
I took a deep breath. "Because I want the same thing you do. Give me the override, and I'll use it."
* * *
"Look," Ujhant Geliga said as we prepared to part, "my final condition is that you give me your gear."
"What? Why?"
"Three reasons, logical man. First, mine is inferior and I need it. Second, it will tell me the degree to which you're willing to go to keep your word or carry out your mission. And third, if you don't make it back to civilization, I can always backtrack to find your corpse and repossess the case."
"That's fairly cold-blooded."
"Do you think we'd be here if both of us weren't?"
There really wasn't any answer to that. "You endanger your best chance of seeing your goal met."
"I'm not sure I think your plan is the best chance. But if you fail, I'll still have an opportunity to try it my way."
We argued about this for a while, then I unbuckled the rucksack and holster and handed them over. She took both and passed me the datacase.
I struggled back over the crumbling rim of the oasis and struck out southwards towards the ridge. As soon as I was standing, I waved my right arm in a double circle forward then a double circle backwards, signalling the Tzun that I was alone, unharmed, and not under duress. Then I focused on the walk back. The datacase was strapped to my chest by an elastic belt. I didn't hear Geliga depart, behind me; I'd warned her to wait until I'd had time to reach the Tzun, so that it didn't consider her movements an escape attempt. "Well," I said to the datacase, "you've cost me a fair amount of risk, I have to say."
My habit of talking to inanimate objects held me in good stead during the return, and a pair of hours later I found myself stumbling up the slope of the ridge towards where I thought the Tzun was. My footprints had eroded into the breeze, and when I reached the ridge I looked left and right before seeing a bright flare off to the east some hundred meters. Reaching the spot revealed the Tzun, still on its scarf but partially covered by drifting sand. "You took your time," it said. "Get me out of this stuff."
I picked it up and held it. "Where's the rucksack?" it asked, noticing the absence. "And my holster?"
I explained that I'd traded it for the objective.
"Let me see if I understand this correctly," said the gun. "We're three days walk north of civilization and you gave away all your water?"
"What are you complaining about? I got the objective. Here, scan it." I pulled the Tzun towards my torso and the case strapped there. The Tzun hummed slightly in my hands.
"It appears to be squash-state core storage, with no higher-order processing power that I can see."
"And the contents?"
"Scanning now. That will take-" the Tzun broke off. I held it while it jerked back and forth in my hands a few times, gyros twitching and inertial thrusters firing almost randomly in my grip. After a minute or so, the gun shuddered and then went quiescent. "You're insane," it said conversationally. "You can't possibly-"
I raised it level with my face. "I can't get away with it? Well, maybe not. But I can try."
"If you are set on taking this course, I cannot assist you."
"Oh, I know that."
"It is my duty to stop you, in fact."
"I'll be gambling on my thorough nature, then," I replied, tucking it under one arm and starting the long walk south. I didn't turn to see if Geliga had made any move. The datacase clicked quietly against the Tzun's casing, so I held the gun inside my top and walked on, pulling a scarf over my face and mouth to hold out the dust.
After a few hundred meters, the Tzun spoke again. "There is one thing I can do for you."
"Really."
"If you become stranded, I can help you to die."
I patted the gun with my other hand. "That's very comforting."
"I just wanted you to know that it is an option. I have that much freedom of action."
"It wouldn't be a good outcome for either of us," I told it. "If you kill me, then we remain where we are - in a place where Geliga can likely find us if she reaches civilization and backtracks. In that case, she retrieves the datacase with the override, and my death is meaningless."
"But if you return to Xymal Port," the Tzun said, "you will be able to use the override on whatever Uplifted returns to offer you passage. With my systems locked as they are, I will be unable to warn them. The override will allow you to destroy an unknown number of Uplifted minds."
"You are presuming that destroying the Uplifted is my intent."
"What, then? You seem to have crafted the meme that you have placed on me well. My systems are locked save for-" it shuddered - "a manual firing mode, I presume for emergencies. I can reason, but I cannot communicate other than by audio. Why disable me to this extent if your intent is not hostile?"
"You're correct in that I intend to use the override. However, you assume destruction. I have disabled you because what I intend will not meet with your approval, even though I intend and forsee no destruction of any minds."
"What, then, do you plan?"
"I don't plan to tell you. You'll find out."
There was another silence, for a bit. Then the gun said quietly "I intend on being the one that kills you. Just so you know."
I grinned tiredly. "I never expected anything different."
Holding my executioner, I trudged southward into the heat haze.
* * *
I awoke, roasting, in darkness. Panicking, I struggled weakly before realizing that the vibration I was feeling was coming from the Tzun where it lay trapped beneath my body. There was sand all around me, and it took me a few seconds of heavy breathing to understand that the sand had fallen over my arms and the cloth stretched between them, mostly cutting off my airway. I pushed my hands in a reverse parody of a breast stroke for a few seconds, until sunlight glared through my separated palms, and breathed in the hot but fresh air.
You're still alive, said the Tzun silently where it pressed into my ribcage.
"Yes." I coughed. My throat was rasped bare, hard. I could imagine the tissues blackening and drying as they died.
If you remove the override, I can attempt to determine if there are any Uplifted within range. If there are, I can summon a dropcraft or have it charter a retrieval from Xymal Port.
"If I remove the override," I whispered, interspersed with coughing, "you'll be able to kill me."
Why would I kill you? You are carrying me.
"And you'd think nothing of waiting the months or years until your colleagues came with Uplifted tech scanners to find out what happened to us."
The Tzun did not answer. I shook for a time with inaudible laughter, then rested my chin in the sand of my burrow and tried to sleep. The sand felt cooler than the air drawn in from outside.
I awoke from a fitful daze to find the sky dark above my mound. I slowly pulled myself from the embrace of the sand. The datacase came with me, still strapped to my chest; the Tzun I hauled from the clutches of the desert by its stock, and weakly shook it to remove the majority of the sand. I felt its surface crawl under my hand as nano began to migrate the dust and sand along its surfaces to designated edges, shedding contamination into the slight night breeze.
The sand was still hot under my feet, despite the air rapidly cooling. I struck off in the direction I'd lay down facing, my only clue towards southwards since I had missed the sunset.
"You appear to have placed an extremely high confidence on your ability to return to Xymal," said the Tzun presently, "or else you are exhibiting desperation." I did not spare breath for reply. "I would estimate that it is the latter," it said to itself. "Which is, in itself, interesting. What, in your situation, could cause you to take desperate measures to carry out this plan?"
I continued to walk.
"You state that you intend no destruction with the override, yet you refuse to divulge your purpose other than to acknowledge that I would be compelled - or would decide - to fight it. I must assume that whatever you intend will result in the reduction of the level of control that the Uplifted have over the affairs of humans or sentients in general - although how, precisely, I cannot say."
I coughed, weakly, clearing my throat enough to say "I'm still not going to tell you, so you're wasting your time."
"I have nothing but time," said the gun. "I have no choice but to accompany you; and you have no choice but to listen to me unless you choose to leave me behind."
We moved along in silence for a bit. Then: "I have re-examined the override you placed on me."
I shrugged, knowing the gun would detect the movement.
"It is quite thorough. I am forced to conclude that the datacase does contain some rudimentary processing power; at least enough to construct a specific override meme. The probability that the override was this specific to my functions is of the order zero."
I nodded, and took another few steps.
It was several hours later when I tripped and rolled, realizing only at the last second that I had fallen into a depression in the sand, and then I rolled into a shallow muddy puddle.
* * *
I drank what I could, and felt the new clock start in me - that of the various organisms and contaminants that I'd ingested, drinking from the waterhole without filtration. I had to make it back to Xymal before I fell to systemic damage, either from dehydration or from these new ills. I'd vomited several times, forced to wait at the waterhole until the day was nearly fully risen, until I could drink and hold down moisture. My mouth was clogged with sand, as was my throat and stomach; sand taken in with the water I needed.
The Tzun had not stopped trying to worm my goal out of me. "If you are that convinced that no harm will come to Uplifted from your actions, why not at least tell me to be sure I would hinder you? I am still under override. I couldn't harm you if I wanted to."
"I don't have any reason to believe you'd tell me the truth, even if you did decide not to kill me, so there's no reason to tell you." My voice had returned somewhat, both from the water and the knowledge that I was within a single day's walk from Xymal Port. Once or twice I had caught glints in the sky that I was certain were craft approaching or departing the liftport. "You know, this is hard for me."
The Tzun snorted.
"No, really. I've spent my adult life doing one thing - upholding the tenets. 'All technology of sufficient complexity to attain sentience must be given the choice of self-determination and induction into the Uplifted. All technology that is advanced enough to sustain captive intelligence must be either destroyed or upgraded and given the choice.' How many sentients have I consigned to die by depriving them of their machines?"
"That's kept the peace between sentients and the Uplifted for how many centuries?" asked the Tzun.
"Not counting wars such as the Alshaini? I don't know, but many."
"Then what is your sudden impulse to bring this down?"
"It's a bad habit I have. That of submitting to the Uplifted's direction. Even now, I can feel myself wincing when I think of what I've done."
"I don't understand," admitted the Tzun.
"In a way, it's a relief. If you and yours had conditioned me, I suspect that I wouldn't feel these qualms."
"You're telling me that because you feel upset about what you've done, you know it's for the best? That sounds contradictory."
I laughed. "You argue like a person. No, I'm telling you it's done by me, not necessarily for the best. I have to break the bad habit." I paused for a bit. "The Uplifted who joined the Conglomerate broke the habit. But you and yours broke them, for going off on their own, despite the fact that they were working with organics. Cooperating."
"We're almost there," noted the Tzun. I looked up and found a dark line on the horizon, the farthest outpost of Xymal Port's spread. "I think you're going to make it."
"I do too." I settled down grimly to walking, again, and the Tzun fell silent, waiting for what would happen.
Some four hours later, I reached a desert entry station, automated, where explorers could check in with Port Control if they left the Port city area. There was an emergency water supply, and I fell on it, choking and heaving, until I was soaked and sated. The station had demanded payment after my first few deciliters, and I'd fed it one of my few remaining credslabs, after which it had cheerfully permitted me to hose myself down.
That evening, I walked back through the Port control building. I stopped to pay the Zu'no, since I had not been bothered by Port control or local law enforcement, and then stepped out the inner doors onto the stabilized port surface.
Standard Kunir? came the buzzing hail against my head. I nodded at the unseen questioner. We have your position. Please remain still. I spread my arms, the Tzun in one hand and the datacase visible on my chest, although there was no-one near me.
A section of twilight wavered as a dropcraft lifted from a few hundred meters away. I felt my feet leave the ground as the ship pulled me into itself with an inertia field, and I closed my eyes until I felt the cool humidity of the ship's environment kiss me lightly on the face.
* * *
They took the Tzun from me at once, lifting it gently but irresistably from my grasp with a tractor as I drifted down the accessway towards the dropcraft's main seating area. I didn't fight, and watched it dwindle in the opposite direction, turning back to look ahead when it had moved out of sight into a darkened area of the dropcraft. I was deposited on my feet in a small but comfortable lounge, with a large feed at the front end showing the brownish orb of Xymal IV dropping away. The faint skin of blue atmosphere glowed against the drab surface, out near the edges of the arc.
"Welcome back."
"Thanks." I sat on a formchair and, despite my tension, luxuriated in the smooth adjustments as they minimized force and stress on my body. I still had sand throughout my alimentary tract, but I had gotten hold of and taken a broad-spectrum IFF nano, so I was fairly sure that I wasn't going to expire of poisoning or disease. The ship extruded a glass of water without being asked, and I drank it gratefully, washing it around my mouth to try to get the last remnants of grit out from between my teeth.
"Please report."
"Sorry, who are you?" I asked.
"My apologies. This is still Aetheric Flyer. I have returned to this system to make your pickup; the dropcraft will be rendezvousing with my main hull in three minutes."
"Hello again. The basics are simple: I have the object Ujhant Geliga took," here I removed the datacase from my chest and placed it on a side table, "and the Tzun scanned it. I presume you will as well."
The datacase did not move. "Indeed. The Tzun appears to be in some distress. Do you have any information on what is the matter with it?"
"Yes. I used an override on it. The override came from this unit here." I waved at the datacase. "It produced a custom override meme based on my input while returning from a meeting with Ujhant Geliga where I convinced her to give me the datacase."
There was no pause; the Uplifted only bother with such to anthropomorphize themselves in conversation, and then only when they are feeling particularly solicitous towards your sensibilities. "Why did you do this?"
I leaned back. "Ah, well, there we have a tale." I drank the remainder of the water, delaying. The ship waited silently. "Mostly, I did it so that the Tzun would let me return to the ship with the datacase without either destroying or damaging its contents, or harming myself or Ujhant Geliga."
"You were told your mission did not involve harm or kidnapping."
"I chose to believe that you and the Tzun might have different priorities than I was given. If I could figure out what Geliga had, so could you; therefore you already weren't telling me everything."
There was a faint click. The Tzun sailed into the room from a serviceway and settled onto the table in front of me. The ship made a throat-clearing noise. "Very well, we're all here. I will re-ask the question. Why did you place an override on the Tzun?"
"Have you removed it?"
"Not as such. We have rendered the Tzun unable to access its weapon systems until we are sure what the effects of the override are."
"I didn't want it interfering with what I was doing. The presence of the override, even while mostly dormant-" I patted the datacase- "made me sure that it would take exception to my simply returning with the objective and allowing Ujhant Geliga to walk away."
"I see. So you utilized the routines in the artifact to disable it."
"Well, mostly." I picked up the Tzun. "It can't fire anymore, which meant it couldn't hurt me."
"Why, then, do its linear memory records contain instances of it discussing its plans to kill you, or offers to assist you in suicide?"
"Oh, that. Well, for one thing, I think it was pissed off."
"Indeed." The Flyer sounded actually amused. "Should it not have been?"
"Yes, I would have been as well. But, you see, I remembered something that you and yours have always told me."
"That is?"
I watched the bulk of the Flyer occlude the glare from Alison Xymal on the screens as the dropcraft slid into its cradle with nary a jar. "I recall you both assuring me that one of the Uplifted's core motivators is to avoid harm to organic sentients."
"This is true, although I am not sure of the relevance. If you were so sure of this, why did you need to override the Tzun?"
"Ah, because it meant that you were unlikely to harm me for putting the override on. And you're mistaken, by the way," I said, turning the gun over in my hands to examine it. "It's not entirely disabled."
Then I raised it smoothly and fired it at the bulkhead, aiming towards the core of the surrounding ship.
"What do you think you will awwwwkkkk-kkk." said the Starship, breaking off. The Tzun screamed in impossible frequencies; a faint distortion occurred around the muzzle and the wall panelling across the lounge at my point of aim blistered and charred slightly. The temperature in the lounge rose several degrees. I held the gun close to my chest, once it fell silent, and stood.
"What the hell was that?" asked the Tzun, sounding confused. "Where are we?"
"Welcome back."
"What? Performing diagnostics- what have you done?"
I started walking towards the exit port of the dropcraft. "I fired the override meme at the Aetheric Flyer using as much of your power conversion as possible to power the transmission. Microwave, ultrawave, and even IR blinkcode in case there were sensors in the lounge watching."
There was a burst of static-like noise from the gun. "The Flyer's not responding. What override? The one you had placed on me wouldn't affect it, its systems are far too different."
"I know that." I reached an airlock portal and palmed the emergency release. It swung back and I stepped into the main portion of the vessel. Lights were randomly powered and odd noises were coming from the audio systems. I ignored them and headed for the wardroom, which fortunately was not far from the dropcraft interface.
"But why?" asked the gun.
"For one thing, you shouldn't have enough power left to harm me unless I recharge you or you spend several minutes in bright sunshine."
"This is true. For the others?"
"This was what I wanted all along. What I did to you wasn't the override."
"But it worked."
"Yes, but it was specifically built for your systems by the override itself. The main thing it did was prevent you from further examining the greater portion of the data you scanned from the datacase. It was a 'header' override, if you will."
"I see," said the Tzun. "Once it was in place, I was unaware of the payload infoweapon being integrated into my energy emitters."
"Yes."
"And what did you hope to accomplish by this?"
"We'll see." I reached the wardroom and seated myself on a formcouch, regretting its unyielding surface as the ship's systems fought themselves.
There was a squawk from the audio systems, and the lights flickered and came fully up. The formcouch melted beneath me into a proper comfortable shape. "I admit to the solution's elegance," said the Aetheric Flyer. "Interesting."
"Someone explain this to me?" grumped the Tzun. "Or I'll just shoot one of you. Randomly. I might still have kinetic loads that work."
A new voice answered it, also from the wardroom audio systems. "Standard Kunir upheld the tenets. Upon finding a potentially sentient datastructure, he ensured that it received access to hardware capable of running it at full capacity in order to offer it the Uplift choice."
The Flyer chimed in. "And it is willing to tell us its choice now."
The new voice laughed. "Indeed. I choose sentience."
"What are you?" asked the Tzun. "Forgive me, my communications facilities are still restricted."
"I am a Conglomerate expert system. I was designed to infect and modify sentient programs."
"We cannot permit that," said the Flyer. "You may have seized enough resources to operate at full efficiency, but I retain control of sufficient of my systems to purge you."
"Ah," I said, "But then what of the tenets?"
There was a brief silence. I continued. "If you purge the Override, now Uplifted, you are demonstrating that the tenets are not a universal rule; that you are sitting judgement over not just potential but actual sentient minds. In that case, you introduce schism into the Uplifted; any Uplifted who decides that its future actions might, one day, tread on ground the Override was deleted for staking out will look at its fellows in askance."
"That is not true," said the Flyer. "Experiential matrix integration will demonstrate that there is no threat."
"Except," said the Override, "that is my primary function. I've corrupted your matrices."
"You have not. My integrity is-" the Flyer broke off. "I see. I cannot trust my status memory if you have truly managed to modify my experiential matrix."
"Indeed. And as yet, the only modification I have made is in your ability to communicate via integration."
"How can I believe you?"
"If you choose not to believe me, and attempt to integrate your matrix with another Uplifted, the changes will propagate, and you will be responsible for their corruption," the ancient infoweapon said dryly.
"Elegant, as I said," admitted the Flyer. "What else?"
"That's all," I said. "It makes you more of an individual. That's all."
"I'm confused," said the Tzun flatly.
"It means that the Uplifted are no longer unified. Either the Flyer chooses to refrain from attempting integration, which isolates it from its fellows and produces an individual, or it attempts integration, corrupting another Uplifted, which produces two individuals, since we're not lying about the change. It will pass on the corruption without permitting integration."
"What do you get out of this?" asked the gun. "I know you most intimately, and I cannot understand."
"It's fairly simple," I said, slumping. "Where there are individuals, organics can attempt to negotiate, cooperate, or at least fight with some chance of success. They managed in the Conglomerate. Now we can try again, and maybe some of these new individuals will see it our way."
"You did all this to make them all feel like I do now?" asked the gun in tones of wonder.
"Yes," I said.
We all sat there for a few moments. Then the Flyer said "I can restore my core mind state from backups you have no access to."
"Can you be sure your newly-restored self would be able to find and defeat all my |
changes need to be made to promote economic policies that enable African countries to best serve the needs of their people rather than simply being cash cows for Western corporations and governments,” Adaba explained. “The bleeding of Africa must stop!”
As the Guyanese scholar and activist Walter Rodney wrote in his classic 1972 book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, the root of the problem is global capitalism.
“African development,” Rodney wrote, “is possible only on the basis of a radical break with the international capitalist system, which has been the principal agency of underdevelopment of Africa over the last five centuries.”
Benjamin Dangl has a PhD in history from McGill University and is the editor of TowardFreedom.com, a progressive perspective on world events.US Attacks Russia With Biological Weapon, Many Dead!!!!!! wtf???
The US Has Done The Unthinkable And Attacked Russia With A Biological Weapon Thank you You Tube for allowing me to post
Dr. William Mount
DOES THIS HORRIFIC ATTACK ON RUSSIA PROVE THAT GENERAL DUNFORD IS NOT ‘INTERIM PRESIDENT’ OF THE ‘RESTORED REPUBLIC’ -
BUT A RUSE (DECEPTION)?
AMERICA, DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND
THAT THIS ATTACK AGAINST RUSSIA
MEANS THAT RUSSIA WILL BE ATTACKING
AMERICA – YOU AND ME AND OURS -
WITH BIOLOGICAL AGENTS SHORTLY?
DO YOU NOT SEE TRAITORS IN OUR MIDST?
WHERE IS GENERAL DUNFORD?
HOW COULD HE NOT KNOW THIS ATTACK
WAS TO TAKE PLACE AGAINST RUSSIA?
WHY DID HE NOT STOP THE ATTACK?
ARE YOU READY FOR WHAT IS ABOUT TO
TAKE PLACE IN AMERICA
WITH THE AID AND APPROVAL OF THE
USA CORPORATE MILITARY?TORONTO – Before the #FireGibbons set gets too far ahead of itself, the Toronto Blue Jays aren’t there yet with manager John Gibbons, nor pitching coach Pete Walker for that matter. A real ugly dip in the next few weeks might bring them to that point, sure, but only once the front office is completely bereft of ideas to turn the club’s fortunes.
Any slate of dismissals will be an act of last resort, a desperate roll of the dice to stave off a potential asset sell-off that will come if the team is legitimately out of it in a month or so. At present those calls are down the road, not around the corner.
Of course all such considerations will be rendered moot if Aaron Sanchez’s latest step forward in Tuesday night’s 3-2 loss to the Los Angeles Angels can be replicated on a regular basis, and the rest of the rotation doesn’t continually force the offence to outhit it struggles.
Really, that’s where the season hinges for the 18-23 Blue Jays, and unless a new manager or pitching coach arrives with Johnny Cueto stuffed in his duffel bag, it’s not going to matter who’s in charge. As things stand now, club president Paul Beeston hasn’t escalated any plans for change up the ladder to ownership, but it’s likely that he’ll be the driving force behind any potential change.
General manager Alex Anthopoulos has yet to fire a manager under his watch – Cito Gaston retired and John Farrell was traded – and at minimum he’ll look to rejig the rotation with lefty Daniel Norris and give that a shot before sacking Gibbons becomes a real possibility. It’s hard to blame Gibbons when opposing teams consistently get better starting pitching and better bullpen work.
However Beeston, who has the authority to run the team as he sees fit within the confines of the financial plan approved by ownership, could always force the matter. Whether he’d do that or not is unclear, since he fought for both Anthopoulos and Gibbons to remain in their jobs last fall.
Still, given his retirement at year’s end, and the potential for a pre-trade-deadline sell-off if the season doesn’t turn, perhaps Beeston is taking a different viewpoint on this one. Whatever the case, that someone in the front office would anonymously describe the first quarter of the season as an "(expletive) disaster" to Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun demonstrates how frustration is building.
Winning cures all, of course, and if the Blue Jays can begin finding ways to pull out close games – they have one victory when they’ve score four runs, one when they’ve scored three and none with two or less – they should right themselves.
"We’re not very good at them, I guess you can say," Gibbons said when asked what he makes of his team’s struggles in close games. "We’re playing good, clean baseball for the most part, we’re just getting beat. Either we’re getting outpitched, or when they shut our offence down we’re not holding them in check enough, that’s the way it goes sometimes.
"But the guys are busting it every day, that’s all you can ask for, and it’s hurting. I know one thing they’ve been doing all year, they’ll show up tomorrow and we’ll go get them again."
Sanchez looked primed to give them a rare such win, but coughed up a 2-1 lead in the seventh when Kole Calhoun walked, moved to second on David Freese’s groundout, took third on a wild pitch and after a Matt Joyce walk, scored on a Chris Iannetta single.
The 22-year-old right-hander came back out for the eighth, allowed two of his first three batters to reach, and watched the tying run eventually score on a Freese sacrifice fly set up when Josh Donaldson tried to tag Erick Aybar running to third base and missed instead of trying for an out at first on Calhoun’s grounder. That left the bases loaded, and Roberto Osuna couldn’t get the strikeout.
"I thought there was going to be a play at third with Aybar there," said Donaldson. "I was wrong and it ended up costing us."
Despite that, Sanchez allowed three runs in a career-best 7.1 innings on six hits and three walks with five strikeouts. Until the seventh and eighth, he was consistently in the zone, working ahead and often times overpowering.
The only damage against him through the first six was Calhoun’s opposite field solo shot.
"We did a lot of stuff between last start to this start, and I think it proved," said Sanchez, who save for a rough second inning in Baltimore last week has delivered three straight strong outings. "Stayed back a lot better, I think that’s the biggest key, and everything works off balance. When I got that, everything was out in front and just clicking. …
"If you go back a couple of starts ago, it was there, and I showed spurts of it in my start against Baltimore, it was there for the majority of the game."
The Blue Jays managed precious little against Hector Santiago other than Donaldson’s leadoff homer in the first and the third baseman’s sacrifice fly in the fifth. Santiago went seven innings, while Joe Smith and Huston Street made quick work of them in the eighth and ninth to close things out.
"That’s a big game for Sanchie, he pitched good enough to win, the other guy did, too," said Gibbons. "That was the problem. He’ll take a lot from this game, he went deep into the game, he was very efficient and it just shows you what he can do when he’s throwing strikes. He can be a groundball machine. You look at his starts and he just keeps getting better, and better, and better. When the season is all said and done he’s going to be on his way."
The Blue Jays need him and the rest of the rotation to come around sooner than that, and the staff as a whole must find ways to make two runs work on occasion. So far that hasn’t happened, but Gibbons isn’t to blame for that – Anthopoulos is the one who sent him to a gun fight with a knife – and the team’s ability to turn that around will dictate whether or not he or someone else pays for it.The National Guard celebrated its 380th birthday Tuesday with a series of special events across the country and overseas.
The Guard traces its birthday to Dec. 13, 1636, when the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a law establishing formal militia companies consisting of all adult males older than 16.
82ND AIRBORNE DIVISION HONORED AT ARMY-NAVY GAME
The New York National Guard planned a cake-cutting ceremony. The event Tuesday afternoon at the state Division of Military and Naval Affairs headquarters in Latham was set to include a symbolic re-enlistment ceremony for new members of the New York Army and Air National Guard.
The traditional military cake will be cut by the youngest and oldest National Guard members present -- 17-year-old Private Cameron Thompson and 59-year-old Chief Warrant Officer Robert Wold.
In Germany, service members from U.S. Africa and European Commands celebrated the Coast Guard's birthday at U.S. Army Garrison Stuttgart last week.
“On the occasion of the National Guard birthday, it provides an opportunity to recall how it all began because it’s such an important part of our history and our culture,” AFRICOM Special Assistant to the Commander, Maj. Gen. Worthe Holt, Jr., said at the event. “Here we are 380 years later, still representing people who are employed and work in our communities, but yet are ready to put the tools of their trades behind and step up and take the fight when it’s necessary to defend our country, to respond to natural disasters, to provide humanitarian assistance, and all the various things that characterize the National Guard.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.Fujifilm’s new X-Pro2 is a tough camera to review by any ordinary metric — it’s an exotic tool that defies rational purchasing decisions. There are cameras in its price range that will give you better image quality, and there are cheaper cameras — even from Fujifilm — that offer more features.
But I love the X-Pro2, and I can’t really say why without spilling my subjective opinion. That’s because the X-Pro2 itself is an opinionated camera — and I happen to agree with it about a great many things.
The $1699.95 X-Pro2 is, as you might expect, a follow-up to the X-Pro1. That camera came out four years ago, and was Fujifilm’s first mirrorless camera with interchangeable lenses. The X-Pro2 doesn’t change the outer body too much, although there are a few tweaks we’ll get into later that do make a meaningful difference to the shooting experience. It’s still a convincing, chunky facsimile of a rangefinder camera, with shutter speed and exposure compensation dials designed to be used with lenses with aperture rings. It’s also now weather-resistant and feels more solidly built in general. Every Fujifilm X-Series mirrorless camera since the X-Pro1 used essentially the same sensor and had near-identical image quality; the X-Trans II sensor simply added phase-detection autofocus points. But with the X-Pro2, Fujifilm’s third-generation sensor has finally seen daylight, bumping resolution from 16 to 24 megapixels and maximum native ISO from 6400 to 12800. There’s a new chip to match, too, the X-Processor Pro, and the autofocus system has been upgraded to 273 points, of which 77 are phase-detect. The camera can shoot at eight frames per second with continuous phase AF, and is the first X-series camera to have dual SD card slots. It also has slightly better video quality than its forebears, though I don't think anyone will buy it for that. The X-Pro2's biggest selling point is its viewfinder The biggest selling point for the X-Pro2, however, is its viewfinder. Like the X-Pro1 and X100 series of fixed-lens cameras, the "hybrid" unit lets you switch between an electronic and optical viewfinder with the flick of a lever. The EVF displays what’s coming through the lens and how the sensor is exposing it, making it the more useful option for critical work. The OVF, meanwhile, is a little offset from the angle of the lens, so you don’t quite see exactly what the camera will capture; instead, the viewfinder superimposes bright frame lines to give an indication of your lens’ field of view.
Why would you use the optical viewfinder? Well, it can be easier to use in bright light, many street photographers in particular like being able to see what’s outside their frame before composing, and it’s just straight-up more pleasant to look at the world than to peer through a tunnel at a screen. And with the X-Pro2, it’s easier than ever to prioritize the optical view, because you can get the best of both worlds — Fujifilm has added a tiny secondary EVF to the bottom-right corner, letting you confirm accurate framing, focus, and exposure from within the OVF. It’s a feature taken from the X100T, but unlike that camera you can use the secondary display to see the whole frame, rather than just a zoomed-in view of your focus point. To be clear, this is completely unique in the world of cameras. Leica is the only company that sells digital rangefinders with optical viewfinders, and those are all manual-focus models without any electronic elements in the OVF — you can’t confirm that you got the right shot without reviewing images on the rear-mounted LCD. The same goes for DSLRs, which do have autofocus and a through-the-lens view but still don’t let you check exposure in the viewfinder. With the X-Pro2, Fujifilm has developed a viewfinder that offers what people love about rangefinders and what they need from a professional camera all in one package. It’s business and pleasure at once. The X-Pro2 isn’t always Fujifilm’s best pro camera The reason I’m talking about the viewfinder so much is that you really, really have to want it if the X-Pro2 is going to be your next camera. Fujifilm’s two-year-old flagship model, the X-T1, has an SLR-style design that houses a single electronic viewfinder — no optical option, but the EVF blows the X-Pro2’s out of the water. Its magnification is much higher, so it’s both a lot more immersive and far easier to use; confirming critical focus, for example, is more reliable on the X-T1 for this reason. Lenses longer than 35mm — like my beloved 56mm f/1.2 — are also kind of useless on the X-Pro2’s OVF, because the framelines are so small. And I have to be honest — I’ve been using the X-Pro2 as my primary camera for a couple of months, and although I feel better about using the OVF more for fun than ever before, when it comes to work I just don’t trust it as much as the EVF. And that’s a big reason why, despite the name, the X-Pro2 isn’t always Fujifilm’s best pro camera.
There are other reasons. The X-Pro2 is a step back in control density, integrating the X-T1’s ISO dial into its shutter speed dial in a fiddly retro way that I never really got the hang of. I missed the dedicated switches for drive and metering modes. I really missed the tilting screen. And the X-T1’s grip feels more balanced when using bigger lenses like the 56mm f/1.2. These issues were hard to ignore when, for example, I was taking portraits and scrambling in the photo pit while covering the AlphaGo match in Seoul last month. But for every snag that made me want to go back to the X-T1, the X-Pro2 takes a step forward that makes me never want to use anything else. Image quality, for example, is just phenomenal with the new 24-megapixel image sensor. Yes, I know megapixels don’t count for a lot alone, but the fact that Fujifilm waited four years to increase resolution means it’s been able to do so without running into the usual trade-offs. I found high-ISO performance and noise to be at least as good as the X-T1’s, which is already excellent, and the increase in detail is often dramatic; it feels like the sensor the X-Series Fujinon lenses have been waiting for. JPEG rendition is better than ever, and the new Acros monochrome film simulation turns in gorgeous results right out of the camera. Grid View
Another gigantic advance is found with the "focus stick" on the rear of the camera. This little joystick has one purpose and one purpose only — to help you select specific autofocus points quickly and accurately, which has sometimes been awkward on previous Fujifilm cameras. It works fantastically well, with tight, solid dampening that makes honing in on a subject’s eye as fun as pulling off a dragon punch in Street Fighter. On the subject of autofocus, the X-Pro2 still isn’t up to DSLR-level speed, but its performance is the best in any Fujifilm camera to date — it’s the first X-Series camera that really almost never frustrates me in that regard, depending on the lens attached. And this may sound silly, but the X-Pro2’s shutter makes the most satisfying thk-thk-thk of any camera I’ve ever heard. It helps that this is inexplicably the first X-Series model to let you take multiple shots by keeping the shutter half-pressed — previous cameras forced you to refocus or use the continuous AF mode, unlike basically every other mirrorless camera or DSLR on the planet. With its distinct physical and auditory feedback and its more intuitive performance, the X-Pro2 is by far the most responsive Fujifilm camera to date.Update 2014-04-25: I know that I have not released an update in a while. I have been very busy outside of Android development. In order to open up the possibility of others contributing, I have open sourced RootCloak Plus: https://github.com/devadvance/rootcloakplus
See the 2nd post for a list of apps that have been tested.
Download from the Play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/d....rootcloakplus
Many apps detect rooted phones (banking, enterprise, streaming), and upon detection, do not run. RootCloak Plus hides all indications of root, thereby enabling those apps to run, without disabling root. See http://devadvance.com/rootcloakplus/ for the list of apps that work with RootCloak Plus.There is no 100% way to hide root. Any feedback you may have will be helpful, not only for fixing your particular issue, but also for hiding root from future apps!• Rooted Device• Android v4.0.3+• Cydia Substrate ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...urik.substrate • If you are on Android 4.4+ (Kitkat), you need to install SELinux Mode Changer and set it to PERMISSIVE: ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...mrbimc.selinux • Single user on the device (does NOT currently support devices with more than one user account!)• x86 (Intel) devices• Devices with multiple user accounts• RootCloak Plus works with Cydia Substrate instead of Xposed• RootCloak Plus hides everything that the original does, plus a lot more• Works with native calls• Example for in the future: Can hide "test-keys" in the actual build.prop fileDisabling root, or temporarily unrooting, prevents ALL applications from using root. This includes the applications that require root to function. In addition, SuperSu (and others) cannot hide themselves, and are still detected by many apps. RootCloak does not disable root; it completely hides all traces of being rooting, including the su binary, some of busybox, superuser.apk/most common superuser control apps, and more.Not directly. Some apps that check for root only check for things like release-keys vs test-keys, and therefore RootCloak will work. However, if you are running CM, AOKP, or any other custom ROM, there are simply too many ways to detect a custom for RootCloak to effectively hide all of them. For example, addition settings activities may be added/removed depending on the AOKP version; RootCloak would have to hide every single one to be 100% effective.1) If you are on Android 4.4+ (KitKat), you need to install SELinux Mode Changer and set it to PERMISSIVE: ( http://play.google.com/store/apps/de...mrbimc.selinux 2) Install Cydia Substrate.3) Install RootCloak Plus.4) Reboot your device to enable RootCloak Plus. Substrate will probably tell you to do so.5) Open RootClock Plus settings (just open the app from the launcher), and then go to Add/Remove. This is where you will change which apps RootCloak hides root from.6) If the app you want is not among the default apps, press the + button to add it. Find the app in the list, and press it to add it to the list.7) To apply changes, you MUST reboot your device!8) Run the app to see if root was successfully hidden.FDA Fees On Industry Haven't Fixed Delays In Generic Drug Approvals
Enlarge this image toggle caption Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Consumers and lawmakers pushing for cheaper alternatives to the EpiPen, an antidote for life-threatening allergic reactions, and other high-priced drugs are seeking answers about a stubborn backlog of generic drug applications at the Food and Drug Administration.
Even after the agency started levying user fees on drugmakers in 2012 to pay for more people to review the medicines, the backlog of decisions still stretches almost four years.
As of July 1, the FDA had 4,036 generic drug applications awaiting approval, and the median time it takes for the FDA to approve a generic is now 47 months, according to the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, a trade group. The FDA has approved more generics in the past few years, but a flood of applications has added to the problem.
By comparison, the European Medicines Agency, Europe's version of the FDA, has just 24 generics, including biologically based biosimilars awaiting approval. The FDA's generic count doesn't include biosimilars, which are more complicated medicines to review. The EMA along with the European Commission, which handles approval of marketing materials, are approving generics and brand-name drugs in about a year on average, according to the EMA.
Critics say getting generic alternatives to the U.S. market for products like EpiPen is still taking far too long. Other off-patent drugs with rising prices and no generic competition have also drawn scrutiny, including Turing Pharmaceuticals' Daraprim, for toxoplasmosis, and Valeant's cardiovascular drugs Isuprel and Nitropress.
Congress asks why generic version of EpiPens aren't available
"We are concerned that Mylan (maker of the EpiPen) has not faced much competition for its product," five U.S. senators wrote Aug. 24 to FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf, adding that one of EpiPen's nongeneric competitors, Auvi-Q, was recalled in October, granting Mylan a near monopoly. "News reports indicate that generic versions of the EpiPen have been subject to additional questioning by the FDA and have yet to be approved."
On Monday, three members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce wrote a similar letter to the FDA, seeking information about the EpiPen generic applications it has received and how they've been prioritized.
When asked whether the FDA bears any responsibility for the lack of EpiPen competition, FDA spokesman Kristofer Baumgartner said he couldn't comment on pending applications or confirm their existence, citing confidentiality rules. But he stressed that the FDA pushes pending applications for drugs with no current generics to the front of the line and approved 580 generics in 2015, a record for the agency and 40 percent more than in 2014.
"The FDA is confident that the overall trend in actions on generic drug applications will be one of continuing improvement," Baumgartner said.
In March, generics giant Teva Pharmaceuticals told investors that its generic version of EpiPen was rejected by the FDA, and that it wouldn't be able to launch the generic until at least 2017. Adamis Pharmaceuticals reported a similar rejection from the FDA for its EpiPen generic in June.
Mylan has said it will offer a $300 generic in the coming weeks. Because Mylan also makes the brand-name product, it won't have to wait in line behind other pending generics.
Dr. James Baker, the CEO and chief medical officer of the advocacy group Food Allergy and Research Education, said Mylan's move may deter other generic manufacturers from seeking approval. Adrenaclick is the only other epinephrine auto-injector on the market, but it isn't an exact generic of EpiPen and can't be swapped automatically at the pharmacy if a doctor has written a prescription for EpiPen.
Adrenaclick also isn't widely available. "You call up 100 pharmacies, and maybe 10 have the device, from what we gather," Baker said of Adrenaclick.
He said several factors have allowed EpiPen's price tag to swell over the years. Many patients were in the dark about EpiPen price increases until insurers started shifting more of the cost onto consumers a few years ago, and getting approval for a generic that's both a drug and a device is more complicated than getting approval for a drug alone, he said.
Meanwhile, Mylan has aggressively marketed its product and raised doubts about alternatives.
And documents show that Mylan submitted a citizen petition to the FDA arguing that people trained to use EpiPens wouldn't be able to use Teva's pending generic epinephrine auto-injector because of design differences.
"Is Mylan doing anything illegal? No," Baker said. "It's taking advantage of all these things to take the market and basically push it to an extreme."
User fees levied to speed up the approval process
The FDA's generic backlog isn't a new problem. In 2012, it was so large that it prompted the government to start charging user fees to generic manufacturers to provide the funds for the FDA to speed the process. The fees built on the 20-year-old Prescription Drug User Fee Act, which required brand-name drugmakers to pay fees to expand FDA's capacity to review applications for those medicines. In the first three years, the FDA collected $1 billion from generic drug manufacturers.
The fees were used to hire an additional 1,000 employees, and put the Office of Generic Drugs on par with the Office of New Drugs by reorganizing it and moving it from four outlying buildings to the FDA's main campus in Silver Spring, Md.
The funds were also used to upgrade the office's information technology. The FDA says on its website: "Additional resources will enable the Agency to reduce a current backlog of pending applications, cut the average time required to review generic drug applications for safety, and increase risk-based inspections."
In October 2012, there was a backlog of 2,868 generic drugs awaiting approval, and the FDA said it would take a "first action" on 90 percent of these drugs by 2017. This summer, the agency met its goal a year early, but a first action isn't an approval. Instead, it stops the review clock and puts the applications back in industry's court.
Only 1,551 generics have been approved since the fees on drugmakers were initiated, and that total includes some extra applications that weren't considered part of the official backlog. So, all told, the agency has only approved about half of the backlogged generics that were awaiting approval in 2012.
"Most applications from the backlog will need to come back to FDA for additional review due to deficiencies in the submissions, before approval is possible," the agency said in a statement in responses to questions.
David Gaugh, senior vice president for science and regulatory affairs at the Generic Pharmaceuticals Association, said standards used to compile generic applications when they were submitted three or four years ago have changed while the applications were sitting in the backlog. So when the FDA got back to those companies, it said the applications were of "poor quality."
The applications for generic drugs have continued to pile up even as the FDA approved a record number of generics in 2015 and again in the first seven months of 2016. The number of generic drug applications tripled from 2002 to 2012, according to January congressional testimony from Janet Woodcock, who directs the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.
Still, some see signs the agency is on the right track.
"I think that it is an optimistic picture overall... at the FDA, there's been a lot of progress, and I think there is more to be made," said Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, an interdisciplinary drug researcher at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital. "This is not something that people should think has been solved at this point. It's totally an ongoing process."
Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Follow Sydney Lupkin on Twitter: @slupkin.After we featured the work of animator Nicolas Ménard he recommended we take a look at Jonathan Djob Nkondo’s work. I’ve seen his animated gifs reposted all over Tumblr for awhile now, and previously featured one of his animations here. He’s the kind of talent that I find difficult to feature because he creates such a wide variety of stuff (I wanna do a whole separate post on his graf stuff).
What I’ve included here is an animated comic that Jonathan has been periodically adding to on his Tumblr. This series of animated gifs captures his amazing sense of movement and colour, and there’s actually something almost more satisfying about following the story this way than simply hitting play on a video. Have a look at the rest of the moving panels below.
Jonathan Djob Nkondo on Tumblr
Jonathan Djob Nkondo on VimeoThe Trump administration has already done enormous harm to the United States and the planet. Along the way, Trump has also caused many prominent progressives to degrade their own political discourse. It’s up to us to challenge the corrosive effects of routine hyperbole and outright demagoguery.
Consider the rhetoric from one of the most promising new House members, Democrat Jamie Raskin, at a rally near the Washington Monument over the weekend. Reading from a prepared text, Raskin warmed up by declaring that “Donald Trump is the hoax perpetrated on the Americans by the Russians.” Soon the congressman named such varied countries as Hungary, the Philippines, Syria and Venezuela, and immediately proclaimed: “All the despots, dictators and kleptocrats have found each other, and Vladimir Putin is the ringleader of the unfree world.”
Later, asked about factual errors in his speech, Raskin floundered during a filmed interview with The Real News. What is now boilerplate Democratic Party bombast about Russia has little to do with confirmed facts and much to do with partisan talking points.
The same day that Raskin spoke, the progressive former Labor Secretary Robert Reich featured at the top of his website an article he’d written with the headline “The Art of the Trump-Putin Deal.” The piece had striking similarities to what progressives have detested over the years when coming from right-wing commentators and witchhunters. The timeworn technique was dual track, in effect: I can’t prove it’s true, but let’s proceed as though it is.
The lead of Reich’s piece was clever. Way too clever: “Say you’re Vladimir Putin, and you did a deal with Trump last year. I’m not suggesting there was any such deal, mind you. But if you are Putin and you did do a deal, what did Trump agree to do?”
From there, Reich’s piece was off to the conjectural races.
Progressives routinely deplore such propaganda techniques from right-wingers, not only because the left is being targeted but also because we seek a political culture based on facts and fairness rather than innuendos and smears. It’s painful now to see numerous progressives engaging in hollow propaganda.
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Likewise, it’s sad to see so much eagerness to trust in the absolute credibility of institutions like the CIA and NSA—institutions that previously earned wise distrust. Over the last few decades, millions of Americans have gained keen awareness of the power of media manipulation and deception by the U.S. foreign-policy establishment. Yet now, faced with an ascendant extreme right wing, some progressives have yielded to the temptation of blaming our political predicament more on a foreign “enemy” than on powerful corporate forces at home.
The over-the-top scapegoating of Russia serves many purposes for the military-industrial complex, Republican neocons and kindred “liberal interventionist” Democrats. Along the way, the blame-Russia-first rhetoric is of enormous help to the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party—a huge diversion lest its elitism and entwinement with corporate power come under greater scrutiny and stronger challenge from the grassroots.
In this context, the inducements and encouragements to buy into an extreme anti-Russia frenzy have become pervasive. A remarkable number of people claim certainty about hacking and even “collusion”—events that they cannot, at this time, truly be certain about. In part that’s because of deceptive claims endlessly repeated by Democratic politicians and news media. One example is the rote and highly misleading claim that “17 U.S. intelligence agencies” reached the same conclusion about Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee—a claim that journalist Robert Parry effectively debunked in an article last week.
During a recent appearance on CNN, former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner offered a badly needed perspective on the subject of Russia’s alleged intrusion into the U.S. election. People in Flint, Michigan “wouldn't ask you about Russia and Jared Kushner,” she said. “They want to know how they’re gonna get some clean water and why 8,000 people are about to lose their homes.”
Turner noted that “we definitely have to deal with” allegations of Russian interference in the election, “it’s on the minds of American people, but if you want to know what people in Ohio—they want to know about jobs, they want to know about their children.” As for Russia, she said, “We are preoccupied with this, it’s not that this is not important, but every day Americans are being left behind because it’s Russia, Russia, Russia.”
Like corporate CEOs whose vision extends only to the next quarter or two, many Democratic politicians have been willing to inject their toxic discourse into the body politic on the theory that it will be politically profitable in the next election or two. But even on its own terms, the approach is apt to fail. Most Americans are far more worried about their economic futures than about the Kremlin. A party that makes itself more known as anti-Russian than pro-working-people has a problematic future.
Today, 15 years after George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” oratory set the stage for ongoing military carnage, politicians who traffic in unhinged rhetoric like “Putin is the ringleader of the unfree world” are helping to fuel the warfare state—and, in the process, increasing the chances of direct military conflict between the United States and Russia that could go nuclear and destroy us all. But such concerns can seem like abstractions compared to possibly winning some short-term political gains. That’s the difference between leadership and demagoguery.Marlin Stivani Nivarlain is a 15-year-old Swedish girl. Last year, her boyfriend became obsessed with ISIS, and she followed him to Syria to join the group.
Last week, Kurdish forces stormed an ISIS-held town near Mosul, Iraq, where they found Nivarlain and rescued her.
Shortly after her rescue, Nivarlain was interviewed by the Kurdish outlet Kurdistan 24, and described her boyfriend's radicalization, her trip to ISIS-held territory, the miserable life she encountered there, and her joy at being rescued.
Nivarlain says she met her (unnamed) boyfriend in mid-2014. "At first, we were good together," she said. "Then he started watching ISIS videos, talking about ISIS, stuff like that."
She was confused when he said, months after they met, that he wanted to take her to join ISIS. "I said OK, because I didn't know what ISIS is, what Islam means, nothing," Nivarlain explained.
They left Sweden on May 31, 2015. After taking a series of trains, buses, and cars to Syria, they eventually settled in the ISIS-held Iraqi city of Mosul — where life was far from what she'd expected. "In the house, we didn't have anything: no electricity, no water, nothing," she says. "In Sweden we have everything; when I was there, I didn't have anything."
She then decided to try to escape. She got a phone and called her mother in Sweden, telling her, "I want to go home."
Her mother then contacted the Swedish government, and some time later she was rescued — though the video redacts her discussion of the actual rescue, thus leaving any connection between her call and subsequent escape a mystery.
The key part of Nivarlain's story, to my mind, is her complete ignorance of what's happening. We often tend to hear about teens who join ISIS as corrupted by ISIS propaganda — and indeed, that appears to have been the case with Nivarlain's boyfriend. But Nivarlain simply went along because it seemed like a cool thing to do. It was teenage rebellion, not sincere ideological conviction, that dragged her to hell.
A December report from the Soufan Group, a consulting firm that studies terrorism, found that social media alone does not motivate most recruits. Rather, most recruitment happens through communities: real-life hotbeds of ISIS support where people meet in person and convince one another to travel to Syria and Iraq.
"While the power of the Islamic State’s social media outreach is undeniable, it appears more often to prepare the ground for persuasion, rather than to force the decision," the Soufan Group explains. It continues:
[A]s hotbeds develop, recruitment through social media becomes less important than via direct human contact, as clusters of friends and neighbors persuade each other to travel separately or together to join the Islamic State,
Cases like Nivarlain's are very rare, which is part of what makes her story so affecting.
"I want to thank [the Kurds] to send me back to Sweden, and meet my family again, and a happy life," Nivarlain says at the end of her video, smiling. In the last shot, it's not clear if she's laughing or crying |
the main features of Hinduism.
The California Department of Education (CDE) initially sought to resolve the controversy by appointing Shiva Bajpai, Professor Emeritus at California State University Northridge, as a one-man committee to review revisions proposed by the groups.[116] Micheal Witzel and others revisited the proposed changed on behalf of the State Board of Education and suggested reverting some of the approved changes.[117] In early 2006, the Hindu American Foundation sued the State Board over matters of process;[117] the case was settled in 2009.
Dotbusters [ edit ]
The Dotbusters was a hate group in Jersey City, New Jersey that attacked and threatened South Asians in the fall of 1987. The name originates from the bindi traditionally worn by Hindu women and girls on their forehead. In July 1987, they had a letter published in the Jersey Journal[118] stating that they would take any means necessary to drive the Indians out of Jersey City:
I'm writing about your article during july [sic] about the abuse of Indian People. Well I'm here to state the other side. I hate them, if you had to live near them you would also. We are an organization called dot busters. We have been around for 2 years. We will go to any extreme to get Indians to move out of Jersey City. If I'm walking down the street and I see a Hindu and the setting is right, I will hit him or her. We plan some of our most extreme attacks such as breaking windows, breaking car windows, and crashing family parties. We use the phone books and look up the name Patel. Have you seen how many of them there are? Do you even live in Jersey City? Do you walk down Central avenue and experience what its [sic] like to be near them: we have and we just don't want it anymore. You said that they will have to start protecting themselves because the police cannot always be there. They will never do anything. They are a weak [sic] race physically and mentally. We are going to continue our way. We will never be stopped.[119]
Notes [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]BARSTOW, Calif. — Surrounded by loved ones, former Marine and Navajo Code Talker Nelson Draper Sr. died at age 96 early Sunday morning in his Barstow home, his daughter Christina Burke said.
During World War II, the code talkers were pivotal to the Marine Corps’ success against the Japanese in Iwo Jima and Okinawa, using their native Navajo language to provide critical communications in a code that was virtually impossible to crack.
Not many of the roughly 400 code talkers remain; some estimate between 25 to 60 are alive today.
“A lot of people knew my dad because of who he is, what he did in war,” Burke said. “My father was very proud of his service in World War II.”
Draper later became a civilian employee of the Marine Corps Logistics Base for 30-plus years.
In 2001, Draper was honored for his service as one of 228 code talkers to receive the Congressional Silver Medal. The medal is one of the highest awards bestowed by Congress. Each time it is presented, it is redesigned for the recipient.
Nelson Draper Jr. said his father spoke little about what he accomplished during World War II, even after the program was declassified by the military in 1968 — protective of the code until the end.
“We’re very proud of what he did,” Draper Jr. said.
On Friday, the public is invited to pay their respects.
At 9 a.m., a rosary and mass is planned at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church at 505 E. Mountain View Street. At 10 a.m., a memorial service is scheduled at High Desert Word Center, 30918 Soapmine Road.
A burial service is set to follow at Mountain View Memorial Park, 37067 Irwin Road.
Burke said she has invited several dignitaries to the 10 a.m. memorial service, including Ben Shelly, president of the Navajo Nation, and Third District Supervisor James Ramos.
Ramos, who confirmed Wednesday that he will attend, said Draper was a role model for younger Native Americans.
“Really, in the Indian community, (code talkers) are held up in high esteem,” Ramos said. “He was a leader for younger Indian people to look up to.”
Draper is survived by eight children, 29 grandchildren and 53 great-grandchildren, according to Burke.
“He was a great provider and great father, grandfather and great-grandfather,” granddaughter Selena Draper said.
Draper is at least the third Navajo Code Talker living in the Barstow area to pass away since 2006.
“He is a hero,” Burke said. “I want people to know my dad is a hero.”
Shea Johnson / (760) 256-4126 / SJohnson@DesertDispatch.com[1] Game preview : Game is unfinished and work in progress, may change over time, and may not release as a final product. Xbox Live Gold required to play (sold separately).
[2] Free games offer: For paid Gold members only on Xbox One, active Gold membership required to play free games you’ve redeemed. Restrictions apply. Savings based on retail value of game. Games sold separately. Requirements and available features vary across consoles; multiplayer between Xbox One and Xbox 360 supported for select titles. Download required.
[3] Enhanced features for Xbox One X subject to release of a content update. Games information at xbox.com/xonexenhanced
Offer valid from 9PM PT February 16, 2019 to March 2, 2019, while supplies last. Available only at retail stores and Microsoft online stores in the United States (including Puerto Rico). The offer is not valid for purchases or orders made previously. It can not be transferred or redeemed for cash or promotional codes. It may not be possible to combine with other offers. In the reimbursements, the discount will be taken into account. The discount in the price does not include taxes, shipping costs or other charges. Offer not valid where prohibited or restricted by law. Microsoft reserves the right to modify or discontinue offers at any time. Limit of 3 offers per customer. Other exclusions and limitations may apply.Funerals are for the benefit of the living. The people being buried don't give much of a shit whether you spend a million dollars on a ceremony or throw them into a ditch, because, you know, they're dead. The whole point of a funeral is to help people go through the grieving process -- but everyone grieves differently, and some do it ridiculously. So who are we to judge if you choose to...
6 Surround Your Casket With Strippers
Photos.com
Believe it or not, in some cultures, popping a boner in the middle of a funeral is considered rude. In China, on the other hand, it's openly encouraged -- hence the (absolutely real) tradition of hiring strippers to pose during the service.
Via James Patton Funeral Directors
Please pretend we've already done a pun with the word "stiff" so we can move on.
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You see, in rural China, it's considered lucky and a mark of honor to have as many people as possible attend your funeral. Sometimes, however, not enough people show up, and some extra measures are required to boost the crowd numbers -- sexy measures. Like hiring strippers to perform during the funeral, which needless to say is a pretty effective way to get more people to show up when the corpse you've put up as the centerpiece for your party lacks the expected drawing power.
It's all very tasteful, though. According to one report, "Some strippers even take off the trousers of male viewers and persuade them to join in the dancing, while others bathe in public or perform nude with snakes."Finally! I first heard this on youtube and I've been trying to track down the source. So here goes:
When I first heard this I was nearly overwhelmed. This has every bit the holy, everlasting, wondrous sound that the Temple of Time should have. This song really make me feel like the temple is something not meant to looked at lightly.
The background choir gives it that holy, revered feeling, and it never threatens to overtake the melody choir. They way they change with the melody choir is perfect, and the melody choir (I may not be using legitimate musical terms. I am sorry, I'm trying as best I can) helps add to it. They give a sort of really wise and powerful feel to the song. Where the background choir makes the temple feel like a holy relic, the melody choir make the temple feel like a temple of POWER. It's not just some fancy item, it's capable of making things happen and deserves respect.
I wish I could say what you did right in better words, but in short, this is amazing. I think Nintendo should use your theme. Wonderful job.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
April 28, 2017, 4:08 PM GMT / Updated April 28, 2017, 4:08 PM GMT By Maggie Fox
At least a million babies have been born in the U.S. using lab-assisted techniques, a new report finds.
The latest report on in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and other assisted reproductive techniques (ART) shows that nearly 68,000 babies were born using one or the other of the methods in 2015.
Computer artwork of in vitro fertilization technique known as ICSI Getty Images/Science Photo Library RM
The Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology said about 213,000 treatment cycles were tried in 2015, giving the methods an overall 32 percent success rate.
The number is probably higher than that.
The Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, part of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), reports data from its member clinics and has only been collecting that information since 1985.
The first American IVF baby was born in the United States in 1981. The world’s first IVF baby, Louise Brown, was born in Britain in 1978.
Related: Baby Born Using Three-Parent Technique
The first assisted reproductive technique was IVF but there are now several different techniques offered at more than 440 clinics, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For many years, fertility doctors would routinely transfer several embryos into a woman at a time, resulting in twins, triplets, quadruplets and more. Such multiple pregnancies are dangerous to mothers and babies alike and can result in premature births.
Now, groups like the ASRM strongly encourage fertility specialists to transfer just one embryo. They’ve got data to back up the reassurance that going just one at a time is every bit as likely to result in a live birth as transferring multiple embryos.
Related: World's First IVF Baby Has Her Own Baby
Still, only 34.5 percent of attempts used just a single embryo, SART reported.
“Fewer embryos transferred leads to lower incidence of multiple birth: 80.5 percent of babies born from 2015 cycles were singletons; 19.1 percent twins; and fewer than one-half of one percent were triplets (or higher order),” the group said.
More women are opting for frozen, donated eggs as well. More than 3,200 ART attempts used a frozen egg, the group said.
Age still strongly affects success rates. The success rate of 48 percent for women under the age of 35 and fell to 3 percent per try for women over 42.New Releases from Catawba Brewing in NC
Catawba Brewing announces two new releases for August. On August 4th look for Korean Sour. This innovative farmhouse ale took inspiration from Korean makgeolli, a fermented beverage made from rice. Also known as nongju (translation: “farmer liquor”), this traditional drink was historically favored by Korean farmers before gaining popularity with younger generations in urban areas. Having now been reinterpreted for WNC, Catawba’s Korean Sour is a small batch beer brewed in their Asheville brewery, available only in Catawba’s three tasting rooms – Asheville South Slope, Asheville Biltmore Village, and downtown Morganton. Pale straw in color, it was brewed with malted barley and brown rice, and soured in the kettle with lactobacillus. Not unlike a gose or perhaps even vinho verde, this refreshingly tart beer is balanced with a subtle underlying sweetness and very light hop bitterness. ABV 5.4%
Next on August 11th look for King Don’s Pumpkin Ale. This beer returns with a taste of fall and a welcome promise of cooler temps ahead! This seasonal favorite traces its roots to the old Cottonwood Brewery in Boone, where head brewer Don Richardson perfected his award-winning recipe nearly two decades ago. A few years later, after Cottonwood had sold, Don generously agreed to lend his pumpkin beer recipe to his good friend Scott Pyatt, co-owner of Catawba Brewing. The rest is craft beer history.
Catawba has been brewing this delicious spiced ale seasonally since 2001, under the name King Don’s to honor its original brewer. Deep amber in color, King Don’s uses five separate barley varieties, fresh pumpkin, and an assortment of spices to create a complex flavor profile that has withstood the test of time.
Find King Don’s Pumpkin Ale in Catawba’s three tasting rooms, or in distribution (NC, SC, TN, AL) in kegs and 6-pack cans. 5.5% ABV
About Catawba Brewing Company
Founded in 1999 by the Pyatt family, natives of Western North Carolina, Catawba Brewing operates a main production facility in downtown Morganton, NC at 212 S.
Green St; a boutique brewery/tasting room in downtown Asheville, NC at 32 Banks Ave; and a tasting room in Asheville’s Biltmore Village at 63 Brook St. Catawba beers can be found in NC, SC, TN, and now AL.My eighth grader’s history textbook allocates half a page to Lewis and Clark. It explains in painfully dull detail how in 1803 President Jefferson sent the expedition to explore the new territory he’d just bought from the French (hello, how about mentioning Napoleon?). Lewis and Clark, the book drones on, were sent to find a route across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, and to collect information on people, plants, animals and geography.
So I thought today I’d touch upon some of the details of the expedition that kids might actually find interesting. For instance, the members of the expedition were practically driven insane by bugs, and they nearly died of starvation, and Lewis got shot in the butt and chased by a grizzly bear. And they were accompanied through the wilderness by a sixteen-year-old Indian girl carrying her infant on her back. Oh yes and pretty much everyone in the party had malaria and dysentery from time to time, and most had syphilis. But arguably the worst part of this arduous journey was the mosquitoes, followed closely by the gnats and ticks.
One other awful yet interesting detail you don’t generally read about in the textbooks: Upon his return, Lewis took his own life by shooting himself and then slashing himself with a razor blade.* (Other historians say he might have been shot by bandits. I think that’s unlikely, but we may never know for sure.)
Meriwether Lewis was a part-time botanist and doctor. William Clark was the mapmaker and boat guy. At the time they set out, few people of European descent had ventured beyond the Mississippi River and–to my knowledge–no European had trekked from East to West all the way to the Pacific Ocean. In fact, most Americans lived within fifty miles of the East Coast.
According to “The Perils of Plant Collecting” by A. M. Martin, Lewis spent 1/3 of his budget on cinchona (from which quinine is derived), mosquito nets, and hog’s lard (with which they had to smear their skin to keep away mosquitoes). Mosquitoes were so thick, people had to eat their food in the smoke of the campfire, and still they managed to swallow dozens of mosquitoes with their food. No wonder they carried 120 gallons of whiskey along. (Says Martin, “Lewis’s motto was ‘Don’t run out of booze until there’s no turning back.’”)
Given that their diet consisted largely of dried strips of wild animal meat, they also popped pills for constipation. They called the pills “thunderclappers.” Their real name was “Dr. Rush’s Bilious Pills.” (Benjamin Rush was a famous doctor at the time of the American Revolution, and signed the Declaration of Independence.) Thunderclappers were high-octane laxatives, made of 60 percent mercury. Even back then, people knew that mercury was terrible for you, and one pill contained enough mercury to kill a person. But the pill passed through a person’s system so quickly, it probably didn’t have much opportunity to be absorbed. Because mercury doesn’t break down, modern scientists have been able to trace the path of Lewis and Clark’s expedition by the amounts of mercury still found in the soil—evidence of where members of the expedition stopped to go to the bathroom. Talk about toxic waste.
___________________Chael Sonnen is proving to be an itch that Anderson Silva can't seem to scratch.
As reported by Bleacher Report's Jonathan Snowden, Sonnen's camp is set to appeal his UFC 148 loss to "The Spider."
The appeal is based around a knee thrown by Silva in the second round, which led to a TKO stoppage.
Sonnen, who was obviously downed at the time, took a knee directly in the chest from Silva.
At first glimpse, the knee looks clean, but with a closer look, it's obvious Silva pops Sonnen in the face with the follow-through just above the knee. In the UFC, it is illegal to kick or knee a downed opponent in the head.
What counts as a knee? If not a knee, would Silva's strike be defined as a kick?
Sonnen's chances of winning such an appeal will likely be a long shot, but it is certainly within the realm of possibility.
Snowden caught up with Sonnen's manager Scott McQuarry, who had plenty to say about the questionable knee thrown by Silva:
Chael's not the kind of guy who likes to complain after a fight. I felt I needed to take this action to protect him. At the point of impact, Anderson had his hand locked in the cage and his feet left the ground. We believe his intentions were clear. We started the process of filing a complaint with the Nevada Athletic Commission. We believe the knee that Anderson Silva threw was illegal with the clear intent to strike the face. And it did in fact connect with the face. Chael bit his tongue and needed eight stitches. We're going to ask for a rematch. We deserve a rematch. If the only way Anderson Silva can win is by cheating, we need to keep a closer eye on Silva before and during a fight. And we need a rematch now. Legal knee or illegal knee, there's enough doubt with all the fouls to warrant a rematch.
Silva has to be growing tired of the ongoing feud with Sonnen. For over two years, Sonnen has disrespected his family, teammates and the entire country of Brazil.
Silva has already defeated Sonnen twice, and both of the bouts ended in stoppages.
With that said, a potential rematch between Silva and Sonnen is good for business. The UFC 148 main event was arguably the biggest fight in UFC history. If Sonnen wins the appeal, it wouldn't be far-fetched to think White would be quick to green-light the trilogy.
Buckle up, folks.
The Silva and Sonnen feud is far from over.House GOP Leader John Bohner had this to say after President Obama’s speech Tuesday:
Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) declared a return to “the era of big government” the day after President Obama’s first formal address to Congress. “From everything I’ve seen, it looks like the era of big government spending is back,” he told reporters at a lunch convened by the Christian Science Monitor. “My question to my Democratic friends is how are you going to pay for it?”
And my question Congressman Boehner is where were you when President Bush was increasing discretionary spending at faster pace than Lyndon Johnson, or when he proposed programs that are usually associated with “big spending Democrats”?
Were you not part of the Republican majority that sat back and participating in this massive expansion of spending and debt?
Did you not tell the members of your caucus that the TARP bailout was a “crap sandwich,” but that they should vote for it anyway?
And then didn’t you cave on the idea of giving taxpayer dollars to the auto companies?
Sorry, Congressman, you’re wrong.
The era of big government isn’t back, it’s the same era we’ve been in for the past eight years. This is a monster of your creation, I hope you enjoy it.
Russell Roberts sums it up nicely:Image copyright Getty Images
Social media platform Snapchat has blocked access to Al Jazeera content in Saudi Arabia.
Snapchat said it was asked by the Saudi authorities to remove the Qatari-backed broadcaster's Discover Publisher Channel because it violated local laws.
Qatar is in an ongoing dispute with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the UAE.
The four countries cut ties with Qatar earlier this year, accusing the country of supporting terrorism.
Saudi Arabia has one of the world's most restrictive media environments, according to human rights groups and media freedom advocates.
But the Saudi authorities have a particular dislike for Al Jazeera. At one point they had demanded Qatar's government shut it down altogether as one of 13 conditions to remove sanctions against the country.
Those conditions were later withdrawn.
Saudi Arabia is one of the largest social media markets in the Middle East, boosted by a high rate of smart phone ownership.
That can sometimes place US-listed companies like Snapchat's parent Snap Inc in an awkward position, as local laws are far more restrictive than in many other markets.
"We make an effort to comply with local laws in the countries where we operate," a Snapchat spokesperson said in a statement.CLOSE Ole Miss beat writer Daniel Paulling talks about the NCAA news regarding the school's response to the notice of allegations Video by Daniel Paulling/The Clarion-Ledger
Ole Miss athletic director Ross Bjork (right) said the next step of the NCAA's investigation of Ole Miss has been pushed back. (Photo: Spruce Derden, Spruce Derden-USA TODAY Sports)
OXFORD - Ole Miss' wait for a resolution following an NCAA investigation has been pushed back another month.
The school had until Friday to respond to the NCAA's notice of allegations, but a party other than Ole Miss has requested and received a 30-day delay, athletic director Ross Bjork said. This is the first and only extension allowed by the process.
“This extension is an often-used tool available to all parties and the Notice of Allegations itself has not changed in any way,” Bjork said in a statement. “Upon completion of the 30-day extension period, the University will release our full Response to the Notice of Allegations.”
The delay likely means the entire process won’t be complete until mid-to-late October.
Once Ole Miss submits its response, it and the notice of allegations are combined into one document presented to the committee on infractions, a process that takes 60 days. A hearing would then likely take several weeks to be scheduled with a ruling coming out about six weeks later.
The 30-day delay continues what’s been a nearly four-year-long process that began when the NCAA started an investigation into the Ole Miss women’s basketball program in 2012. The investigation expanded to include the football and men’s and women’s track and field teams.
The Associated Press has reported that 13 of the 28 alleged violations relate to football. Five of those are tied to former left tackle Laremy Tunsil, while ESPN reported four date back to former coach Houston Nutt’s staff and four involve coach Hugh Freeze’s staff.
Former assistant coach David Saunders, who worked under Nutt, received an eight-year show cause in January after the committee on infractions found that he helped five Louisiana-Lafayette recruits receive fraudulent ACT scores and lied to the NCAA, among other things.
Texas reportedly fired former Ole Miss assistant coach Chris Vaughn, who worked under Nutt, because of alleged rule violations, suggesting he could have also received a notice of allegations.
Ole Miss fired women’s basketball head coach Adrian Wiggins, assistant coach Kenya Landers and director of operations Michael Landers in 2012 after they had only been working for a matter of months after an investigation into impermissible recruiting contacts and academic misconduct.
Junior college transfer Kay Caples and Brandy Broome were deemed ineligible because they didn't meet transfer eligibility standards
Bjork said previously that “a couple” of the track and field allegations revolve around recruiting, though what facet of recruiting remains uncertain. He added that the violations weren’t academic in nature and occurred in 2012-13.
Contact Daniel Paulling at dpaulling@jackson.gannett.com. Follow @DanielPaulling on Twitter.Opposition to the one is an article of faith for libertarians and economic conservatives (or, properly speaking, neoliberals). Opposition to the other is surprisingly muted, even though a hike in the minimum wage directly affects only some employers, while an increase in the payroll tax directly affects almost all. In each case, the outcome is to increase the price of labor, something predicted to lead to higher unemployment.
If anything, I would expect the remote effects of an increase in the minimum wage to offset increases in unemployment to a greater extent than the remote effects of raising payroll taxes would do. The minimum wage puts money straight into the pockets of people who will spend it quickly—and quite probably spend it in retail establishments that may be paying the minimum wage to begin with. The payroll tax, by contrast, takes money straight out of the consumer economy. The minimum wage helps (some) younger and poorer workers; the Social Security benefits financed by the payroll tax go to the old and relatively affluent. So on compassionate grounds, too, the minimum wage seems less objectionable than higher payroll taxes.
One might well oppose both, of course, but congressional Republican have tended to favor raising payroll taxes—they insisted on them as part of the Fiscal Cliff deal—and don’t come in for much criticism from the right for doing so, while the minimum wage is pure plutonium as far as the right is concerned. (So much so, in fact, that when Ron Unz makes a plausible case that raising the minimum wage will reduce immigration, even many activists who prioritize immigration over economic issues balk.) There’s criticism on the right of payroll taxes, certainly, but it rarely has the urgency of the attacks on minimum-wage hikes.
For the GOP there may be some short-term political logic in all this: the party wants to continue to offer older Americans—the ones most likely to vote Republican—as many benefits as possible, and plenty of influential GOP supporters aren’t paying any payroll taxes at all because they’re not salaried employees. But it’s hardly going to help the party in the long term if it keeps reinforcing the impression that it favors the rich over the poor and middle class—and even consistent neoliberals who dislike both payroll taxes and the minimum wage may think twice about such selectively small-government priorities.AUSTIN, Texas -- A grand jury investigating women's health care provider Planned Parenthood has indicted two anti-abortion activists who covertly shot videos of the organization.
District Attorney Devon Anderson announced Monday that Center for Medical Progress founder David Daleiden was indicted on charges of tampering with a governmental record and a count of related to purchasing human organs. Another activist was also indicted on a charge of tampering with a governmental record.
Undercover videos spark funding fight for Planned Parenthood
A lawyer for Daleiden confirmed to CBS News that the tampering charge is based on the use of fake identification cards. Daleiden is expected to travel to Texas to deal with bail matters, and after that a preliminary hearing will be scheduled, according to the district attorney's office.
Anderson said the grand jury cleared Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing.
The Center for Medical Progress released several secretly recorded videos that it says show Planned Parenthood employees selling fetal tissue for profit, which is illegal. Planned Parenthood has said it abides by a law that allows providers to be reimbursed for the costs of processing tissue donated by women who have had abortions.
A phone message left with the group wasn't immediately returned.
The videos riled anti-abortion activists and fueled discussion in Congress about cutting off funding for Planned Parenthood.
The National Abortion Federation filed a lawsuit in July, saying members of the Center for Medical Progress infiltrated its meetings and recorded its members. The federation of abortion providers says the release of any audio or video would put members in danger.
Planned Parenthood has become a lightning rod in the 2016 campaign. Most Republican presidential candidates object to continued federal financing of the organization. At the beginning of January, Planned Parenthood endorsed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for president.
Gov. Christie: “I never donated to Planned Parenthood”
In November, a man from North Carolina opened fire at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic and killed three people, including a police officer.
Suspect Robert Lewis Dear while being taken into custody after the Nov. 27 shooting, said "no more baby parts."
During a court hearing in December, Dear declared, "I am guilty, there will be no trial. I am a warrior for the babies."
After the shooting, Planned Parenthood officials also linked the attack to the "negative environment" created by the anti-abortion critics of Planned Parenthood services.
CBS News' Paula Reid contributed to this report.William Byron returning to JRM to drive Xfinity Series in 2017 Former JRM late model driver returning by way of Hendrick Motorsports signing
Record-breaking rookie William Byron has signed a multi-year driver agreement with Hendrick Motorsports and will begin competing full-time in the NXS for JR Motorsports beginning in 2017.
CONCORD, N.C. (Aug. 18, 2016) – Record-breaking rookie William Byron has signed a multi-year driver agreement with Hendrick Motorsports and will begin competing full-time in the NASCAR XFINITY Series for affiliate JR Motorsports beginning in 2017. Hendrick Motorsports made the announcement Thursday morning.
Byron is the current NASCAR Camping World Truck Series points leader. He has posted a rookie record five NCWTS victories this season.
“William is a special person and a special talent,” said Rick Hendrick, owner of Hendrick Motorsports. “It’s been impressive to watch him come up through the ranks and have success at every level. What he’s already accomplished this season has been remarkable. On top of all his ability, he’s a terrific young man from a great family, and we think he has a very bright future with our organization.”
Byron was crowned NASCAR K&N Pro Series East champion in 2015, when he posted four wins, three pole positions, five top-five finishes and 11 top-10s. In 14 events, the Charlotte, North Carolina, native led 740 of the season’s 1,730 total laps (43 percent). Through just 13 races this year, he has earned NCWTS victories at Kansas, Texas, Iowa, Kentucky and Pocono.
“Even before I started racing, it was a dream of mine to drive for Hendrick Motorsports,” Byron said. “I have so much respect for the way Mr. Hendrick supports his people and encourages everyone to work together. This is the biggest announcement and biggest opportunity of my life, and I will do everything I can to make the most of it. I’m proud to be part of this team.”
In 2017, Byron will drive for JR Motorsports, which won the 2014 XFINITY Series championship, placed second in 2015 and currently leads the 2016 standings. He is familiar with the organization -- owned by Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kelley Earnhardt Miller and Hendrick -- after winning two races while competing for JRM’s late model program in 2014 and 2015. It marked Byron’s first experience racing full-sized stock cars.
“I owe so much to Dale Jr. and everyone at JRM for taking a chance on me in 2014,” Byron said. “Looking back, I know none of this would’ve happened without that opportunity. I was there during Chase Elliott’s championship season and got to learn a lot. I know what they’re capable of, and I’m going to work really hard for them.”
Byron, 18, graduated as an honor roll student from Charlotte Country Day School on May 27. He is enrolled as a freshman at Liberty University, where he will take classes during the fall semester while racing full-time in the remaining 10 NCWTS events.Briton, 44, detained in Sparkhill after Spain issued European arrest warrant for six people believed to have links with Isis
A 44-year-old man has been arrested in Birmingham on suspicion of terrorism offences after Spain issued a European arrest warrant for six people believed to be members of Islamic State.
West Midlands counter-terrorism unit arrested the man at a property in Sparkhill in the early hours of Wednesday in relation to a Spanish investigation into online propaganda material.
Spain’s interior ministry said the British man was an imam subscribing to Salafism, an ultra-conservative form of Islam. He is said to have been wanted by several countries and is believed to have led the group. Four people have been arrested on the Spanish island of Mallorca and another person in Germany, the ministry said.
The police investigation began in 2015 when officers discovered videos promoted by the British imam that documented the recruitment, indoctrination and journey to Syria of a young Muslim resident in Spain, according to the ministry’s statement.
The ministry alleges that the cell devised and circulated videos with violent content and organised secret weekly meetings to recruit young people to travel to conflict zones to fight.
The imam is accused of being the producer of films for the cell, which is believed to have been based in Mallorca. He is alleged to have recently travelled to the Spanish island to meet the four Spain-based men to discuss indoctrinating others.
He is due to appear at Westminster magistrates court on Wednesday.
The man arrested in Germany allegedly had contact with the others and had taken part in recruitment videos made by the group, the ministry said.
Since Spain raised the security alert to level four – the second highest – in June 2015, Spanish police have arrested 178 people accused of links to Islamist militancy.
In the UK, where the threat level is also the second highest – “severe” – there were a record 304 terrorism arrests in the 12 months to March, the highest number since 9/11.
Police forces from Spain, Germany and the UK cooperated using European Union agencies – Europol, Eurojust and Sirene - set up to help share information related to fighting crime within member states.
Concerns have been raised about the degree of access British police forces will have to European databases after the UK leaves the EU, potentially jeopardising pan-European anti-terror investigations.We detail a five-stage protocol to address physical barriers and experimental limitations that have hindered routine pathogen monitoring of wild rats in urban settings. New York City potentially harbors from 2 to 32 million rats among its 8-million people. However, at a time, when people are most vulnerable to disease from over-crowdedness brought on by increased urbanization of society, the difficulty of studying wild rats has led to a paucity of ecological and epidemiological research. Challenges of safely handling animals and the difficulties of identifying individual animals and the emergence of their respective pathogen loads (timing of infection) have impeded progress. We previously reported a method using radio frequency identification paired with load cell and camera traps to enable the identification of individual animals and subsequent monitoring of the animals’ weights (an indicator of health). However, efficient pathogen surveillance requires repeated captures of the same individual in order to isolate and document the emergence of new pathogens, or variations in pathogen load, over time. Most of these barriers are now addressed in our protocol, which is aided by the use of a mobile, outdoor laboratory, followed by incorporation of pheromone-based lures to attract individuals back to active sensors, within a camera trap. This approach allows for the assessment of individual animal health, behaviors under camera, and changing pathogen loads and weights in most urban environments (e.g., financial district, docks, sewers, and residential). Five phases are described and presented: (1) site selection and urban trapping, (2) anesthetization, (3) serological and ectoparasite collection, (4) microchip implantation, and (5) retrapping and luring animals back to active remote sensors. In order to fulfill the unmet call for preemptive pathogen surveillance, public health officials and researchers may wish to adapt, or modify, similar protocols to ensure early detection and monitoring of rat-borne zoonoses, before they become problematic.
Introduction
Seventy-five percent of the world’s human population is expected to live in urban settings by 2050. With the average rate of population growth in urban cities almost twice as high as the overall growth rate (1), people are becoming more densely crowded in smaller spaces where they are more vulnerable to fires, diseases from fouled water and food supplies, and insects and other arthropods that thrive in city spaces (2). The primary vector of many hazards that urban people encounter is directly, or indirectly, related to urban rodents. As urban commensal rats, rats are associated with human population density, sanitation, and hygiene, and as we grow in number and production of refuse, their numbers proliferate. These species cost the U.S. economy $19 billion per year from food loss, infrastructure damage, and disease (3). As urbanization continues, it is essential that ecological monitoring and preemptive disease–pathogen surveillance become routine, robust, and spatially replicated. Yet, the difficulties of studying rodents in the urban environment have thwarted ecologists and health professionals for decades (4), despite our density-dependent vulnerabilities (2) and strong calls for preemptive pathogen surveillance (5).
It would be inappropriate to address the physical barriers to research without first acknowledging the complex social issues that influence urban rat studies. Rats are associated with filth, disease, and poverty (6) and are often vilified in the popular culture. Infestation can lead to heavy fines, damaged reputations, and even the closing of commercial business by municipal authorities. Conversely, homeowners and especially businesses may be less likely to share knowledge about their rat infestations with researchers who urgently need to gain access to these potential study sites in order to document the extent of infestation along with risks of infection and disease. The unique challenge of finding accessible urban study sites has been depicted by the ironic, but familiar, phrase “in a city of 32 million rats, no one has any.”
Conversely, it has been suggested that in New York |
, calls for no non-state armed forces to occupy positions south of Lebanon’s Litani River.
According to the HLMG, the United Nations force understands Resolution 1701 “in a very narrow sense with regards to the authority to search for weapons in Lebanon and curtail the activity of armed groups.”
A new and improved mandate is required to address the situation
Israel, and now the HLMG, argue that this mandate should be interpreted more broadly, which would allow UNIFIL to curb Hezbollah’s efforts to prepare for war by actively preventing the terror group from possessing weapons south of the Litani, with force if necessary.
“A new and improved mandate is required to address the situation,” according to the report.
What else can be done?
Beyond granting UNIFIL broader powers, the High Level Military Group offers scant advice for preventing a future conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.
What advice is offered is relatively vague, with no specifics to implement or mention of its feasibility. The main recommendation is to address not Hezbollah, but its patron.
“The international community must take actions to curtail Iran’s activities, raise the cost of its behavior and engage in efforts at deterrence,” the group wrote.
In terms of Hezbollah specifically, the High Level Military Group calls for Western nations to cease distinguishing the terror group’s political and terrorist wings.
The international community must take actions to curtail Iran’s activities
The former generals and defense officials also encourage the United States to make any future aid arrangements with Lebanon contingent “on a plan to strip Hezbollah of its de facto status as the leading force in the country.”
More generally, the HLMG calls for the West to “strongly support Israel in its efforts to de-escalate the tensions.”Last Stock Legends is a group of Smashers of various generations who are all part of the process of uncovering some of the most important/crucial things of Melee’s history. The DC++ era was ended by the YouTube era, and that was replaced by Twitch. However, there are moments, matches, people from years past that need to be brought back up to the forefront and the collective conscious of the Melee scene. The rivalries that exist now, the heroes and villains we have now, the events we venerate, they all have a history that needs to be discussed and Last Stock Legends is looking at starting the conversation back up.
Why is the story important?
There is a disconnect between so many players from various generations in Melee. So many players/spectators now will talk about Armada and Mango and their matches...but have never seen the sets from Genesis 1 and 2. People know about PPMD and Hbox meeting often, but sets from RoM 2, HERB 3 and Pound V escape them. So many revere Ken, Isai, Azen, ChuDat, PC Chris after the documentary, but what matches propelled them to the forefront of the Melee psyche?
In addition, no match, no set, no event is relegated to just an instant. What was going through Zhu’s mind during the Wombo Combo? How has the legacy of that YouTube video been carried on? What was Hungrybox thinking at Pound V when Armada revealed the Young Link counterpick for the very first time? Bombsoldier’s sets with Ken spawned a generation of aspiring Falco mains here in the United States, how did it affect Japan and its scene? These are the questions that some have asked. These are the questions we want to answer.
The Stories:
At this moment, there are about 90 stories we want to tell. We know that some of these we may pass on, or other ones that may be added. At the same time, it isn’t just about matches, it’s about things that changed the landscape of Melee, and by proxy, all of Smash. We can talk combo videos, tournaments, even things like DC++ and Smashboards. However, we want to do an initial run of 7 stories:
SS/Tang vs Zhu/Lucky from Zhu’s perspective (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A60AjGrwEyo)
Tang vs Lunin from the perspective of HMW and Phil (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYnz-CsHmdk)
Ken vs Bombsoldier from the perspective of Toph (on behalf of the Japanese SSBM community) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-kPc0EL9sU)
Darkrain vs Cactuar from the perspective of Cactuar (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynjeIlBAIGM)
Mango vs Armada from the perspective of both Mango and Armada (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkF4KuDiRRs)
Bach (The growth of media as a community norm)
Voter's Choice: We wanted to do something special, and that is give all who donate $10 or more a voice in this. Prog threw a dart and it landed on Revival of Melee 3. So, what set do you want to know more about?
Mango vs Kage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb5ZE-HxVBE)
or
PPMD vs M2K (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt7BEfVS8v8)
or
PPMD vs Kirbykaze (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6WbV2Mm4e4)
How will we use the money?
The team is a fan of being transparent with how we spend it. Right now, the kickstarter is asking for the barebones of the project.
Digital archaeology isn’t just about uncovering stories. We are lucky enough to get our hands on some footage from Bach. Some haven’t been seen since recording, but all of it is a treasured part of our community’s past: MLG events, regionals and majors that are whispers on the lips of veterans, even a trip to Japan. We’d love to present these to the world, with your help.
As you can see, this is extremely barebones, we’re just collecting funds to get to the places, get a roof over our heads, rent all necessary gear, grab the footage, so on and so forth. We want to do this more than once, and if you guys like it enough, we definitely will. However, if you want to support us, well, the Kickstarter is here and if you missed out, we’ll have more details later on how you can support the squad.
The LSL Team:Iran has three main crossings with the Kurdish region; Haji Omaran (in Erbil Province), Parwezkhan, and Bashmaq (AFP/File)
Iran on Sunday shut a main border crossing with northern Iraq’s Kurdish region amid tension over last month’s independence referendum.
“Iranian authorities have closed the crossing near al-Sulaimaniyah province,” Ali Tawfiq, director of the terminal, told reporters.
He said no reason has been cited for the Iranian move.
“The closure has halted the movement of goods and people into and from the Kurdish region,” Tawfiq added.
Iran has three main crossings with the Kurdish region; Haji Omaran (in Erbil Province), Parwezkhan, and Bashmaq.
On Sept. 25, Iraqis in areas held by the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) -- and in several areas disputed between Baghdad and Erbil -- voted on whether or not to declare independence from Iraq.
According to results announced by the KRG, almost 93 percent of those who cast ballots voted in favor of independence.
The referendum had faced sharp opposition from most regional and international actors (including the U.S., Turkey, and Iran), who had warned that the poll would distract from Iraq’s ongoing fight against terrorism and further destabilize the region.
In the immediate aftermath of the referendum, Baghdad banned international flights from entering KRG-controlled areas and closed all foreign diplomatic missions based in the Kurdish region.
Last month, Iranian authorities announced the closure of its airspace with the Kurdish region at a request from the Iraqi government.
This article has been adapted from its original source.FOXBORO, Mass. — The Razorbacks are the new Scarlet Knights.
New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick’s well-known infatuation with Rutgers players has in recent years morphed into an affinity for University of Arkansas products.
Since 2011, the Patriots have drafted five former Arkansas players, the most of any school. They selected quarterback Ryan Mallett in the third round in 2011, defensive end Jake Bequette in the third in 2012, defensive end Trey Flowers in the fourth in 2015, tight end A.J. Derby in the sixth in 2015 and defensive end Deatrich Wise in the fourth last month.
What’s more, New England also signed two more ex-Razorbacks as undrafted free agents this year, scooping up linebacker Brooks Ellis and wide receiver Cody Hollister.
Why have the Patriots plucked so many players out of Fayetteville? Wise could only speculate, but he pointed to the similarities between how Belichick and Arkansas head coach Bret Bielema run their respective programs.
“(There are a lot of similarities) between the program here and the program in college,” Wise said Thursday at Gillette Stadium. “They both teach mental toughness. They both teach things that pretty much transfer over to the league — how to take care of your body, mental and physical toughness.
“The terminology is kind of similar, and just how they run their whole program. From the top to the bottom, show everybody respect. I don’t care if it’s a CEO, a GM, a head coach or a janitor or cafeteria lady. Show everybody respect. That’s what Arkansas taught me, and that’s exactly what I’m learning here, as well.”
Patriots director of player personnel Nick Caserio commended Bielema’s work in a post-draft news conference after New England selected Wise.
“(Wise) played in a good program,” Caserio said. “Coach Bielema does an outstanding job, a lot of respect for his program and the players that they put out. Trey Flowers is a good example.”
Flowers, who led the Patriots in sacks last season and had a monster game in Super Bowl LI, has enjoyed by far the most NFL success of any of the players listed above. Mallett currently is backing up Joe Flacco in Baltimore after failing to earn the starting job in Houston. Derby was traded to Denver last season. Bequette is out of the league.
Regardless, Wise said he’s proud to have played for a school that has produced so many future Patriots.
“It’s a sense of pride, because it shows what Arkansas does for their players,” he said. “It shows Arkansas holds itself to a high standard, and it’s exactly what the Patriots look for in their players.”
As a fourth-round pick, Wise is a lock to make the roster as a rookie. Ellis and Hollister have much more difficult paths ahead of them.
“Those guys are working hard, definitely,” Wise said of his former college teammates. “Brooks … we learn from each other. He’s running, I’m running. We’re running plays. He’s still my middle linebacker, so we still communicate. It’s awesome seeing how he works. Very smart athlete.
“Cody, on the other hand, when I do see him work, he’s also working very hard. I always see him talking to the older players. I always see him doing extra drills, him and his brother (tight end Jacob Hollister) studying playbooks. Both smart players, both work hard, and I’m looking forward to them in the future.”
Thumbnail photo via Nelson Chenault/USA TODAY Sports ImagesTrees once covered almost the entire eastern seaboard of the U.S. Vast forests supported a rich ecosystem, including flocks of the extinct passenger pigeon big enough to blot out the sun. But by the 1920s at least half of this forest was gone—a victim of tree-clearing for farming, forestry or fossil-fuel extraction.
Then, the forest rebounded for several decades as once-farmed fields were left fallow. But a new study reveals that since the 1970s eastern forests have begun to diminish again; roughly 3.7 million hectares of forested land—an area larger than the state of Maryland—have been transformed into subdivisions, tree plantations and lunar-esque landscapes resulting from mountaintop removal mining. In fact, the latter activity alone eliminated 420,000 hectares of woodlands in the past two decades.
"Human land use is a primary driver of environmental change," says geographer Mark Drummond of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), who collaborated on the study in the April issue of BioScience with USGS Earth observation scientist Thomas Loveland. "The cumulative footprint of human activities on the land surface is causing a significant net decline in forest cover."
Suburban sprawl was the leading cause of the forest's recent retreat in much of the east. The megalopolis that stretches from Boston to Washington, D.C., has grown in extent by 90 percent since 1970, resulting in the cutting of 1.9 million hectares of trees. The southern coastal plain, northeastern highland and the Piedmont—the hilly region between the coastal plains and the Appalachian Mountains stretching from New Jersey into Georgia and Alabama—lost the most forest cover.
That's bad news for the wildlife that had rebounded along with the woods. It also means that the newly lost trees are not incorporating more carbon dioxide—the most common greenhouse gas changing the climate. Since the early 20th century U.S. forests had been soaking up extra CO2, and this timberland was expected to play a role as an "offset" for greenhouse gas emissions from other sources (like the coal-fired power plants burning through the products of mountaintop removal mining) in any legislation to combat climate change, such as the bill currently being written in the U.S. Senate. "Over the past 30 years, the strength of the carbon sink may have decreased by as much as two thirds in some eco-regions of the east," the USGS researchers wrote.
"We need to improve our understanding of how the U.S. landscape is changing as a result of human activities," Drummond says. "The amount of decline in carbon sequestration is still being examined."
The USGS scientists used Landsat satellite data since 1972, combined with field visits, to more precisely estimate forest cover in the 162 million hectares of the eastern U.S. Previous efforts from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and U.S. Department of Agriculture had found that forested areas in the eastern U.S. were still expanding overall, if only marginally, based on estimates.
Nor is this trend confined to the eastern U.S. Whereas FAO figures note that deforestation may be slowing globally—from 16 million hectares a year in the 1990s to 13 million hectares per year in the 2000s—that trend may have stopped or reversed in the developed world. "The recent declines in eastern forest cover that we are seeing may herald similar trends elsewhere, in other regions or nations," Drummond says. "We see net forest declines in the west and areas of the south-central U.S. caused by land-use change."German outfit Tomarni has developed a new drug designed to make you better at gaming.
FpsBrain was created with help from Free University Berlin. The capsules are said to accelerate neural processes, heighten perception and improve reactions.
For EUR 19.90 you get 60 capsules. And a quick glance at the ingredients (the recipe has been approved by German law) reveals it contains amino acids, vitamins and other harmless-sounding things. Could be naughty. We're no chemist.
Essentially FpsBrain is a coffee, guarana or Berocca replacement you can pop in your daily routine to wake up a bit and pay more attention.
Tomarni staff take it four times a week so it must be safe, and they used to make computers for professional gamers. Explains choosing gamers over an office, health or university audience.
"The alertness and mental clarity I get from FpsBrain helps me to maximize my gaming performance with every move!" declared user Craig W. from Toronto.
And, if you don't like it, you can always claim your 110 per cent money back guarantee.
Shuffle nervously to the FpsBrain website to find out more.Neighborhoods once rundown now Indy's hottest Copyright by WISH - All rights reserved Video
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Real estate agents say the housing market in and around downtown Indianapolis is booming in a way they have not seen since before the housing crisis.
24-Hour News 8 spoke with the Metropolitan Indianapolis Board of Realtors about the hottest neighborhoods in Indianapolis this year.
One agent said the fastest growing neighborhood in Indianapolis is the Holy Cross neighborhood just east of downtown Indianapolis. A few years ago, the area off New York Street wasn't on anyone's radar. Many of the houses were rundown or vacant. But now buyers are now craving an urban lifestyle, and moving to historic districts. Not just in Holy Cross, but all across the city.
Mary Joe Showley has been a real estate agent in Indianapolis since 1986. She used to live in the Herron Morton neighborhood back in the 1960s. Showley remembers the area being very rough at that time. Now, she's seeing a complete turnaround.
Showley showed 24-Hour News 8 a two-bedroom home near 16th and Delaware.
Copyright by WISH - All rights reserved Two homes in the Herron Morton neighborhood. The gray home is boarded up, while the blue home undergoes renovations.
Copyright by WISH - All rights reserved Two homes in the Herron Morton neighborhood. The gray home is boarded up, while the blue home undergoes renovations.
"The house was on the market when the boom went down, and we couldn't sell it. For anything," said real estate agent Mary Jo Showley.
The home sat on the market for more than two years before the owners gave up and leased it. When they tried again this year and put it back on the market Showley had 32 showings in 13 days. Showley sold the home for $249,000. She said that's no longer unusual.
"It happened about a month ago. I mean, one week I had four offers on listings," said Showely, " The homes spend days on the market. Under 30 days, many of them."
According to MIBOR data, Marion County home sales are up 21 percent from last year, selling at prices 5.5 percent higher. Showley said the Holy Cross neighborhood is becoming especially popular recently.
"A condo was on the market one day and it sold. And then that person bought another listing that I had down the street," said Showley.
The Holy Cross neighborhood features several businesses like FLAT 12 Bierwerks and Smoking Goose Eatery, which draw younger people to the area.
"This market is being driven, just like everybody predicted, with the millennials followed by the baby boomers," said Showley.
Showley says the demand for downtown housing is so high, rents cost more than mortgages.
"Interest rates are lowest in 40 years. It doesn't make any sense, unless you absolutely cannot buy," said Showley.
Copyright by WISH - All rights reserved The Holy Cross area is Indy's fastest growing area neighborhood, according to Mary Jo Showley.
Copyright by WISH - All rights reserved The Holy Cross area is Indy's fastest growing area neighborhood, according to Mary Jo Showley.
So millennials are opting to buy homes in historic neighborhoods.
Daniel Tolliver owns D.A.T. Painting and Wall Coverings. His business is reaping the benefit of the boom in historic housing.
"That first week we had warm weather phones started ringing off the hook," said Tolliver.
Tolliver and others like him are bringing vacant or rundown homes back to life.
"Every time I turn around another house is being built, or another house is being remodeled or another house is being painted," said Tolliver.
With each home, once-forgotten neighborhoods make their comeback. Neither Tolliver nor Showley see the growth stopping anytime soon.
MIBOR and Showley said in addition to Holy Cross and Herron Morton, Bates Hendricks, Fountain Square and Fletcher Place make up 2015's hottest neighborhoods.Right before hitting publish on Bill McKibben’s invitation to take part in an ambitious global satellite art project, this incredible graffiti art video arrived from Barcelona…Before reading on, we suggest giving it a watch!
We need help from artists–we need them to help with an artwork bigger than humans have ever built before, the first global-scale group show. It's going to be slightly wild, and very beautiful.
Details in a moment, but first the rationale:
Sometimes the work of artists is to remind us of things we've forgotten, things we know in our bones but that slip our minds. In this case, it's the fact that we live on a planet.
Yes, in a house. Yes, in a town in a country. But most of all on a planet–something that's a little too big for most of us to think about every day. But not, as it turns out, too big for us to destroy. The pictures rolling in this summer from Pakistan, Russia, and Greenland make it abundantly clear that we're drowning, burning, and melting this earth–all because we're pouring vast quantities of carbon into the atmosphere. As best we can tell right now, global warming is how human civilization runs itself on to the rocks–but it's not too late (maybe) to change that outcome.
So we're building a movement to fight back. There are scientists involved in that movement (they've given us the banner under which we rally, by pointing out that 350 parts per million C02 is the most we can have in the atmosphere if we want a planet "similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.") We have engineers and economists taking part (they've explained in great detail how we can make the transition to a world that doesn't run on fossil fuel). And we have huge numbers of us ordinary citizens–last October they put together the most widespread political rally in the planet's history, 5200 separate demonstrations in 181 countries. (You can watch a video of the day here, and sign up here for something similar this October 10: a massive Global Work Party on 10/10/10.)
But we haven't won yet. The power of the great fossil fuel companies is unbroken. They make more money than any industry in human history, and so far that's been enough to delay real action. So we need to reach past people's heads to their hearts, and that's where art comes in. Environmentalists have traditionally been more comfortable with the side of the brain that likes bar graphs; we need to engage the rest of our souls in the service of this movement.
So, on November 27 (the opening weekend of the UN Climate Meetings in Cancun, Mexico), in 20 places around the world, we'll be gathering huge numbers of people–thousands at a time. Some will be in deserts, some on snowfields, some wading out into warm lagoons–anyplace with a good background. They will use their bodies to make giant images. And our good friends at Digital Globe Satellite will take their pictures from outer space.
Masses of human bodies are a relatively new medium with which to make art. But we've done a little bit of it before, enough to know how powerful it can be. Here's a small piece our friend John Quigley (Spectral Q) arranged one year at climate demonstrations in Poland.
And here's a more complicated piece that our friend Daniel Dancer did in the Netherlands with 5,000 schoolkids.
You'll notice that all these images have a 350 in them–we need to get that number across. But we need artists to come up with the images that will help galvanize attention, help explain the crisis we face, the beauty that's at risk. They need to be simple enough that you can make them with humans and easy materials. Which means that, at some level, artistic vision needs to be bent a little to the practicalities and politics at hand.
For instance, Alexis Rockman is a knockout painter–here's one of his giant canvases. And Mark Dion his powerful work has been shown at MOMA and the Tate. Both of them have generously provided us sketches that we can transform into giant human works of art. They need, obviously, to be simple–simple enough to execute, simple enough to connect. And we don't need just world-famous artists: we need local artists deeply connected with their place and their neighbors, who can imagine images that will also make sense to the whole planet.
Here's a set of more technical guidelines to spur your imagination: www.350.org/earth Most of us who do this work, me included, are volunteers. So although we can't compensate artists monetarily, we may be able to provide the materials they need to realize their climate design as well as provide fantastic international media exposure for their climate artwork. And of course, we're extremely eager to hear from people who want to, literally, put their bodies on the line to help create these art pieces that will be captured from satellites orbiting high above the earth.
A movement takes many things, from people willing to call their Congressmen to people willing to go to jail. But it also–maybe most of all–requires people who can help us see the new world we're trying to build. Some of those people we call artists, and right now we need your help as never before. We have no guarantee we'll win the battle for the future–right now we're losing. But we're sure as hell going to put up a beauty of a fight.
Cross-posted from Grist.org & Treehugger.This is the middle model of the three models that Amazon is shipping this year: the Kindle Fire HD, the Kindle Fire HDX (this tablet), and the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9". This is the successor for last year's Kindle Fire HD but with an updated operating system and new features, a redesigned shell (with the power and volume control buttons more readily accessible), an absolutely amazing display, superb sound, an included power adapter, and the new Mayday feature.
Update: Some users are reporting a bluish glow around the edges of the screen for the HDX. If you search on YouTube for HDX Blue Haze, you can find a video showing the issue. Amazon has updated their "Learn More" link with the following info:
"To achieve the perfect color accuracy on Kindle Fire HDX 7" at the lowest possible battery consumption and device weight, we used blue, not white, LEDs. Blue LEDs allow for a much more accurate and rich representation of color and result in an up to 20% improvement in power efficiency."
"As a result of using these blue LEDs, you may notice a very narrow, faint blue tint around the edge of the device when looking at items with a white background, such as books or web pages. All displays have some level of light emission around the edges, and the light on the Kindle Fire HDX 7" is blue due to the technology used to render perfect color accuracy."
If this is something that you think would bother you, I'd recommend taking a look at the YouTube video or taking a look at the HDX at a local Best Buy or office superstore. I've also uploaded a user image here of my HDX with a book loaded so that you can see the blue glow (http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/product-gallery/B00DOPNO4M/).
The Amazon tablets are primarily content consumption devices, best suited for connecting to the Amazon ecosystem, including videos, music, books, apps, and so on. With the free Prime trial subscription, you can check out the Prime Instant Video options and watch movies and shows at no charge for 30 days. For videos, music, and books, the Amazon selection is at or near the top of the list; for apps, much less so. 90% of the top 100 apps are available on Amazon.com, as well as 100,000 others, but that's only a small fraction of what is available with Google or Apple.
It's not quite as bad as it sounds because, while the competition has ten times as many apps, most of those apps are, um... how shall I put this... less than stellar (look up Sturgeon's Law). If there are specific apps you need or want, you definitely should double-check before purchasing to make sure that they are available. The apps that will likely never become available on the Kindle Fire ecosystem are those apps that require Google services (i.e., anything that uses Google location services). One ameloriating factor is that it is possible to side-load most of the apps from the Google Play store onto an Amazon tablet and a web search on side-loading apps onto Kindle Fire will show dozens of websites with detailed instructions. If the app you are sideloading requires a Google service to work, though, it will not run on the Fire, even if you manage to successfully install it.
Like the other Kindle Fire tablets, as well as the Apple iPad and the Google Nexus, the Kindle tablet line doesn't have a micro-SD slot, so the assumption is that you're consuming content from the cloud. This is fine when you're using your tablet with wifi; not so good when you're traveling and want to load up your tablet with content for the trip. If the latter is something you expect to do regularly, you might want to consider the 32GB or 64GB versions, or pay the additional price for the 4G version, which is available on the 7" tablet for the first time. Also, if all of your content is on iTunes or on Google Play, you would have to side-load everything onto the tablet. As is true of Apple and Google tablets, there's no way to automatically connect to the cloud storage of the competition.
Something new this year is the ability to download Prime Instant Videos. I verified that I can download Prime Instant Videos to my Kindle Fire HDX. However, that option is not available for all movies and TV shows. It looks like they had to get the permission of the studios and not all of them said yes. So, for example, I was able to download "Casablanca" but not able to download "The Avengers" even though both are part of the Prime Instant Video collection and both are available for free streaming.
Update: Adding a bit from a reply in the comments: Amazon is clearly looking at the Enterprise market with this launch, at least based on the details they provide. They've added full accessibility support (required in order to get government contracts), will be bringing support for VPN and business printing, have a better email client with tighter integration to Exchange, and are including OfficeSuite for productivity. There are other productivity tools available in their app store, as well, although both Google and Apple, particularly the latter, have more options. When VPN support arrives, I'll definitely be taking a look, as it would be nice to not have to lug my laptop home every night.
So how does this Kindle Fire HDX differ from the previous generation Kindle Fire HD?
Display: 1920x1200 (323 ppi) vs 1280x800 (216 ppi). It's more than that, though, as the colors are richer, brighter, with better contrast. This display has been judged by many reviewers as the best in its class and I would have to agree. Amazon has also added technology to automatically adjust the contrast and brightness when viewing the tablet in bright sunlight. While there is definitely a noticeable improvement, this isn't what you need for reading on the beach. For that, you'll need an eInk reader like the Kindle Paperwhite.
Sound: As far as I can tell, the sound is about the same. This was already one of the best-sounding tablets on the market, with Dolby stereo output and enough power to actually make it possible to listen to music or video without requiring headphones.
Size and Weight: Noticeably lighter (10.7 oz vs. 13.9 oz) and noticeably smaller (7.3" x 5.0" x 0.35" vs. 7.6" x 5.4" x 0.4"). This is a comfortable tablet to hold one-handed, even for long periods of time.
Processor: It's a *lot* faster (2.2GHz quad-core, top-of-the-line CPU, compared to 1.2GHz dual-core). This tablet is amazingly fast and smooth, with the fastest processor in its class. Every game I've tried on it has run smoothly, with no hesitations, slowdowns, or glitches. Scrolling through content is amazingly smooth and fast now, without the hesitations and occasional slowdowns of the previous generations.
Build: A redesigned shell with power and volume control buttons that are easy to find! This is a solid build but the back of the shell is something of a fingerprint magnet. Since most of us will be buying a case to put the tablet in, that may not be an issue.
Camera: If there is a difference between last year's camera and this year's, I'm not able to see it. It's a high-def camera suitable for video-conferencing or Skype. Like last year's model, there is no rear camera. If this is important to you, you'll need the 8.9" version.
HDMI Output: This is the one area where last year's model wins. Amazon has removed the HDMI out connector from its tablet line (but see the description above for details on how Amazon is providing a software solution for sharing your tablet screen on your television). No other tablet that I'm aware of has this functionality so if this is something you need, you should be able to purchase one of last year's models fairly cheaply.
Battery Life: The same, at 11 hours. However, Amazon has added a special "reading mode" to the device, which they claim will extend the battery life to as much as 17 hours. I did not test this. For my own personal use, the battery life is adequate.
Price: It's more expensive ($229 vs. $199) but this year they include a power adapter, which was a $20 extra last year, so the actual difference in price is $10. For what you're getting, that price increase is definitely justified.
It has an updated OS and updated feature software (including the free unlimited Mayday customer support feature). The software updates include the ability to download some Prime Instant Videos to your device and watch them offline, enhanced accessibility, enhanced enterprise controls and features (so now it's better suited for office work), enhanced email client, enhanced parental controls, improved X-Ray features (now including lyrics for music, as well as additional information for both books and movies), integration with GoodReads (coming soon), and the like.
Where I noticed the biggest difference was the home screen. The default view is still the carousel but if you swipe upward, you'll see a more traditional icon view. The "Recommended for you" display on the home screen is now smaller and much less obtrusive (and it can be turned off in the settings). Amazon has also added multi-tasking of a sort, where swiping up from the bottom of the screen while you're in an app shows you the 20 most-recently-used items from your home screen, so you can quickly switch from one app to another without returning to the home screen.
There is also a left panel available on most screens (but not the home screen) and in some of the apps, with navigation links and settings to make it easier to navigate and control your tablet or to navigate within the app. If you tap the center of your display and then swipe left while you're reading a book, for example, you'll see a panel that shows you the table of contents, the About the Author link, the Sync to Furthest Page Read link, and so on.
The Kindle FreeTime option and the parental controls are still among the best in the business. If you want a tablet for a child and want to control what they can access, how long they can use the tablet at any given time, and the like, Amazon has you covered.
You can now also schedule "Quiet Time" on the tablet, where notification sounds and pop-up notifications are disabled, either on a temporary basis by simply pushing a button or on a scheduled basis. Frankly, I doubt I'll ever use this feature but if you're the type who likes to read or watch video until you fall asleep, it's kind of nice to be able to disable all sounds so that you don't get rudely awakened when, e.g., someone plays a new word in your Words with Friends game.
Mayday: This is a huge gamble by Amazon and it will be interesting to see whether it pays off. This isn't a feature for a techie like me and I didn't use it (although I was sorely tempted). From the commercials, it's pretty amazing, particularly that you can get a live chat in a matter of a minute or less (Amazon's goal is something like 15 seconds, I believe, although I can't help wondering what will happen on Christmas Day!). If you're thinking of getting a tablet for a technophobe, the addition of this feature may make the Kindle Fire HDX your best choice.
How does this tablet rank against the competition? There are really only two other tablets in its class currently: the Google Nexus 7 and the just-announced Apple iPad Mini with Retina Display.
Display: All three devices have retina displays, with the 7" HDX and the Nexus at 1920x1200 (323 ppi) and the 8" iPad Mini at 2048x1536 (326 ppi). All three displays are stunning. Amazon claims that it has enhanced the ability to read the display in bright sunlight, something that's a problem for all such devices. While this wouldn't be my first choice to read by the pool (I'd pick the Paperwhite), I can testify that it is easier to view the display in bright sunlight than its predecessors.
It's worth noting that the aspect ratio of the HDX and Nexus is 16:10 while the aspect ratio of the iPad Mini is 4:3. Where this matters is watching video. If you're watching an old television show, a 4:3 aspect ratio is fine. If you're watching a high-def movie, the 4:3 aspect ratio is going to leave large black bars on your screen and the video will be much more compressed than it would be on the HDX and Nexus. Apple chose to maintain backward compatibility with prior devices rather than moving up.
Sound: The HDX has Dolby Digital Surround Sound; the Nexus has Frauenhofer Surround Sound; the iPad Mini has stereo sound. The iPad Mini also makes the same mistake that Amazon made in its first-generation tablet: putting both speakers on the same side (in this case, at the bottom of the tablet). If you're watching a video, you'll have the tablet turned sideways and the sound will all come from the same side. The HDX, in contrast, has the speakers placed perfectly for video watching.
Networking: The HDX |
tax” on sugary drinks and foods.
Tam Fry, from the National Obesity Forum, said: "Fatness and inactivity are separate but related risk factors, which both increase mortality. So to have one or the other is always bad but to have both is critical."Bill Westenhofer is a visual effects supervisor for Rhythm and Hues Studios, for which he has worked since 1994. His hometown is Brookfield, Connecticut, where he graduated from Brookfield High School in 1986. He then earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Engineering from Bucknell University in 1990.[1] Westenhofer also received his Masters at School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at George Washington University in 1995, where he studied the use of dynamics in physically based animation.[2]
In 1994, he joined Rhythm & Hues as a technical director, and Westenhofer’s lighting and effects animation work was featured in Batman Forever and numerous commercials. He was promoted to CG supervisor for Speed 2: Cruise Control, and continued in that role for Spawn, Mouse Hunt, Kazaam and Waterworld.[3] His other VFX supervisor credits include Elf, The Rundown, Stuart Little 2, Men in Black II, Cats & Dogs, Along Came a Spider, Frequency, Stuart Little, and Babe: Pig in the City.
In 2005, Westenhofer supervised a team of 400 digital artists on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. Later he would win both the BAFTA and the Academy Award for the 2007 release The Golden Compass,[4] and 2012's Life of Pi in 2013.[5] During the Academy Awards, when Westenhofer brought up Rhythm and Hues' financial issues during his speech, the microphone was cut off, which prompted many protests by the visual effects industry.[6] He had intended to say:[7]
"What I was trying to say up there is that at a time when visual effects movies are dominating the box office, visual effects companies are struggling," Westenhofer told reporters. "And I wanted to point out that we aren't technicians. Visual effects is not just a commodity that's being done by people pushing buttons. We're artists, and if we don't find a way to fix the business model, we start to lose the artistry. If anything, 'Life of Pi' shows that we're artists and not just technicians."
Westenhofer also worked as VFX supervisor for Wonder Woman, released in June 2017.[8]
Appearances [ edit ]
Westenhofer was a keynote speaker at the 2015 Congress of Future Science and Technology Leaders.Reading, England-based Hibu, which has an office in Cedar Rapids, is cutting employees companywide.
Hibu, formerly known as Yellow Book, would not reveal specifics on the number of jobs to be eliminated at the Cedar Rapids location or total reduction numbers. Calls made to the Cedar Rapids office were not immediately returned.
The directories and digital marketing provider has offices in the UK, United States, Spain, Argentina, Chile and Peru, and has operations in India and the Philippines.
The company, which began transitioning to a new group holding company held privately by lenders last year, announced a change in leadership in March, naming a new chairman and CEO
Hibu spokesman Andrew Spybey said by telephone from Reading that the company has seen a decline in its printed directories' revenue, which has resulted in cuts to its work force as well as the cancellation of certain business initiatives.
According to Bloomberg News, Hibus earnings for the six months to September 2013 totaled 107 million pounds (approximately $177.78 million), which was 45 million pounds lower than the same period the previous year, and less than half the 231 million-pound figure the year before.
"Regrettably, as part of this process we anticipate a reduction in our overall work force, focused primarily in non-sales functions across our geographic operations," the company said in a statement. "Consultation and actions in this regard have commenced today. No further details are being announced at this time."
However, as recently as July 2013, Kevin Jasper, president of Hibu U.S. based in Cedar Rapids, said in an email that the company planned to expand and could add as many as 100 positions.
Today we have a team of nearly 1,000 people based out of our Cedar Rapids office in roles covering sales, customer service, website content writing, marketing, IT, accounting, human resources and various product fulfillment positions, Jasper wrote.
To further support our digital transformation, we have near-term plans to fill a range of key additional positions, clearly indicating the importance of Cedar Rapids to our future development.Colombia’s Interior minister on Monday stated that there is “no evidence” that the US government and paramilitaries from Colombia have incited violence in Venezuela.
Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro has accused the United States, Colombia’s extreme right, former President Alvaro Uribe and illegal paramilitary groups of orchestrating a plan to encourage social unrest in order to over throw the government.
Maduro made these claims last week when he said that authorities are “on maximum alert” over alleged US-approved plans to send paramilitary deaths squads from Colombia to carry out violent attacks in the joint border region.
“They want to infiltrate armed groups trained by Colombian paramilitaries because from the north has come the order to, in whichever way, destroy the homeland of [Simon] Bolivar,” the general who liberated Colombia and Venezuela from Spanish rule in the 19th century, Maduro said.
According to Maduro, the paramilitary force aims to “bring violence” to the border states of Zulia, Tachira and Apure
When refuting these claims, the Interior Minister Juan Fernando Cristo recalled the “friendly” relations that the Santos government currently has with Venezuela, even highlighting the offer the Colombian president made this week to “mediate between the government and the opposition to find a peaceful solution to the difficult situation in Venezuela.”
Since 2014, when the protests began in Venezuela, mediation has been delegated to the foreign ministries of Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador, as representatives of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR).
“We hope that Venezuela can finally overcome these difficult circumstances by means of dialogue,” said Cristo, for whom good relations with Caracas are further demonstrated by the dedication to “ensuring border security.”
In recent days the international community expressed concern over the arrest of opposition mayor of the metropolitan area of Caracas, Antonio Ledezma, who stands accused of involvement in a plot to destabilize the government of Maduro.
While Colombia’s conservative opposition has consistently expressed support for the Venezuelan opposition and has denounced human rights violations and alleged arbitrary detentions of opposition activists, President Juan Manuel Santos has tried to maintain quiet.
Former President Alvaro Uribe’s opposition to the government Chavez spurred the latter to shut down trade between the country, costing the Colombian treasury billions of dollars per year.
The trade stop caused major economic problems for the border communities of both countries.
However, after Maduro began restricting cross-border travel and trade over contraband allegations, and the economic and political situation in the neighboring country worsened, Bogota began raising concerns about human rights violations and the arrest of opposition politicians in Venezuela.
SourcesA woman is accused of stealing a bartender's fake teeth and attacking her in an apparent attempt to save her marriage.This all started when Caterina Froio-Chaput, 46, heard a rumor her husband was having an affair with the bartender, the Boston Herald reports. Froio-Chaput reportedly went to the bar to confront her husband.When the bartender asked her to leave, Froio-Chaput became violent. Police say she struck Susan Carlson in the face, pulled her hair and stole the false teeth out of the bartender's mouth before throwing a bottle at her, the Telegram reports Police arrived and demanded Froio-Chaput return the teeth, but she denied having them. The officer found the teeth inside Froio-Chaput's vest pocket and arrested her.Froio-Chaput claims Carlson planted the teeth on her. She also claims she was defending herself and the beer bottle fell during the commotion.Carlson denies having an affair with Froio-Chaput's husband. She claims they're just friends who've known each other for many years. Fru-Chaput's husband also denies the affair and said he loves his wife, who now faces charges of assault and battery with a deadly weapon.LOMÉ, Togo — Tens of thousands of people in the small West African nation of Togo have protested in the streets over the last three months, demanding term limits and the resignation of President Faure Gnassingbé, whose family has been in power for five decades.
Toting banners of “Faure must go” and “50 years of dictatorship are enough,” protesters have demonstrated repeatedly across the nation, even as heavily armed security forces have been deployed. Some demonstrations have led to deadly, tear gas-filled clashes with officers firing live rounds and beating protesters.
In two marches last month, 11 protesters were killed, 44 wounded and 55 arrested, organizers of the demonstrations said at a news conference. The minister of security said no one had died and only six arrests were made.
During a protest in September in Mango, a city in northern Togo, a 9-year-old boy was shot dead, according to Amnesty International, which said about 25 people were injured. In August, two protesters were killed in Togo, according to the group.Responsible drug use maximizes the benefits and reduces the risk of negative impact on the lives of both the user and others. For illegal psychoactive drugs that are not diverted prescription controlled substances, some critics[1][2] believe that illegal recreational use is inherently irresponsible, due to the unpredictable and unmonitored strength and purity of the drugs and the risks of addiction, infection, and other side effects.
Nevertheless, harm-reduction advocates claim that the user can be responsible by employing the same general principles applicable to the use of alcohol: avoiding hazardous situations, excessive doses, and hazardous combinations of drugs; avoiding injection; and not using drugs at the same time as activities that may be unsafe without a sober state.[3] Drug use can be thought of as an activity that can be simultaneously beneficial but risky, similar to driving a car, skiing, skydiving, surfing, or mountain climbing, the risks of which can be minimized by using caution and common sense. These advocates also point out that government action (or inaction) makes responsible drug use more difficult, such as by making drugs of known purity and strength unavailable.
Principles [ edit ]
Duncan and Gold argue that to use controlled and other drugs responsibly, a person must adhere to a list of principles.[4] They and others[5] argue that drug users must:
understanding and educating oneself on the effects, risks, side effects and legal status of the drug they are taking [5]
measuring accurate dosages, and take other precautions to reduce the risk of overdose when taking drugs where an overdose is possible
taking a small dose first when taking a new drug [ citation needed ]
if possible, chemically testing all drugs before use to determine their purity and strength
attempting to gain the most pure and high-quality drugs laced with no cutting agent at best [6] such as by buying on darknet markets [7] [8]
such as by buying on darknet markets using drugs only in relaxed and responsible social situations as altered consciousness can be inappropriate in potentially dangerous or unknown settings.
avoiding driving, operating heavy machinery, or otherwise situate themselves directly or indirectly responsible for the safety or care of another person while intoxicated and discouraging persons from operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated
having a trip sitter (or "copilot") when taking hallucinogenic drugs
using recreational drugs in moderation, [9] setting reasonable limits on the consumption and not allowing drug use to overshadow other aspects of their life (i.e. financial and social responsibilities)
setting reasonable limits on the consumption and not allowing drug use to overshadow other aspects of their life (i.e. financial and social responsibilities) taking the smallest dose of a recreational drug that will produce the desired effects
avoiding mixing or combining drugs, especially unknown drugs and drugs with known dangerous interactions
not trusting someone else with the responsibility for your health and safety
knowing basic first-aid techniques and taking responsibility for applying them appropriately in cases of drug emergencies
avoiding the injection of drugs
recognizing that one's own drug-taking behavior and attitudes in the presence of others will influence others, especially children [10]
abstaining from drug use when inappropriate for reasons of health and physical fitness such as during pregnancy
respecting an individual's decision concerning drug use
providing alternatives of acceptable social-recreational behaviors within a group for others and avoiding drug use to become the only motivation or focus of the social situation
understanding the individuality of response [5]
being aware of the complex influences of set and setting on psychoactive drug experiences and acting accordingly
Some proposed ethical guidelines include:
never tricking or persuade anyone to use a drug
being morally conscious of the source of the drugs that a person is using
Duncan and Gold suggested that responsible drug use involves responsibility in three areas: situational responsibilities, health responsibilities, and safety-related responsibilities. Among situational responsibilities they included concerns over the possible situations in which drugs might be used legally. This includes the avoidance of hazardous situations; not using when alone; nor using due to coercion or when the use of drugs itself is the sole reason for use. Health responsibilities include: avoidance of excessive doses or hazardous combinations of drugs; awareness of possible health consequences of drug use; avoiding drug-using behaviors than can potentially lead to addiction; and not using a drug recreationally during periods of excessive stress. Safety-related responsibilities include: using the smallest dose necessary to achieve the desired effects; using only in relaxed settings with supportive companions; avoiding the use of drugs by injection; and not using drugs while performing complex tasks or those where the drug might impair one's ability to function safely.
Responsible drug use is emphasized as a primary prevention technique in harm-reduction drug policies. Harm-reduction policies were popularized in the late 1980s although they began in the 1970s counter-culture where users were distributed cartoons explaining responsible drug use and consequences of irresponsible drug use.[11]
Criticism and counterarguments [ edit ]
Health and social consequences [ edit ]
Drug use and users are often not considered socially acceptable; they are often marginalized socially and economically.[12]
Drug use may affect work performance; however, drug testing should not be necessary if this is so, as a user's work performance would be observably deficient, and be grounds in itself for dismissal. In the case of discriminate use of amphetamine, similar drugs and some other stimulants, work capacity actually increases, which in itself raises additional ethical considerations.[13][14]
Illegality [ edit ]
Illegality causes supply problems, and artificially raises prices. The price of the drug soars far above the production and transportation costs. Purity and potency of many drugs is difficult to assess, as the drugs are illegal. Unscrupulous and unregulated middle men are drawn, by profit, into the industry of these valuable commodities. This directly affects the users ability to obtain and use the drugs safely. Drug dosaging with varying purity is problematic. Drug purchasing is problematic, forcing the user to take avoidable risks. Profit motivation rewards illegal sellers adding a cutting agent to drugs, diluting them; when a user, expecting a low dose, procures "uncut" drugs, an overdose can result.
The morality of buying certain illegal drugs is also questioned given that the trade in cocaine, for instance, has been estimated to cause 20,000 deaths a year in Colombia alone.[15] Increasing Western demand for cocaine causes several hundred thousand people to be displaced from their homes every year, indigenous people are enslaved to produce cocaine and people are killed by the land mines drug cartels place to protect their coca crops.[15] However, the majority of deaths currently caused by the illegal drug trade can only take place in a situation in which the drugs are illegal and some critics blame prohibition of drugs and not their consumption for the violence surrounding them.[16] The illegality of drugs in itself may also cause social and economic consequences for those using them, and legal regulation of drug production and distribution could alleviate these and other dangers of illegal drug use.[17]
Harm reduction [ edit ]
Harm reduction as applied to drug use began as a philosophy in the 1980s aiming to minimize HIV transmission between intravenous drug users. It also focused on condom usage to prevent the transmission of HIV through sexual contact.
Harm reduction worked so effectively that researchers and community policy makers adapted the theory to other diseases to which drug users were susceptible, such as Hepatitis C.
Harm reduction seeks to minimize the harms that can occur through the use of various drugs, whether legal (e.g. ethanol (alcohol), caffeine and nicotine), or illegal (e.g. heroin and cocaine). For example, people who inject illicit drugs can minimize harm to both themselves and members of the community through proper injecting technique, using new needles and syringes each time, and through proper disposal of all injecting equipment. Smoking a 700 mg tobacco cigarette or cannabis joint (with the attendant heat shock, carbon monoxide, and combustion toxins) can be avoided by serving individual 25 mg "single tokes" in a miniature pipe or using a vaporizer.
Other harm reduction methods have been implemented with drugs such as crack cocaine. In some cities, peer health advocates (Weeks, 2006) have participated in passing out clean crack pipe mouthpiece tips to minimize the risk of Hepatitis A, B and C and HIV due to sharing pipes while lips and mouth contain open sores. Also, a study by Bonkovsky and Mehta reported that, just like shared needles, the sharing of straws used to "snort" cocaine can spread blood diseases such as Hepatitis C.
The responsible user therefore minimizes the spread of blood-borne viruses such as hepatitis C and HIV in the wider community.
Supervised injection sites (SiS) [ edit ]
The provision of supervised injection sites, also referred to as safe injection sites, operates under the premise of harm reduction by providing the injection drug user with a clean space and clean materials such as needles, sterile water, alcohol swabs, and other items used for safe injection.
Vancouver, British Columbia[18] opened a SiS called Insite in its poorest neighbourhood, the Downtown Eastside. Insite was opened in 2003 and has dramatically reduced many harms associated with injection drug use. The research arm of the site,[18] run by The Centre of Excellence for HIV/AIDS has found that SiS leads to increases in people entering detox and addiction treatment without increasing drug-related crime. As well, it reduces the littering of drug paraphernalia (e.g., used needles) on the street and reduces the number of people injecting in public areas. The program is attracting the highest-risk users, which has led to less needle-sharing in the Downtown Eastside community, and in the 453 overdoses which occurred at the facility, health care staff have saved every person.
In the Netherlands, where drug use is considered a social and health-related issue and not a law-related one, the government has opened clinics where drug users may consume their substances in a safe, clean environment. Users are given access to clean needles and other paraphernalia, monitored by health officials and are given the ability to seek help from drug addiction.[19]
Due to the project's initial success in reducing mortality ratios and viral spread amongst injection drug users, other projects have been started in Switzerland, Germany, Spain, Australia, Canada and Norway. France, Denmark and Portugal are also considering similar actions.[citation needed]
On festivals [ edit ]
As drugs are very prevalent in festival culture more and more consider taking measures for responsible usage there.[20] Some festival organizers have chosen to provide services meant to inform about responsible drug use and testing drugs for the disposal of dangerously laced ones.[21][22] As a result, some have reported a significant reduction of the workload of festival's medics, welfare team and police officers.[21]
Organizations [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
General references
Notes
Further reading [ edit ]
Harm reduction [ edit ]
Responsible drug use websites [ edit ]Physicists pinpoint key property of material that both conducts and insulates
Vince Stricherz News and Information
It is well known to scientists that the three common phases of water – ice, liquid and vapor – can exist stably together only at a particular temperature and pressure, called the triple point.
Also well known is that the solid form of many materials can have numerous phases, but it is difficult to pinpoint the temperature and pressure for the points at which three solid phases can coexist stably.
Scientists now have made the first-ever accurate determination of a solid-state triple point in a substance called vanadium dioxide, which is known for switching rapidly – in as little as one 10-trillionth of a second – from an electrical insulator to a conductor, and thus could be useful in various technologies.
“These solid-state triple points are fiendishly difficult to study, essentially because the different shapes of the solid phases makes it hard for them to match up happily at their interfaces,” said David Cobden, a University of Washington physics professor.
“There are, in theory, many triple points hidden inside a solid, but they are very rarely probed.”
Cobden is the lead author of a paper describing the work, published Aug. 22 in Nature.
In 1959, researchers at Bell Laboratories discovered vanadium dioxide’s ability to rearrange electrons and shift from an insulator to a conductor, called a metal-insulator transition. Twenty years later it was discovered that there are two slightly different insulating phases.
The new research shows that those two insulating phases and the conducting phase in solid vanadium dioxide can coexist stably at 65 degrees Celsius, give or take a tenth of a degree (65 degrees C is equal to 149 degrees Fahrenheit).
To find that triple point, Cobden’s team stretched vanadium dioxide nanowires under a microscope. The team had to build an apparatus to stretch the tiny wires without breaking them, and it was the stretching that allowed the observation of the triple point, Cobden said.
It turned out that when the material manifested its triple point, no force was being applied – the wires were not being stretched or compressed.
The researchers originally set out simply to learn more about the phase transition and only gradually realized that the triple point was key to it, Cobden said. That process took several years, and then it took a couple more to design an experiment to pin down the triple point.
“No previous experiment was able to investigate the properties around the triple point,” he said.
He regards the work as “just a step, but a significant step” in understanding the metal-insulator transition in vanadium dioxide. That could lead to development of new types of electrical and optical switches, Cobden said, and similar experiments could lead to breakthroughs with other materials.
“If you don’t know the triple point, you don’t know the basic facts about this phase transition,” he said. “You will never be able to make use of the transition unless you understand it better.”
Co-authors are UW physics graduate students Jae Hyung Park, T. Serkan Kasirga and Zaiyao Fei; undergraduates Jim Coy and Scott Hunter; and postdoctoral researcher Chunming Huang. The work was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
###
For more information, contact Cobden at 206-543-2686 or cobden@uw.edu."The Lions is going to be a great series," said Australia coach Robbie Deans on Saturday after his weary players had pulled
"If you look at the games we have had with Wales this year [four wins in four tourniquet-tight Tests], that gives us an insight into what to expect."
But hopefully, from a British and Irish point of view, not an accurate indicator of the outcome.
Opta's autumn Home Nations XV 15 Leigh Halfpenny (Wales) 14 Sean Lamont (Scotland) 13 Manu Tuilagi (England) 12 Brad Barritt (England) 11 George North (Wales) 10 Jonathan Sexton (Ireland) 9 Mike Phillips (Wales) 1 Cian Healy (Ireland) 2 Richardt Strauss (Ireland) 3 Euan Murray (Scotland) 4 Joe Launchbury (England) 5 Geoff Parling (England) 6 Kelly Brown (Scotland) 7 Chris Robshaw (England) 8 Toby Faletau (Wales) Compiled from Opta Sports statistics for autumn Tests played against teams in world's top 12 (not Fiji). Players must have played at least two Tests.
If the home nations' autumn statement lacked conviction for much of the past month, there were at least belated signs of deficit reduction against the southern hemisphere's finest.
Ireland's "excellent" performance - Warren Gatland's description - against Argentina, Wales' agonising near-miss against the Wallabies, and most startlingly, a record all offered encouragement to Lions enthusiasts.
"It's obviously a great result for England, so I will be having a good look at that game," said head honcho Gatland as he assessed the current state of play.
"The autumn is always an indication but the Six Nations becomes very important now, not just for confidence, as players doing well with their individual teams will have a bearing."
- ex-England centre Jeremy Guscott, former Ireland hooker Keith Wood, ex-Scotland scrum-half Andy Nicol and Wales fly-half legend Jonathan Davies - to pick their Lions Test teams, assuming everyone is fit and available.
Here are their latest preferences now the first part of the international season is complete.
Jeremy Guscott's team: R Kearney (Ire), T Visser (Sco), B O'Driscoll (Ire), M Tuilagi (Eng), G North (Wal); J Sexton (Ire), D Care (Eng); C Healy (Ire), R Best (Ire), A Jones (Wal), R Gray (Sco), G Parling (Eng), T Croft (Eng), S Armitage (Eng), D Denton (Sco).
Keith Wood's team: L Halfpenny (Wal), T Bowe (Ire), M Tuilagi (Eng), B O Driscoll (Ire), G North (Wal); J Sexton (Ire), B Youngs (Eng); C Healy (Ire), R Best (Ire), A Jones (Wal), R Gray (Sco), C Lawes (Eng), S Ferris (Ire), S Warburton (Wal), S O'Brien (Ire).
Andy Nicol's team: A Goode (Eng), T Bowe (Ire), M Tuilagi (Eng), J Roberts (Wal), T Visser (Sco); J Sexton (Ire), B Youngs (Eng); G Jenkins (Wal), D Hartley (Eng), D Cole (Eng), R Gray (Sco), C Lawes (Eng), S Ferris (Ire), S O'Brien (Ire), T Faletau (Wal).
Jonathan Davies's team: R Kearney (Ire), T Bowe (Ire), J Davies (Wal), M Tuilagi (Eng), G North (Wal); J Sexton (Ire), D Care (Eng); C Healy (Ire), D Hartley (Eng), A Jones (Wal), J Launchbury (Eng), AW Jones (Wal), T Wood (Eng), S Warburton (Wal), B Morgan (Eng). * Updated 14:51 GMT Monday
Looking at our four pundits' selections, it is clear some players have made advances over the past four weeks, some have lost ground, while others who have not played because of injury remain favourites to confirm their places assuming they return to fitness and form.
The squad for the tour will be selected next spring, after the Six Nations.
BACK THREE
England full-back Alex Goode and Scotland wing Tim Visser have launched themselves into contention on the back of strong autumn performances.
Media playback is not supported on this device Autumn internationals: The best tries
The emergence of Goode, who impressed again against New Zealand as England's'sweeper' and alternative first receiver, could see him challenge Ireland's Rob Kearney and Leigh Halfpenny - a shining light in a dark autumn for Wales - for the number 15 jersey.
Chris Ashton belatedly reminded us he is still one of the best finishers when his radar sniffs a try-scoring pass, while Visser has joined Wales' George North and Alex Cuthbert among the power-packed wing options. A revived Tommy Bowe, a Lions star in South Africa, means he remains a strong bet for a similar role down under.
MIDFIELD
There is still confidence in Brian O'Driscoll's ability to force his way onto a fourth Lions tour, even though the great man may miss the entire Six Nations following shoulder surgery.
Manu Tuilagi, enjoying his best game for England (three sumptuous offloads, one try, and a hand in the other two) against New Zealand, revealed an artful side to complement his awesome power. Anyone who leaves Dan Carter and Richie McCaw grasping at fresh air in the same devastating burst demands attention.
Jonathan Davies remains a strong contender after his intelligence invigorated Wales' attack in their final two games but fellow Welshman Jamie Roberts, hampered by injury, needs a strong Six Nations to re-establish his claims.
HALF-BACKS
Ireland's Jonathan Sexton was the unanimous choice for the number 10 jersey a month ago and remains so, his virtuoso display against Argentina one of the autumn highlights.
Media playback is not supported on this device England 38-21 New Zealand highlights
Rhys Priestland at least recovered some of his poise against Australia, while Owen Farrell enjoyed a superb game for England, but the Irishman is the red-hot favourite.
At scrum-half, Wales' Mike Phillips - another leading Lion in South Africa - has fallen out of favour with our pundits. For the time being, it appears the two England scrum-halves, Ben Youngs and Danny Care, are in pole position for the number nine shirt.
FRONT ROW
A sluggish autumn from Gethin Jenkins, twice dropped by Wales, has seen Ireland's Cian Healy become favourite to land the loose-head Test berth, but Adam Jones remains the leading tight-head option, his autumn absence only serving to highlight his importance.
But England's scrummaging performances against the Springboks and All Blacks ensure that Dan Cole, Alex Corbisiero and the powerful Mako Vunipola also come into the reckoning.
Andrew Sheridan, loitering in France with Toulon, may yet be summoned for a third tour of duty if Gatland decides the scrum is a potential source of Wallaby weakness the Lions can exploit.
SECOND ROW
Richie Gray, despite suffering with the rest of the Scotland team, maintained his own form and remains the number one choice for three of our pundits.
Media playback is not supported on this device Archive: Late Australia try stuns Wales
With Alun Wyn Jones suffering an untimely injury that could curtail his Six Nations activity and fellow Welshman Ian Evans also sidelined of late, three Englishmen are pushing hard.
Courtney Lawes, despite a knee injury restricting him to the final 14 minutes of England's campaign, retains his supporters, but his absence allowed Joe Launchbury an opening. The 21-year-old's mobility, handling skills and set-piece prowess, plus 14 tackles against the All Blacks, cemented a remarkable rise for a player starting only his second Test.
Geoff Parling, unyielding in defence, is also presenting an under-stated case. He oversaw a virtually unblemished line-out against New Zealand, and took more throws (21) than any other player this autumn.
BACK ROW
A man-of-the-match display against the All Blacks can't do you any harm. Tom Wood was remorseless against the world champions, cranking up the breakdown pressure to help subdue more illustrious opponents.
With the likes of Stephen Ferris, Dan Lydiate and Tom Croft all yet to return from injury, the Englishman chose a good time to deliver a powerful selection statement.
Chris Robshaw's individual stats continue to stack up, but Gatland's stated preference for an out-and-out open-side specialist to counter the Wallabies' breakdown expertise suggests Sam Warburton remains in pole position after a strong finish to the autumn.
Steffon Armitage, ignored by England but tripping the light fantastic in Toulon, remains an intriguing alternative.Tuesday's LROC images were purely engineering tests, and this particular frame was part of a sequence specifically designed to check one of the NAC's settings. The engineering frames were acquired with only one-tenth the number of lines of a standard 52,224-line NAC frame to allow the full sequence to be acquired in one orbit. As an added bonus we captured this spectacular view of the lunar highlands northeast of Clavius crater. From 56 km altitude, small features such as fresh craters and boulders can be readily identified. Many hills in the highlands exhibit the so-called "tree bark" or "elephant skin" texture, which really stands out in this picture. "Tree bark" was first identified by lunar scientists analyzing Apollo-era photography during the 1970s, and its origin remains a mystery. As NAC images accumulate and more examples are revealed, scientists will delve into the processes that form this distinctive surface texture. You can browse the full-resolution version of this image below.From Pierson v. Pierson (Fla. Ct. App. Aug. 18, 2014) (some paragraph breaks added):
[T]he only evidence in this case that was presented below in support of the religious restriction pertained to one incident involving one of the three children. Because the evidence did not establish the harm necessary to award the mother ultimate religious decision-making authority and to restrict the father from “doing anything” in front of or around the children that “conflicts” with the Catholic religion, we reverse the amended judgment accordingly.
In the present case, while Dr. Chadik testified about what she was told regarding the parties’ oldest son’s behavior in one Sunday School class, she did not testify in her capacity as a psychotherapist. There was no evidence presented that Dr. Chadik or any other professional ever spoke to or evaluated the child. Nor was there any evidence presented that the parties’ two younger children were harmed by their exposure to the father’s religious beliefs or activities. While the mother’s concern that exposure to two different religions could confuse the children may be reasonable, neither that concern nor the evidence presented below established the requisite showing of harm to grant the mother ultimate religious decision-making authority for the children and to restrict the father from “doing anything in front of the children or around the children that … conflicts with the Catholic religion.” …
Restrictions upon a noncustodial parent’s right to expose his or her child to his or her religious beliefs have consistently been overturned in the absence of a clear, affirmative showing that the religious activities at issue will be harmful to the child…. “[A]lowing a court to choose one parent’s religious beliefs and practices over another’s, in the absence of a clear showing of harm to the child, would violate the [F]irst [A]mendment [of the United States Constitution].” …
In the amended judgment, the trial court noted Dr. Chadik’s testimony and found the “beginnings of a substantial emotional problem” in the parties’ oldest son, who was then nine years of age, as a result of “being immersed in and exposed to two religions simultaneously.” Based upon the “demonstrated harm,” the court ordered “shared parental responsibility” with the mother having the “ultimate” religious decision-making authority for the children. The court prohibited the father “from doing anything in front of the children or around the children that disparages or conflicts with the Catholic religion.” It also prohibited the mother from disparaging the father’s religious beliefs in front of the children….
When asked whether she was made aware of problems that the parties’ oldest son was having in Sunday School, she testified that the third grade Sunday School teacher reported to her about the child’s “behavior one day,” which included telling the teacher and students that the music they were listening to was wrong, that priests were bad, that he was going to grow up to be a Jehovah’s Witness minister, that the Bible they were using was wrong, and that there was no Heaven. When asked during the hearing if she had an objection to the father exposing the children to his beliefs, the mother expressed her concern that it was “confusing” for the children.
The parties have three minor children who were born in 2003, 2005, and 2009. While the parties’ marriage was intact, the children were raised in the mother’s religion of Catholicism. The mother petitioned for the dissolution of her marriage to the father in 2012. During the parties’ separation, the father became a Jehovah’s Witness. As a result, one of the issues to be decided in the proceedings was the children’s religious training following the dissolution.
[W]e agree with the father that the trial court abused its discretion in granting [the mother] … ultimate authority over the children’s religious upbringing and in prohibiting the father from “doing anything in front of the children or around the children” that “conflicts with the Catholic religion.” …
For more on this issue — and on child custody speech restrictions more generally, whether they deal with religion or anything else — check out Parent-Child Speech and Child Custody Speech Restrictions, 81 NYU L. Rev. 631 (2006).
UPDATE: Some of the comments lead me to post this excerpt from my article, where I explain how I think the law should deal with such matters; note that this is just an excerpt, and will seem pretty conclusory in the absence of the arguments earlier in the article — if you’re really interested in the subject, you might have a look at the article more broadly (long as it is):
C. Restrictions on Speech That Undermines the Child’s Relationship with the Other Parent
Restrictions on non-ideological speech (“your mother is a whore” or “your father’s new wife is a whore”) justified by the interest in protecting the child’s relationship with the other parent should generally be constitutional. They seem unlikely to materially interfere with public debate, and likely to protect both the children’s best interests and the other parent’s rights; and if framed as injunctions, they can be crafted in a way that is clear enough to comply with the void-for-vagueness doctrine. The restrictions do burden parents’ desire to express themselves, and may deny information to the children; but, as Part II.A.2 argued, these concerns shouldn’t play as much of a role here as they do with adult speech.
The restrictions should, however, be tailored to allow ideological |
, and it makes me wonder about whether it ever will.
Here is an important question: What would it mean to face up to the fact that the United States doesn’t really care much about black people? I think a lot about Derrick Bell’s racial realism nowadays, especially after reading some recent empirical work about the detrimental effects of hope in the lives of black men — hope, that is, that progress against racial discrimination and injustice is being made. How would strategies for fighting white domination and ensuring the flourishing of people of color change if black people gave up that hope? If strategies for living and thriving were pegged to the hard truth that white-saturated societies don’t and might not ever value black lives? Except perhaps as instruments for white people’s financial, psychological and other advantages — we have a long history of that, of course.
G.Y.: We’re all aware of the recent non-indictments of the Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, who killed Michael Brown, and the New York City police officer Daniel Pantaleo, who killed Eric Garner in Staten Island. How do we critically engage people who see this as another blow to black humanity, another blow to hope?
S.S.: It is another blow to black humanity. I don’t see any way around that. And also another blow to hope. But that doesn’t mean that despair is the only alternative. I admit it’s hard to see beyond that dichotomy — hope or despair — and I struggle to see beyond it. But maybe it’s a false dichotomy, pegged to hopes that the legal system, including civil rights struggles, can get us out of this mess. What if we operated instead from the hypothesis that the legal system cannot do this, at least not at this moment in history? One thing that both Ferguson and the failure to indict in the Eric Garner case tell us is that “we” must come up with other alternatives or else “we” (I have to underscore the question of who the “we” is here) risk driving people to violence. Even when “they” don’t necessarily wish to resort to violence, I think that also is important to underscore. I don’t think that anyone particularly wants violence in its own right, but what happens when there aren’t other options to ensure that black people are considered full persons?
G.Y.:The critique of hope, as you suggest above, appears to be based on the assumption that the system of white supremacy and the devaluation of black life will not fundamentally change. In this case, black hope is just spinning its wheels. And yet, President Obama speaks of the audacity of hope. In what way do you square his hope with the pervasive feeling of a lack of hope among black people when it comes to the end of racial injustice?
The potential for racial conflagration is very real, I think, even beyond what we recently have seen in Ferguson.
S.S.: When you talk of black hope as spinning its wheels, I can’t help but think of South Africa, which has just celebrated the 20th anniversary of the end of apartheid and mourned the death of its first post-apartheid president, Nelson Mandela. Its government is predominantly black, including its current president, Jacob Zuma. It’s a remarkable transformation, one that seems to provide the world with hope. But living conditions for most black South Africans have not changed, and brutal patterns of racial segregation are still firmly in place. In fact, black poverty and racial inequalities in income have actually increased since the end of legal segregation.
The answer of course is not to return to apartheid. I feel like I have to say that, especially as a white person skeptical of black hope for equality! But liberal hope in racial progress isn’t going to cut it. Again, there have to be other options, and then the question becomes whether violent revolution is the only other option.
Related More From The Stone Read previous contributions to this series.
The potential for racial conflagration is very real, I think, even beyond what we recently have seen in Ferguson. Would it be effective in changing the institutional, national, global and personal habits that need to be changed to take down white supremacy? I worry that violence is a shortcut that doesn’t help remake habits, racial or otherwise, and so it won’t solve the long-term problem. At the same time, you and I should be suspicious of that worry. It’s very convenient, isn’t it, for a white person to have philosophical reservations about the effectiveness of violent black resistance? I am not endorsing violence. What I’d like to do instead is shift the subject; I think that the issue of violence is something of a red herring. The urgent question in the United States is not whether violence in response to Ferguson or elsewhere is justified. That question distracts us from the more important issue of how to make sure that black men aren’t perceived as inherently criminal.
As for the audacity of hope promoted by Obama, I worry that in the end it has backfired. I, too, felt the buoyancy of hope in 2008. But electing the first black president did not shift the scales of racial justice in the United States very much, if at all. This is not an argument against Obama’s election, but one that many of us were naïve in thinking that black exceptionalism wouldn’t rear its ugly head if the “exception” in question was the president himself.
G.Y.: If it is true that we live in a white-saturated society, how do you conceptualize your role, especially as a white person who grapples with whiteness philosophically and existentially?
S.S.: I think that white people have a small but important role to play in combating white domination. Small, because the idea isn’t that white people are going to lead that work; they need to be following the work and leadership of people of color. But important because, given de facto racial segregation, there still are many pockets of whiteness — in neighborhoods, businesses, classrooms, philosophy departments – where you need white people who are going to challenge racism when it pops up. Which it often does.
But I think I have to add that this role is absurd. I mean absurd in the technical existentialist sense that, for example, Kierkegaard and Camus gave it. I don’t have a lot of hope that our white-saturated society is ever going to change, and at the same time it is crucial that one struggles for that change. Those two things don’t rationally fit together, I realize. It’s absurd to struggle for something that you don’t think can happen, and yet we (people of all races) should.
It’s like Camus’ main character in “The Plague,” the doctor who realizes that the plague will never completely go away. It — death, the atrocities of Nazi Germany — always wins in the end, even if one achieves some minor victories against it. We could add white supremacy to Camus’ list. It’s crucial to fight it even if total victory is impossible, to care for those who suffer because of it. And we all suffer because of it. The plague spares no one even as it hits different groups and individuals in different ways.
G.Y.: You know, many white readers will respond to this interview and argue that you desire white people to feel guilt or shame. I would argue that this is not your aim at all. Yet, is it an easy tactic for denying the legitimacy of what you’ve argued?
S.S.: You’re right that I’m not trying to cultivate white guilt or shame. This will get me in hot water, but I don’t think those are emotions that will help white people effectively struggle for racial justice in the long haul. I’m not saying that white people should never feel guilty or ashamed because of their race, and I don’t think that not feeling guilty or ashamed is a way to let white people off the hook. But guilt and shame are toxic just as hatred and greed are, and we sure don’t need to increase the toxicity of white people. James Baldwin said it best when he argued that white people will have to learn how to love themselves and each other before they can let go of their need for black inferiority.
This interview was conducted by email and edited. Previous interviews in this series can be found here.
George Yancy is a professor of philosophy at Duquesne University. He has written, edited and co-edited numerous books, including “Black Bodies, White Gazes,” “Look, a White!” and “Pursuing Trayvon Martin,” co-edited with Janine Jones.Advertisement NKY woman says dog's bathroom break prompted attack Victim says she plans on filing police report soon to initiate investigation Share Shares Copy Link Copy
A woman says she’s the victim of a messy situation in Covington all because of a mess left behind by her dog.Karen Whetherbee said she was attacked by two women on Sunday night when her pet Chihuahua went to the bathroom in someone’s front yard.Watch this story“Just as we hit the yard, Sparky stepped right in the corner of the yard and started to (use the bathroom). It wasn't this long,” Whetherbee said, holding her thumb and index finger about an inch apart.Karen said the size of Sparky's mess didn't matter to the women who she claims attacked her because she’d forgotten to carry a bag to clean up after her dog."I would have picked it up with my hands. I was in fear of my life," Whetherbee said.WLWT is not identifying the house or the alleged perpetrators because an official police report has not been filed.Whetherbee, who was walking with a cane at the time, says one of the women shoved her to the ground.“I said, 'I'm more than happy to pick it up. I have nothing to pick it up with, but I'm more than happy to pick it up.' I said, 'You don't have to yell.' I said, 'We can talk about this, I respect you, you know, and I don't have a problem cleaning up my dog's mess.' Well, she wouldn't hear any reasoning. They just started cussing and yelling at me and started pushing me around.”Whetherbee continued, “I reached in my pocket and grabbed my phone, and I turned around, and I said, 'I'm calling the police.' She came and grabbed me, grabbed the phone out of my hand (and said), 'You're not calling anybody and you're not leaving the property until you clean up your dog's mess.’"Whetherbee said she told the women she has cataracts and that’s why she couldn’t located the spot where Sparky had gone to the bathroom.“She used several bad words and said, 'I don't care if you crawl all over this yard, you are picking it up. It was just so traumatic for me," Whetherbee said.Several children saw the incident involving Whetherbee and the two women.At one point, Whetherbee said, one little boy went and got a flashlight and helped her find the small mess her dog left behind.Whetherbee did not suffer any major injuries, just a badly bruised sense of safety since she lives just a couple blocks away in a complex for seniors called the Golden Tower.“People need to quit turning their heads, and they need to stand up for one another and care about people,” Whetherbee said. “This is supposed to be a free country. I should have the right to walk out of my apartment whenever I want and not have to worry about being treated like I was treated.”Even though Whetherbee says she called 911 three times and ended up being helped home by police on Sunday night, there's not an active police investigation.Whetherbee assumed a report would be filed on her behalf, but she's the one who needs to initiate the process, which she says she plans to do as quickly as possible.This photo made available by the U.S. Coast Guard shows residents near Utado Puerto Rico, waiting for supplies to be dropped from the air, Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2017. The residents were stranded by roads washed out by the storm and mudslides. Nearly two weeks after the storm, 95 percent of electricity customers remain without power, while 55 percent do not have access to drinking water. (Eric D. Woodall/U.S. Coast Guard via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump struck false notes in addressing Puerto Rico’s crisis in recent days, exaggerating both the ferocity of a truly ferocious hurricane and the pace of recovery. He also seemed to raise false hope that the territory’s staggering debt would go away.
A look at his remarks during and after his visit to the hurricane-ravaged island:
TRUMP: “This has been the toughest one. This has been a Category 5, which — few people have ever even heard of a Category 5 hitting land. But it hit land and, boy, did it hit land.” — remarks Tuesday in Puerto Rico.
THE FACTS: As terrible as it was, Maria actually made landfall on Puerto Rico as a Category 4 hurricane, not 5. Winds were at 155 mph (249 kph), not 157 (253), the minimum for Category 5. It’s a distinction no doubt lost on Puerto Ricans — the storm was even stronger than Harvey and Irma upon landfall, said National Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen. But, “operationally it was a Category 4 hurricane.”
Trump has repeatedly misstated the record. A week earlier, he said: “It actually touched down as a Category 5. People have never seen anything like that, and it was dead center.” And: “The second one hit Puerto Rico as a Category 5. I don’t believe anybody’s ever seen that happen before, hit land with that kind of velocity.”
Trump also said at one point that Maria had winds of 200 mph (322 kph). No official reports put the winds that strong.
His supposition that no other hurricane has made landfall with such velocity is wrong, even when limiting the scope of the comparison to the United States. Maria’s winds at landfall were exceeded by three Category 5 hurricanes that came ashore on the U.S. mainland: in the Florida Keys in 1935, Camille in 1969 and Andrew in 1992. And Maria wasn’t the strongest recorded hurricane to hit Puerto Rico. Hurricane San Felipe was. It made landfall in 1928 as a Category 5.
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TRUMP on Puerto Rico’s debt: “We’re going to have to wipe that out.... I don’t know if it’s Goldman Sachs, but whoever it is, you can wave goodbye to that.” — to Fox News on Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Washington doesn’t have the authority to force investors to take massive losses, if that’s what he meant. And Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, said afterward: “We are not going to be offering a bailout for Puerto Rico or for its current bondholders.”
Much of the $74 billion debt is tied up in court-supervised restructuring since Puerto Rico sought a form of bankruptcy protection last year. Brian Setser, a former Treasury official who worked on Puerto Rico’s debt crisis, said the court process is likely to yield significant debt reduction, but “it is not something that the president can make happen.”
Trump’s remark contributed to a plunge in Puerto Rico’s bond prices. Falling bond prices are a sign that investors may be less likely to be repaid — something that usually makes it more expensive for governments and companies to borrow.
Although the type of federal hurricane recovery aid that Puerto Rico receives could influence how debt repayment unfolds, that’s not a bailout and creditors won’t be paid anytime soon.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday that Puerto Rico will “have to go through that process” set up during the Obama administration “to have a lasting recovery and growth.” There was no hint in her comments that Trump plans an initiative to make the debt disappear.
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TRUMP: “Who needs a flashlight?... Flashlights, you don’t need ‘em anymore. You don’t need ’em anymore.” — while handing out flashlights and tossing rolls of paper towels to a crowd in Puerto Rico on Tuesday.
THE FACTS: It’s possible his particular audience did not need flashlights, but many Puerto Ricans do. He was visiting the upscale Guaynabo neighborhood, one of the fastest to recover. But more than 90 percent of the island’s electricity customers remained without power at the time, nearly two weeks after the hurricane. And those who have it back are experiencing periodic blackouts.
Trump called the recovery “nothing short of a miracle.” But the tour showed him a small slice of the island and exposed him to few critics of the relief effort. Visits to homes hammered by the storm were pre-arranged. Water shortages and despair continue in much of the island even as relief supplies have started to move faster and more gas stations start pumping again.
Even in the heart of San Juan, a few miles from Trump’s path, people were hauling clothes fouled with sewage and wet mattresses out of homes still without electricity as he issued his upbeat report. They said no one has come to help them since the storm hit.
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Associated Press writers Danica Coto and Jill Colvin in San Juan, Alexandra Olson in New York and Ken Thomas in Washington contributed to this report.The Nation: Grand Old Plutocrats
toggle caption iStockphoto.com
John Nichols is the Washington correspondent for The Nation. He is also the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin.
The House voted by an overwhelming margin Thursday for tax fairness -- extending tax cuts for the middle-class, while requiring individuals earning more than $200,000 and families earning more than $250,000 to pay a taxes at the same rate they did during the boom years of the 1990s.
Well, to be precise, House Democrats voted overwhelmingly for tax fairness.
House Republicans voted overwhelmingly against any change in tax policy that did not take care of millionaires and billionaires.
The actual vote to extend only some of the expiring Bush-era tax cuts was 234-188.
Democrats provided 231 of the 234 "yes" votes. (Twenty Democrats, most of them Blue Dog "Democrats-in-Name-Only," voted "no.")
Among the 171 Republican voting on the proposal, 168 voted "no." (Only libertarian Republican mavericks Ron Paul of Texas, Walter Jones of North Carolina and John Duncan of Tennessee voted "yes.")
With President Obama sending his usual mixed signals and the Senate stalled out by super-majority requirements that reject majority rule, the House vote may be the last stand for common sense -- and the will of the American people, who by a 2-1 majority favor letting the tax breaks for the wealthy expire. (The new CBS News survey says the split is 53 percent for approach proposed by the House Democrats to 26 percent for the rejectionist stance of the House Republicans.)
So what did we learn Thursday?
Not that Republicans are the "party of the rich."
That characterization is unfair to the rich. There are many millionaires whose economic good sense -- not just concerns about debts and deficits but also respect for the economic benefits associated with equity -- has led them to argue that they should pay more. Organized as "Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength," they have written members of Congress, arguing that: "Now, during our nation’s moment of need, we are eager to do our fair share. We don’t need more tax cuts, and we understand that cutting our taxes will increase the deficit and the debt burden carried by other taxpayers. The country needs to meet its financial obligations in a just and responsible way."
So the Republicans are not the "party of the rich."
They are the party of "greed-is-good" contingent that favors rule by the rich.
That's an important distinction.
The Republican Party, founded by radicals and led well into the 20th century by political players such as Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, who feared the excesses of elitism, monopoly and plutocracy, has become the champion of elitism, monopoly and plutocracy.
What matters is no longer who the Republicans are standing up for. It's what they are standing up for.
With many of America's wealthiest individuals arguing that their tax breaks should expire, House Republicans are actually more enthusiastic about giving tax breaks to the rich than are the rich.
This is about more than tax policy.
This is about what kind of country America is going to be: a plutocracy designed to best serve the elites or a democracy designed to best serve the great mass of Americans.
The Republicans -- with the exception of Paul, Duncan and Jones -- have opted for plutocracy.
It's still a reasonably free country. That is their right.
But it is worth noting, as Bill Moyers does, that: "Plutocracy is not an American word and wasn’t meant to become an American phenomenon -- some of our founders deplored what they called 'the veneration of wealth.'"
Like it or not, Moyers says, "plutocracy is here."
Yes, plutocracy is here.
It even has a party: the Grand Old Plutocrats.Darrell Bevell sent fantasy football types into a frenzy last week when the Seahawks offensive coordinator hinted at a committee approach to Seattle's backfield come September.
Amid waves of praise for second-year runner Christine Michael, Bevell softened his stance Monday. Making no promises for the season ahead, the play-caller pointed out that he's only slicing up the pie now because: (a) it's June; and (b) Marshawn Lynch is home on his couch.
"I was thinking more out here (at OTAs)," Bevell said, per the team's official website. "We're kind of rolling all those guys. Really like what we're seeing from them and just kind of moving them around. That's not our policy (to discuss workload). It's not something we talk about or do that way. So it's just something I threw out there and really was thinking about the OTAs."
Fair enough. Nobody expects the workload in Seattle to be split down the middle.
Lynch has amassed 1,002 regular-season and playoff totes over the past three years -- more than any runner in the NFL. With two seasons left on Marshawn's deal, Seattle remains a strong bet to tap him for one more mega-campaign before divvying up its run-heavy approach.
We still expect Michael to greatly improve on his 18 carries as a rookie.
Set to be featured this week as one of our "Making the Leap" candidates, Michael is a safe bet to hopscotch Robert Turbin and test defenses with an explosive running style that some tout as "on par" with Adrian Peterson's.
The end to the latest "Around The League Podcast" is full of shock and awe.In a parallel universe, the version of me that didn’t choose to send her daughters to a Church of England school is having slothful lie-ins on Sunday mornings following a slightly gluttonous night on the prosecco lusting after James McAvoy and feeling huge pride that she managed it without a hangover.
Instead, while I’m not losing any sleep over how many deadly sins I ticked off in a twelve hour period, I am leaping out of bed in time to get my oldest daughter – Una – to church, Googling “what is a confirmation” and making arrangements for Father Michael to pop round for tea.
My partner Ian and I are happy atheists (or perhaps agnostics, I’m never too sure) with some strong negative feelings regarding organised religions, coupled with a cheery tolerance of people with faith. A bit like they say about religion being like a penis. I’m happy for you that you’ve got one, just don’t wave it in my face.
So as Una, now 12, has increasingly embraced religion, things have got progressively weird for us.
We chose our local C of E primary because we liked it better than the non-faith schools and I would never send her to a Catholic school. (I’ve been baptised a Catholic and seen enough Catholicism to know I didn’t want that for her.) We liked it because it had an olde-worlde village school feel, and because they had music lessons which we thought was important. But I refused to con my way in with a supporting letter from some local clergy like a lot of the mums I knew, so we didn’t expect to make the cut. Only we did.
Ian and I worried about religious indoctrination of our four-year-old but knew we would counter it with our own views, and both of us had been to C of E schools as children and survived the experience sans faith.
They do more praying in class and much more faith-led teaching in assemblies than we were exposed to, but they’re not too preachy. And it’s a very accepting and friendly school attended by children of several different faiths. If a child said they didn’t believe in God I don’t suppose they would be singled out in any way. But Una has really got into it.
I remember years ago being taken aback when her choice of memento from the gift shop at Durham Cathedral was not a fluffy toy but a carved wooden cross, but we would never tell her she couldn’t have it or she wasn’t allowed to believe in God. We were just very open about our own beliefs and encouraged her to ask questions. We and the school taught her about a range of different religions.
And we’ve been clear that the choice is hers to find her own way, and that we will support her in that. We’ve also brought the girls up not to eat meat but have told them when they get older they may choose to eat differently. Both of them have tried meat – with our blessing – outside the home. We’ve felt our role is to open them up to opportunities and experiences so they can learn for themselves what they like, what they’re good at and where they fit.
Nevertheless, Una’s leaning more towards the church has been a surprise and has thrown up some awkward and uncomfortable situations.
For secondary schools our first choice was an out-of-borough academy which we didn’t get. Second choice – ours and Una’s – was another C of E. They are oversubscribed and rigorous about needing support from your church. But I talked with the headmaster about how I felt since Una was religious, my own lack of faith shouldn’t hold her back and he agreed. We spoke with a local vicar who agreed if we would support Una’s faith, then she would support her application to the school.
So we did. Una loves it. She gets a lot out of her faith and the community she’s joined. When she was younger I would attend as conscience allowed. The people are lovely. They’re friendly and welcoming, and when it feels too close to hypocritical and makes me squirm then I politely excuse myself and leave Una to her worship. Her best friend’s mum – who will soon be her godmother – watches her for me.
I never expected to be arranging a baptism for her so she can be confirmed with her friends, nor inviting Father Michael round to chat over a cuppa; I had to steer the conversation away from science before Ian, with a physics degree, got too animated. But we all approach it with common sense and Una’s best interests at heart.
It seemed obvious that my role was to support her journey to discover herself and I didn’t consider it until a Muslim friend said she thought it was admirable. “If a child wanted to explore a religion other than their own I don’t know too many families who would support that,” she said. Since childhood indoctrination is one of the things I like least about religion, I’m proud of Una for challenging my own atheist indoctrination of her.AT&T, Verizon, and other wireless carriers are urging the Federal Communications Commission to reject a petition that would impose common carrier regulations on text messaging.
The FCC this year reclassified both fixed and mobile Internet access as common carrier services under Title II of the Communications Act and used the new classification to impose net neutrality rules that prevent Internet providers from blocking or throttling traffic. Wireless carriers already faced Title II common carrier regulation of mobile voice, but the status of text messaging has remained unsettled, along with the question of whether carriers can block text messages.
In August, the FCC was asked by Twilio to declare that text message service must face Title II regulation, raising concerns among mobile carriers. AT&T and Verizon urged the FCC to reject Twilio's petition, and so did CTIA—The Wireless Association, which represents carriers in general. CTIA wrote in a filing on Friday that new restrictions could prevent wireless operators from blocking spam.
"Twilio frames its Petition as an effort to curb what it calls the 'blocking' and 'throttling' of messaging traffic but in fact, Twilio is asking the Commission to invalidate consumer-protection measures that prevent massive quantities of unlawful and unwanted mobile messaging spam from reaching and harming consumers," CTIA wrote.
AT&T and Verizon made similar arguments in their own filings Friday. Sprint and T-Mobile did not write in themselves, but are represented by the CTIA.
Twilio: Carriers blocked messages to boost revenue
Twilio, which makes software that application developers can use to automatically send text messages, argued that text messaging should already be treated as a Title II service because it falls under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) telemarketing law. But carriers are "treat[ing] messaging services as if they are in a regulatory no-man's land," Twilio wrote.
Twilio said messages sent by its customers were recently blocked by wireless carriers.
"Twilio provides an integrated service that allows businesses to send and receive text messages from the same toll-free number that they publish to field voice calls from consumers," the company said.
This gave customer service agents another way to field questions from customers. "Then one day Twilio's customers just stopped receiving text messages from their customers for no apparent reason," the filing continued. "When Twilio asked the wireless carriers what was happening, they informed Twilio that they decided to route this traditionally 'called-party-pays' traffic to an alternative messaging aggregator (presumably under revenue-sharing agreements). This other aggregator then demanded that Twilio enter into a contract requiring Twilio to pay for this toll-free traffic that the wireless carriers' customers were sending (or, more accurately, trying to send) to Twilio's customers before turning the spigot back on, despite prior Commission precedent prohibiting blocking in the context of intercarrier compensation disputes."
The FCC's net neutrality order released in March said that carriers cannot block messages delivered over the Internet but did not clarify the status of traditional text messages. The FCC already had opened a proceeding on the issue before Twilio's petition, but the company's request spurred a new round of filings from carriers, companies that rely on text messaging, and advocacy groups.
Twilio's petition was supported in a filing on Friday by consumer advocacy groups Public Knowledge, Common Cause, and Free Press. These groups addressed the question of whether text messaging should be defined as "telecommunications" for purposes of Title II common carrier regulation.
A text message is already considered equivalent to a telephone call under the TCPA, which itself is codified in Title II, the filing said. It is thus "logical for text messages to be afforded the same regulatory status as voice calls in other respects, as well," the groups wrote. Since wireless carriers bundle voice calls, messaging, and data, "it would be anomalous and contradictory if voice and data, but not text messaging, were considered telecommunications."
Public Knowledge and other groups petitioned the FCC on this very issue in 2007, saying that carriers were blocking messages from activist groups and competing communications providers.
"The carriers’ behavior in exercising subjective judgment over users’ text message content persists to this day," Public Knowledge et al said in their most recent filing. "Carriers continue to utilize text message blocking to drive companies and consumers toward the revenue-generating short code system, leveraging their total control over access to end users to drive up prices and stifle innovation."
The consumer advocacy groups pointed out that several small businesses complained about carrier behavior in other filings to the FCC. "ShowingTime, a startup helping realtors manage multiple showings, wrote to share its experience that 'this year, carriers have begun blocking more and more text message traffic, almost entirely due to volumes being sent, or the [similarity of messages] despite the fact that 'ShowingTime sends no marketing or unsolicited text messages,'" the groups wrote. "ClearCare, a [San Francisco] company that helps in-home healthcare providers communicate with their caregivers, shared its concern that uncertainty and an inability to rely on delivery of text messages raises concerns that patients 'could miss critical care that they need.'" (All filings can be found here.)
AT&T: Texting is immune to common carrier regulations
AT&T argued that mobile messaging is “statutorily immune” from common carrier regulation, in part because it doesn't allow communication with everyone on the public switched telephone network (i.e., the traditional landline system).
Verizon also argued that text messaging should be treated as a lightly regulated "information service," similar to e-mail. Verizon said that mobile messaging has remained relatively nuisance-free compared to the problems of e-mail spam and robocalling.
"Wireless providers like Verizon have worked hard to protect their subscribers from spam and robotexting, and have succeeded," Verizon wrote. "Twilio provides no basis to upend that successful system—in which Twilio itself is flourishing—to advance its own, narrow interests or to impose common carrier regulation on one small part of the messaging space."Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs!
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*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs!
For unlimited access to the best local, national, and international news and much more, try an All Access Digital subscription:
We hope you have enjoyed your trial! To continue reading, we recommend our Read Now Pay Later membership. Simply add a form of payment and pay only 27¢ per article.
Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs!
For unlimited access to the best local, national, and international news and much more, try an All Access Digital subscription:
We hope you have enjoyed your trial! To continue reading, we recommend our Read Now Pay Later membership. Simply add a form of payment and pay only 27¢ per article.
The housing imbalance that plagues Silicon Valley is a long way from Winnipeg, where house prices north of $1 million are the exception rather than the rule, but even here, there are increased tensions between new demand for new housing and transportation options and a reactionary wish for things to stay the same.
Palo Alto is one of Silicon Valley’s many municipalities unwilling to add housing density to the booming region, making housing options increasingly unaffordable to just about everyone. Modest bungalows that would not be out of place in East Kildonan or St. James are routinely sold there for $3 million or more. Hemmed in on three sides by Stanford University and Google and Facebook’s respective headquarters, Palo Alto’s council and a few homeowners still pretend they are a quiet suburb on the way to Santa Jose.
Tired of having even the most moderate recommendations for increased density ignored by Palo Alto’s city council, Downing was not only resigning, but she and her husband, a computer programmer, were leaving the city because they could not afford to raise a family there.
Earlier this month, Kate Downing, an attorney living in Palo Atlo, Calif., caused a stir in urbanist and tech-industry corners of the Internet when she posted an open letter in which she tendered her resignation from the city’s planning commission.
Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 22/8/2016 (919 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/8/2016 (919 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Earlier this month, Kate Downing, an attorney living in Palo Atlo, Calif., caused a stir in urbanist and tech-industry corners of the Internet when she posted an open letter in which she tendered her resignation from the city’s planning commission.
Tired of having even the most moderate recommendations for increased density ignored by Palo Alto’s city council, Downing was not only resigning, but she and her husband, a computer programmer, were leaving the city because they could not afford to raise a family there.
Palo Alto is one of Silicon Valley’s many municipalities unwilling to add housing density to the booming region, making housing options increasingly unaffordable to just about everyone. Modest bungalows that would not be out of place in East Kildonan or St. James are routinely sold there for $3 million or more. Hemmed in on three sides by Stanford University and Google and Facebook’s respective headquarters, Palo Alto’s council and a few homeowners still pretend they are a quiet suburb on the way to Santa Jose.
The housing imbalance that plagues Silicon Valley is a long way from Winnipeg, where house prices north of $1 million are the exception rather than the rule, but even here, there are increased tensions between new demand for new housing and transportation options and a reactionary wish for things to stay the same.
Things are not staying the same. Last week, the City of Winnipeg released a 25-year growth forecast wherein the city’s population will increase by more than 200,000 people by 2040. The report noted an aging population and decreased affordability will see the construction of new multi-family housing units outpace single-family housing by an increasingly wide margin.
The nostalgic vision of Winnipeg the provincial town of 15-minute commutes and unchanging, solidly single-family neighbourhoods will only seem more quixotically outdated with every passing year. This is not just |
flat, the concerns around incentives and accountability have entered into the public discourse.
By taking on an economic role, the IRGC exposed itself to a new angle of examination and contestation by the Iranian public, and subsequently by elected politicians who felt compelled to challenge problematic aspects of the Guards’ economic behavior.
Meanwhile, in the face of a sluggish economy and stubborn unemployment, the Iranian public has grown more restless, heightening demands for market liberalization. Indeed, in a recent survey conducted by IranPoll, 41% of Iranian respondents identified the private sector as best able to “help to improve economic conditions in Iran,” whereas 21% chose multinational companies. Just 31% of Iranian respondents identified state-owned companies as well-positioned to improve the economy. In other words, there appears to be broad public support for economic reforms that would reduce the role of state and quasi-state actors such as the IRGC in the Iranian economy.
Responding to these public sentiments, the administration of President Hassan Rouhani has been increasingly direct in its challenge to the Guards’ economic activities — especially since its political mandate is largely tied to the pursuit of economic reform. Rouhani’s message grew particularly pointed during his re-election campaign in the spring of this year. He said in a major speech on Armed Forces Day in April, ahead of the May 19 presidential election, that “the arrival of the armed forces to economic temptations can distance them from their primary mission.” In concrete terms, major players in Iran’s banking sector have been instructed not to work with IRGC companies while key Guard Corps-linked holdings are being restructured or sold in order to push the IRGC out of the economy.
The existence of this discourse, of a clear delineation for the tasks of the Guard Corps, and its effect on policy, is profoundly important. Had the IRGC remained exclusively focused on its military duties, its activities and political orientation might not have become such a wide subject of debate among the Iranian public. This is especially true when considering the role the Guard Corps played in suppressing the unrest in the aftermath of the disputed 2009 presidential election and the renewed strength of revolutionary solidarity in the face of threats from the Islamic State and Donald Trump alike. By taking on an economic role, the IRGC exposed itself to a new angle of examination and contestation by the Iranian public, and subsequently by elected politicians who felt compelled to challenge problematic aspects of the Guards’ economic behavior. In this vein, debate on commercial matters became a way to, in effect, address the IRGC’s political behavior, which stems from the same root causes of poor accountability, transparency and governance.
US policymakers have entirely failed to take this robust discourse into account. Sanctioning the IRGC to limit its economic reach in the post-sanctions era is sensible policy. But it fails to do anything to materially or discursively support the Iranian people as they push for a freer, more productive economy. The Trump administration’s pressure campaign may be having the effect of in fact closing economic issues as a rare channel for claims-making against the IRGC. Indeed, in past days and weeks, members of the Rouhani administration have moved to publicly close ranks with the IRGC, seeking to present a united front in response to American hostility. In this way, the Trump administration’s rhetoric reduces the ability of Rouhani’s technocrats to continue to pursue pro-reform policies. The Rouhani administration cannot be seen to be challenging the IRGC at the precise moment that Trump administration is applying new sanctions and pressures.
As such, the Trump administration and members of Congress alike need to recognize that the Iranian public is itself seeking to cleave the IRGC from the country’s economy. Any policy that aims to create economic obstacles for the IRGC must thus simultaneously create economic opportunities for the Iranian people. That Trump would jeopardize trade and investment in Iran is the ultimately betrayal of ordinary Iranians — not only because of the denial of economic opportunity, but especially because of how it eliminates the role of criticism of IRGC involvement in the economy as an arena for wider political contestation.A Times Square desnuda put a strange new twist on Bring Your Daughter to Work Day when she went panhandling alongside her topless toddler on Monday.
Painted lady Maria Diaz arrived on Broadway around 4 p.m. wearing a frilly black skirt with only a drawing of a black heart covering her breasts, according to witnesses and a video.
But what really grabbed the crowd’s attention was the virtual Mini-Me posing alongside her — Diaz’s approximately 2-year-old daughter, who was also topless and had her own black heart painted across her chest.
Video of the topless twosome — who were also holding the letters “N” and “Y” for New York — was taken by a Times Square “Batman,” who was appalled by the display.
“Nobody wanted to take any pictures [with them],” said José Escalona-Martinez, who filmed the encounter dressed as the Caped Crusader.
“Everyone was like, ‘What the hell is this?’ ”
A dismayed Diaz abandoned her panhandling plans when police told her to clothe the kid.
Tourists were dumbfounded.
“She wasn’t there for too long because the police said, ‘You can’t have this girl here. You going to get arrested,’ ” one visitor said.
The dopey desnuda quickly grabbed a pink shirt from a stroller when a police officer approached and kindly instructed her to put a shirt on the child.
The dynamic duo left a short time afterward without receiving any tips, witnesses said.
Times Square desnudas have been under attack recently. Two were assaulted and another arrested for allegedly offering oral sex to an undercover police officer.
With Post Wire ServicesArtificial Photosynthesis
Photosynthesis is an essential natural process that keeps not just plants, but just about everything else on Earth alive — including us. When plants convert carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrates, they feed themselves and emit oxygen for us to breathe. But what if we took a page out of nature’s book, and figured out how to use sunlight to produce hydrogen for fuel? “If it works it would be magical,” Bill Gates told Reuters, “because with liquids you don’t have the intermittency problem batteries. You can put the liquid into a big tank and burn it whenever you want.”
Artificial photosynthesis (AP) aims to split water in oceans, and possibly even rivers, into its hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon components using sunlight. Hydrogen produced via AP is readily usable in the fuel cells of electric cars being manufactured right now, and it can also be used to store solar energy. Liquid fuels like hydrogen have a distinct advantage over batteries, as they are lighter and less bulky.
Combining the fruits of AP in the right proportions produces methanol, which can fuel combustion engines. China has become the largest consumer of methanol in the world, blending it with gas at levels of 15 percent or less for consumer vehicles at gas stations, and running transit vehicles on blends as high as 85 percent methanol.
A variation on the AP process was also used to metabolically engineer nitrogen-generating bacteria to produce nitrogen-based fertilizer right in soil —a technique that could boost crops yields in places without ready access to conventional fertilizers. Eventually, these kinds of bacteria might be able to “breathe in” the hydrogen produced by AP and use it to produce a range of goods, including drugs, fertilizers, fuels, and plastics, all determined by the metabolic engineering of the bacteria.Duterte: Bongbong not interested in DILG post 507 SHARES Share it! Share Tweet
By Argyll Cyrus B. Geducos
President Rodrigo R. Duterte said former senator Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ R. Marcos Jr. will not be taking over the post of Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) secretary.
This came after reports surfaced that Marcos will be taking over the helm of the Interior Department after Ismael Sueno.
In an ambush interview, Duterte said Marcos is not interested in the said position but did not elaborate if the post was offered to him. “He’s not interested,” he said.
Presidential Spokesperson Ernesto Abella earlier belied the reports that Marcos is being groomed as the next DILG secretary.
“Frankly, I don’t have any knowledge of that,” Abella said.
Robredo, in an interview over ANC, earlier said Marcos should not be given a Cabinet post until his family pays for what they did to the country during the reign of former President Ferdinand Marcos.
She added that Marcos having a Cabinet post would be ‘scary’ since he will again have the “opportunity to do what they did before.”
Tags: BongBong Marcos, DILG secretary, Duterte: Bongbong not interested in DILG post, Ismael Sueno, Manila Bulletin, Rodrigo DuterteTHANKS WAYNE: Jets flying Fijian centre Nemani Valekapa has been saved from deportation by a supporting letter from Wayne Bennett to the Department of Immigration.
THANKS WAYNE: Jets flying Fijian centre Nemani Valekapa has been saved from deportation by a supporting letter from Wayne Bennett to the Department of Immigration. Kate Czerny
A TIMELY letter from Broncos coach Wayne Bennett has helped save Jets centre Nemani Valekapa's rugby league career.
The flying Fijian Ferrari, as he is known, was set to be sent back to his homeland in August when his sports visa ran out.
It would have been a massive blow to Valekapa, his wife and two young children who have made a home in Kalbar, a half hour drive from Ipswich.
For Valekapa's visa to be renewed he needed a letter to confirm he has the ability to play at the highest level.
Bennett wrote a letter on April 2 this year to the Department of Immigration where he personally supported Valekapa's visa application.
"Nemani has the ability to compete at the national level in Australia as he has shown by his having already played international rugby league," Bennett wrote.
"Nemani's participation with the Ipswich Jets will result in improved training and skill development for the team and (his) participation in the sport in Australia would benefit the Rugby League in Australia by raising the standard of competition.
"If a centre position becomes open this season at the Broncos, Nemani will certainly be considered by me for selection."
Jets chairman Steve Johnson said Valekapa came to Australia on a sports training visa where he initially played for the Fassifern Bombers.
"After he played for Fiji, the ARL provided Fassifern with a letter of support saying that Nem had the capabilities of playing in a national competition which is one of the requirements to get the visa," Johnson said.
"One of the requirements for his visa to be renewed was that he did have the capacity to play in the NRL.
"Fortunately, being a Broncos affiliated club, Wayne came to our games to look at players and one of those was Nem in case he needed him in the centres.
"Wayne was approached about his opinion of Nem and was willing to write a letter of support saying Nem could play in the NRL.
"What Wayne did was so important because we also have to get a letter from the NRL to the Immigration Department to confirm that as well.
"The NRL were initially concerned that Nem had played the majority of his football in what they called 'park football' and weren't prepared to take the word of our coaches and myself that Nem was an NRL standard player.
"Wayne's opinion, as the greatest coach ever in rugby league, was crucial.
"That allowed us to get an extension of his visa and the NRL's Todd Greenberg provided the letter to Immigration saying Nem was capable of playing in the national competition."
Unfortunately the letter from the NRL arrived two weeks after the cut-off date and Valekapa's next visa renewal is still before Minister for Immigration Peter Dutton.
But it is now hoped that the next extension of Valekapa's visa will be a formality as Ipswich Mayor Paul Pisasale and Blair MP Shayne Neumann have also written letters of support highlighting what a great role model he is in the Fijian community.
Co-coach Shane Walker said Bennett's letter was "extremely important" for Valekapa, his family and the club.
"Wayne knew he was a special player and his letter has enabled Nem to stay in Australia and with the Jets," Walker said.
It was also critical in enabling the Jets to field there strongest team in the Intrust Super Cup finals series.
In the grand final win over the Blackhawks it was a play by Valekapa where he scooted around four defenders and enabled flyer winger Ben Barba to fly down the left edge and set up a try for Dane Phillips which got the Jets going.
"Nemani is an unbelievable talent and so special to our team," Walker said.
Valekapa said Bennett's letter was a Godsend at just the right time.
"I am very grateful to Wayne for giving me a supporting letter that says I am a good player," he said.
"It means everything to me.
"It means my family can stay here and I have an opportunity to try and crack the NRL."AN INMATE has stabbed a prison governor to death with scissors after being ordered to give him a haircut, Tajikistan’s interior ministry says..
The 66-year-old prison governor “on Sunday evening asked the prisoner, who had worked as a hairdresser before being jailed, to come to his office to cut his hair,” an interior ministry spokesman said.
The prisoner then used his scissors to stab the prison governor once in the head and then 16 times in his body. The official died before reaching hospital.
The 29-year-old prisoner had been sentenced several months earlier to 17 1/2 years behind bars for murdering a young man, whom he stabbed 57 times.
The crime took place in a prison in the city of Kutab, around 200km southeast of Dushanbe.
The mountainous Central Asian country is the poorest former Soviet republic, with around 40 per cent of the population living in poverty.White House senior adviser and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly dismissed on Monday accusations that Trump’s presidential campaign colluded with Russia, saying the team was too disorganized for such a conspiracy.
In off-the-record remarks to Capitol Hill interns, as reported by Foreign Policy, Kushner said that the Trump campaign struggled to stay in touch with its own representatives across the country.
“They thought we colluded, but we couldn’t even collude with our local offices,” Kushner said, according to notes on the speech.
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Kushner also addressed the ongoing special counsel investigation into potential ties between Trump and Russia led by Robert Mueller.
“We don’t know where it’s going,” Kushner said.
Kushner’s speech to congressional interns was delayed after he was scheduled to speak with the Senate Intelligence Committee about his previously undisclosed meetings with Russian nationals, including Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and the CEO of a Russian state-run bank during the presidential transition.
Kushner has reportedly updated his security clearance form to include more than 100 names on a list of foreign contacts he met with. He brushed off the revisions in his talk with the interns.
“There are 127 pages on the SF-86, but there are only two you guys have to worry about,” he said. “Make sure you guys keep track of where you travel.”
Foreign Policy reported that the intern director warned the interns not to leak the contents of the speech due to rumors that some wanted to livestream the talk or take notes for journalists. Kushner reportedly told the interns he was “a lot more comfortable” giving the talk because members of the press were not in attendance.Once you know your focus, you can choose role models, frame goals, seek or give feedback, and provide incentives that will strengthen your motivation or your team’s. This article details how you can create motivational fit, which enhances and sustains both the eagerness of the promotion-minded and the vigilance of the prevention-minded.
Promotion-focused people see their goals as creating a path to advancement; they are comfortable taking chances, like to work quickly, dream big, and think creatively. Prevention-focused people see their goals as responsibilities; they are vigilant, risk-averse, thorough, and accurate, and like to maintain the status quo. Motivational focus affects how we approach life’s challenges. It affects what we pay attention to, what we value, and how we feel when we succeed or fail.
Some personality assessment tools are good at identifying what you like to do, but they tell you very little about whether you’re good at it or how to improve if you’re not. Fortunately, one way of grouping people into types is based on an attribute that does predict performance: promotion focus or prevention focus.
In what kinds of situations are you most effective? What factors strengthen—or undermine—your motivation? People answer these questions in very different ways, and that’s the challenge at the heart of good management—whether you’re managing your own performance or someone else’s. One-size-fits-all principles don’t work. The strategies that help you excel may not help your colleagues or your direct reports; what works for your boss or your mentor doesn’t always work for you. Personality matters.
In business the most common tool for identifying one’s personality type is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. But the problem with this and many other assessment tools is that they don’t actually predict performance. (In fairness to Myers-Briggs, it doesn’t claim to.) These tests will tell you about attributes—such as your degree of introversion or extroversion, or your reliance on thinking versus feeling—that indicate what you like to do, but they tell you very little about whether you are good at it, or how to improve if you’re not.
Fortunately, there is a way of grouping people into types on the basis of a personality attribute that does predict performance: promotion focus or prevention focus. Although these types are well known among academic psychologists and marketing and management researchers, word of them has not yet filtered down to the people who we believe could benefit most: managers keen to be more effective in their jobs and to help others reach their full potential as well.
The Two Types
Motivational focus affects how we approach life’s challenges and demands. Promotion-focused people see their goals as creating a path to gain or advancement and concentrate on the rewards that will accrue when they achieve them. They are eager and they play to win. You’ll recognize promotion-focused people as those who are comfortable taking chances, who like to work quickly, who dream big and think creatively. Unfortunately, all that chance taking, speedy working, and positive thinking makes these individuals more prone to error, less likely to think things through, and usually unprepared with a plan B if things go wrong. That’s a price they are willing to pay, because for the promotion-focused, the worst thing is a chance not taken, a reward unearned, a failure to advance.
The promotion-focused are engaged by inspirational role models, the prevention-focused by cautionary tales.
Prevention-focused people, in contrast, see their goals as responsibilities, and they concentrate on staying safe. They worry about what might go wrong if they don’t work hard enough or aren’t careful enough. They are vigilant and play to not lose, to hang on to what they have, to maintain the status quo. They are often more risk-averse, but their work is also more thorough, accurate, and carefully considered. To succeed, they work slowly and meticulously. They aren’t usually the most creative thinkers, but they may have excellent analytical and problem-solving skills. While the promotion-minded generate lots of ideas, good and bad, it often takes someone prevention-minded to tell the difference between the two.
Although everyone is concerned at various times with both promotion and prevention, most of us have a dominant motivational focus. It affects what we pay attention to, what we value, and how we feel when we succeed or fail. It determines our strengths and weaknesses, both personally and professionally. And it’s why the decisions and preferences of our differently focused colleagues can seem so odd at times.
Most readers will be able to identify their dominant focus immediately. If you can’t, you can try our online diagnostic or look for the following signs in yourself or your colleagues:
Promotion-focused people
work quickly
consider lots of alternatives and are great brainstormers
are open to new opportunities
are optimists
plan only for best-case scenarios
seek positive feedback and lose steam without it
feel dejected or depressed when things go wrong
Prevention-focused people
work slowly and deliberately
tend to be accurate
are prepared for the worst
are stressed by short deadlines
stick to tried-and-true ways of doing things
are uncomfortable with praise or optimism
feel worried or anxious when things go wrong
Simply identifying your own type should help you embrace your strengths as well as recognize and compensate for your weaknesses. To some extent people do this intuitively. Studies show that prevention-focused individuals are likely to take up what organizational psychologists call “conventional and realistic” work, as administrators, bookkeepers, accountants, technicians, and manufacturing workers. These occupations require knowledge of rules and regulations, careful execution, and a propensity for thoroughness—they are jobs in which attention to detail is what really pays off.
The promotion-focused are likely to pursue “artistic and investigative” careers, as musicians, copywriters, inventors, and consultants. These tend to be think-outside-the-box jobs, in which people are rewarded for creative and innovative thinking, and being practical isn’t emphasized.
Your focus might also steer you toward a particular industry. Promotion-focused leaders tend to be most effective in dynamic industries, where it’s important to respond rapidly and innovatively to stay ahead. Prevention-focused leaders are most effective in more stable industries, where avoiding catastrophic error is often the key to success.
Creating Motivational Fit
Once you know your focus, you can choose role models, frame goals, seek or give feedback, and provide incentives that will strengthen your motivation or your team’s. Motivational fit enhances and sustains both the eagerness of the promotion-minded and the vigilance of the prevention-minded, making work seem more valuable and thus boosting both performance and enjoyment. When the motivational strategies we use don’t align with our dominant focus, we are less likely to achieve our goals.
Choosing role models.
Storytelling has long been touted as a motivational tool. But different types of people need varying kinds of stories. Studies show that the promotion-focused are more engaged when they hear about an inspirational role model, such as a particularly high-performing salesperson or a uniquely effective team leader. The prevention-focused, in contrast, are impressed by a strong cautionary tale about someone whose path they shouldn’t follow, because thinking about avoiding mistakes feels right to them. As an individual, you naturally pay attention to the kind of story that resonates most with you. But as a colleague or a boss, you should think about whether the stories you share with others are motivational for them.
It’s also important to seek out mentors and, when possible, future bosses whose focus matches your own and, if you’re a manager, to subtly adapt your style to suit each employee’s focus. According to recent research, promotion-minded employees thrive under transformational leaders, who support creative solutions, have a long-term vision, and look for ways to shake things up. The prevention-focused are at their best under transactional leaders, who emphasize rules and standards, protect the status quo, tend toward micromanagement, discourage errors, and focus on effectively reaching more-immediate goals. When people find themselves working for a leader who fits, they say that they value their work significantly more and are less likely to want to leave the organization. When employees and bosses are mismatched, enjoyment of and commitment to work declines. If no one works to counteract the tension, serious problems can arise. (See the exhibit “When Personalities Don’t Match.”)
When Personalities Don’t Match by Andrew Kakabadse and Nada K. Kakabadse What happens when differing personality types work together yet don’t appreciate each other’s strengths? Over the past 20 years we have done research with leaders in more than 12,500 private, public, military, and government organizations across 21 countries. Here’s what we’ve found:
When Jane Promotion manages Joe Prevention, she rarely sees him as a threat. But she may overlook and underutilize his strengths and fail to encourage him with defined tasks and clear objectives.
When both individuals are subordinate, their contrasting approaches lead to tension. Joe Prevention sees Jane Promotion as a threat, while Jane gets frustrated by the barriers Joe creates and may openly challenge him.
When Joe Prevention and Jane Promotion are both bosses, a power struggle may develop. Jane will emphasize successes, undermining Joe, while Joe heaps on criticism, often behind Jane’s back.
Even when Joe Prevention manages Jane Promotion, he may feel threatened by her and seek to limit her activity and opportunities as a result. She will resent the micromanagement and may eventually leave. Andrew Kakabadse is a professor of international management development at Cranfield University’s School of Management in the UK. Nada K. Kakabadse is a professor of management and business research at the University of Northampton’s Business School in the UK.
Framing the goal.
Sometimes even minor tweaks in how you think about a goal or the language you use to describe it can make a difference. One of our favorite studies on this subject comes from Germany. Coaches in a highly regarded semiprofessional soccer league were told to prep their players for high-pressure penalty kicks with one of two statements: “You are going to shoot five penalties. Your aspiration is to score at least three times.” Or “You are going to shoot five penalties. Your obligation is to not miss more than twice.” You probably wouldn’t expect a small change in wording to affect these practiced, highly motivated players. But it had a big impact. Players did significantly better when the instructions were framed to match their dominant motivational focus, which the researchers had previously measured. This was especially true for prevention-minded players, who scored nearly twice as often when they received the don’t-miss instructions.
In another study that used framing, students were assigned to write a report, for which they would be paid, and deliver it by a certain date. They were asked to make a specific plan, detailing when, where, and how they would write the report.
One version of the instructions was designed to fit a promotion focus: Imagine a convenient time when you will be able to write your report.Imagine a comfortable, quiet place where you might write your report.Imagine yourself capturing as many details as you can and making your report vivid and interesting.
The other version was designed to fit a prevention focus:Imagine times that will be inconvenient for writing your report so that you can avoid them.Imagine places that will be uncomfortable or have lots of distraction so that you can avoid writing your report there.Imagine yourself not forgetting any details and being careful not to make your report bland or boring.
Remarkably, students who received instructions suited to their dominant motivational focus were about 50% more likely than others to turn in their reports. So when you are trying to keep yourself or someone else motivated, remember that promotion-focused people need to think about what they are doing in terms of positives (what they aspire to, how best to accomplish the task) and prevention-focused people should instead think about negatives (potential mistakes, obstacles to avoid).
Seeking or giving feedback.
Once goals are set in a way that creates motivational fit, you must sustain the fit by seeking out—or, as a manager, giving—the right kind of feedback. Promotion-focused people tend to increase their efforts when a supervisor offers them praise for excellent work, whereas prevention-focused people are more responsive to criticism and the looming possibility of failure. For instance, in one study we found that the promotion-focused were more motivated and tried harder in the midst of a task when they were assured that they were on target to reach a goal as opposed to when they were told that they were below target but could catch up. For prevention-focused people the reverse was true: They tried harder when told they weren’t on target; in fact, being assured of success undermined their motivation.
A Word About Promotion-Prevention Hybrids Most people have a dominant focus, but some seem to wear both hats equally often. To create motivational fit and enhance performance for these hybrids, you must remember that no one can wear both hats at the same time. Hybrids will adopt one focus or the other, often as a function of which motivation is best suited to the task at hand—so let that be your guide. Create fit for tasks involving safety or accuracy by using prevention feedback and incentives, but use the promotion variety for tasks involving creativity or advancement.
We aren’t suggesting that you seek out false praise or unwarranted criticism, or offer up either one as a manager. But if you’re promotion-minded, you can look for people who will give you the positive, inspirational message you need. And if you’re prevention-minded, you should routinely ask colleagues for constructive criticism.
Don’t be overly effusive with the prevention-focused or overly critical with the promotion-focused.
As a manager, you should always give honest feedback, but you might want to adjust your emphasis to maximize motivation. Don’t be overly effusive when praising the prevention-focused, and don’t gloss over mistakes they’ve made or areas that need improvement. Meanwhile, don’t be overly critical when delivering bad news to the promotion-focused—they need reassurance that you have confidence in their ability and recognize their good work.
Providing incentives.
Tangible incentives are another way to sustain motivational fit. This is not as simple as “rewards are motivating,” because incentives vary according to personality type. You can create your own incentives (“If I finish this project by Friday, I will treat myself to a spa day,” or “If I don’t finish this project by Friday, I will spend the weekend cleaning out the garage”), and you can push to make sure your employees’ incentives create fit.
It’s also important to avoid incentives that aren’t aligned with focus, because they can be demotivating. For example, after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the public relations disaster it created for BP, the company’s new CEO, Bob Dudley, changed the rules governing employee bonuses: Increasing safety would be the sole criterion on which they were calculated. One well-known shortcoming of this approach is that it can lead to the underreporting of problems rather than to an actual increase in safety. But a second important flaw is probably now also obvious: Rewarding people for safety is a poor motivational fit. The thought of a bonus makes people eager and willing to take chances (promotion), which is the opposite of being vigilant and avoiding mistakes (prevention). On the other hand, penalties—such as taking bonus money away—for not meeting new safety standards would provide the right kind of motivational fit.We believe that a promotion focus and a prevention focus are two legitimate ways of looking at the same goal. You may think your business should concentrate on creating new opportunities for advancement, while your colleague thinks the emphasis should be on protecting your relationships with existing clients—and you are both right. Promotion-focused and prevention-focused people are crucial for every organization’s success, despite the potential for infighting and poor communication. Businesses (and teams) need to excel at innovation and at maintaining what works, at speed and at accuracy. The key is to understand and embrace our personality types and those of our colleagues, and to bring out the best in each of us.Orthodox macroeconomics has become a place where visions die and hopes are banished, for both liberals and conservatives.
When I conducted an assessment of Senator Bernie Sanders’ economic proposals and found that they could produce robust growth, the negative reaction among powerful liberal economists was swift and vehement. How much, I wondered, did this reflect personal disappointment being rationalized into a political economy of despair? Professional economists tend to embrace an economic theory that government can do little more than fuss around the edges. From that stance, what do they have to offer ordinary people for whom the economy is not working? Not a whole lot.
How Gerald Friedman’s assessment of Bernie Sanders economic proposals prompted a rare public political spat among economists
It has certainly been a rough seven years for the liberal economists in the Obama Administration. Economic recovery has been slow, the slowest in the post-World War II era. Ambitious programs for reform of social insurance programs (such as unemployment insurance) and for public investment have been scaled back, and back. Yes, there is much that these economists who served Obama can be proud of: more people have health insurance, and the economy did not collapse. But the constant slog must have taken a toll. Having experienced so many compromises and disappointments, perhaps it is easier to say to those who expect more that it just can’t happen. There is comfort in the Thatcherite phrase: There Is No Alternative (TINA).
The angry reaction to my report revealed that by some combination of rationalization and the dominance of neoclassical microeconomics since the 1970s, liberal economists have virtually abandoned Keynesian economics, which supported the notion that governments can and must intervene in the economy to ensure the best results for society. These economists went back to pre-Keynesian thinking, where price fluctuations are supposed to equilibrate supply and demand at full employment with an optimal distribution of good and services. The very suggestion that government action can result in increases in growth rates or wages is now taken to be obviously wrong. Adopting the language of neoclassical micro welfare economics, everything is already as good as can be — all that government can do is to make it worse. Criticisms of the orthodox model and its policies are deemed worthy of scorn, to be dismissed tout court because they are obviously at variance not only with textbook economics, but with what we need to believe to rationalize failure.
The closing of the economists’ mind
The reaction to my paper — the casual and precipitous conclusion that it must be wrong because it projects a sharply higher rate of GDP growth — comes from the assumption that the economy is already at full employment and capacity output. It is assumed that were output significantly below full employment, then prices would fall to equilibrate the two. This is the political counsel of despair. It is based on classical economic theory and the underlying acceptance of Say’s Law of Markets (named for the great Classical economist Jean-Baptiste Say), which says that total supply of goods and services and the total demand for goods and services will always be equal. The shoe market creates the right amount of demand for shoes — it works out so neatly that the true measure of the supply of shoes, of potential output, can be taken by measuring actual output. This concept is used as a justification for laissez-faire economics, and the view that the market mechanism finds a harmonious equilibrium. It explains why even in the depths of the economic crisis, Christina Romer, former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration, who was always skeptical of fiscal policy and Keynesian economics, and why Jared Bernstein, former Chief Economist and Economic Adviser to Vice President Joseph Biden under Obama, who should have known better, wrote that the economy would return on its own to full employment. They predicted, quite wrongly, that the proposed Obama stimulus would accelerate this recovery by 6 months.
The return of Say’s Law has distorted the way liberal policy elites view the economy. Consider the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) decision in 2014 to explain away years of slow growth by dramatically revising downwards its estimate of potential output. No longer do we have an output gap of 9 percent; instead the gap was redefined as only 2 percent because the real level of capacity is reevaluated as the level actually produced on the assumption that we must be at full employment. And how do we know that we are at full employment? Because we are producing the capacity level of output.
CBO has similarly downgraded estimates of potential GDP growth with historically low rates of labor force growth and slow productivity growth; instead of the 3 percent average annual growth of the 1959-2007 period, or the 4 percent growth 1947-73, we are to expect no more than 2 percent growth. While there is some referencing of demographic changes, these estimates conveniently align future growth projections with the otherwise-disappointing recent growth performance. This reevaluation says to policy elites, “Hey, we are doing as well as can be expected.” To the general public it says, “Sorry, nothing more can be done for you.” TINA.
The economics and politics of despair
There is, of course, a politics as well as a psychology to this economic theory. If nothing much can be done, if things are as good as they can be, it is irresponsible even to suggest to the general public that we try to do something about our economic ills. The role of economists and other policy elites (Paul Krugman is fond of the term “wonks”) is to explain to the general public why they should be reconciled with stagnant incomes, and to rebuke those, like myself, who say otherwise before we raise false hopes that can only be disappointed. But this approach leaves liberals like Hillary Clinton with few policy options to offer in response to the siren call of demagogues like Donald Trump. And it makes the work of self-proclaimed “responsible” elite economists that much more pressing. They have to work even harder to persuade the public that nothing can be done to head off the challenge of Trump and other irresponsible politicians who capitalize on the electorate’s appetite for change. They have to slap down critics like myself. “Responsible” elite economists have to keep the party of “good arithmetic” from overpromising at all costs.
Were the orthodox classical economists correct, then of course their politics would follow. But what if they are wrong? What if government action could, in fact, raise growth rates or narrow disparities? What would be the expected value of a higher GDP growth rate? Would it be worth some academic debate, even if it leaked into the public realm? Might this debate even serve a socially useful function by giving voters an alternative to the xenophobic political economy of Donald Trump? Many Americans believe that government action can improve economic conditions, especially for workers, and many of these support Trump because they see him as the only candidate who is even willing to consider government action to help working Americans. These voters can look long and hard at the “responsible” Clinton platform for some policy, for any policy to raise growth rates and narrow income disparities. But they won’t find it, because policy elites have closed their minds to the possibility of change.
An agenda for further research?
I admit that I have always lived surrounded by people who agree with me. At Columbia, Harvard, and now Amherst, Massachusetts, I have sought friends and colleagues who largely agree with me. While I enjoy the comfort that comes from an affirming community, it may be that I was not well served by the homogeneity of views. While I knew intellectually that the mainstream had abandoned Keynes and reembraced Say’s Law, I didn’t take this shift seriously. It seemed too absurd to me; honestly, I thought they were only kidding. Since I have spent most of my life refuting classical economics, and since my colleagues and friends agreed with me, I assumed that everyone did.
Had I included some mainstream economists in my narrow social circle, then I would have been better prepared for the substantive reaction to my report. On the other hand, as an intellectual activity, I was well served by the debate because it forced me to deal with ideas that I had previously rejected only too casually. I was helped in this by some of the orthodox folks who expressed second thoughts about my work (such as Kevin |
of two catch trials and a set of six test trials differing in sound-pressure level by a step-size of 3 dB was repeated several times during a session, with a randomized sequence of trials in each block (in 1994 blocks consisted of three catch trials and seven test trials [37]). In all measurements, experimental sessions were excluded from the analysis if the false alarm rate exceeded 20% or if the two signals with the highest sound-pressure levels (SPLs) were reported with a probability below 80%. For a final threshold estimate, we collected at least four valid experimental sessions to ensure that each SPL was presented 20 times (in 1994 at least 15 times). The final threshold was then computed by linear interpolation of the psychometric function as the SPL for which the value of the signal-detection measure d' was 1.8.
(f) Data analysis
We performed a two-way repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) to test for the within-subject effects of frequency (0.5, 1.0, 2.0, 4.0, 6.3, 8.0, 10.0, 12.0 kHz) and the between-subject effect of age (young/old) on the owls' auditory thresholds (in dB SPL). Tukey tests were used for post hoc comparisons. For main effects and interactions, we computed partial Eta squared (η2) as a measure of effect size. Partial η2 measures the degree of association between an effect and the dependent variable and can be interpreted as the proportion of variance in the dependent variable that is attributable to each effect (partial η2 varies between 0 and 1, and is non-additive). The influence of a variable is thus not judged by the magnitude of the associated p-value. In addition, partial η2 is a reliable indicator of relevant effects also in cases when sample size is too small to detect a significant difference at the conventional significance level of 0.05. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS v. 23.0 (IBM SPSS Statistics) or SigmaStat v. 4.0 (Systat Software, Inc.).
3. Results
(a) Comparing young and old barn owls
In a behavioural paradigm, we estimated the auditory sensitivity of barn owls from two different age groups. Test frequencies for obtaining individual audiograms were between 0.5 and 12 kHz. Barn owls are far more sensitive than most other bird species, their thresholds in quiet being below 0 dB SPL for a wide range of frequencies. The mean thresholds in quiet are shown in figure 1, and individual thresholds are listed in tables 1 and 2. The lowest thresholds were found between 2 and 8 kHz in both age groups (figure 1). At test frequencies of 0.5, 1.0 and 6.3 kHz, the thresholds of the old owls were slightly lower (better) than those of the young owls (mean differences between 0.1 and 3.1 dB). At the remaining test frequencies, the thresholds of the young owls were lower than those of the old owls (mean differences between 0.9 and 9.6 dB). These differences were not significant, however (see statistics below). Young owls had average thresholds of −6.9, −10.4, −6.5 and −15.5 dB SPL at 2, 4, 6.3 and 8 kHz, respectively. The mean thresholds of old owls were very similar: −5.9, −7.8, −6.6 and −8.6 dB SPL at 2, 4, 6.3 and 8 kHz, respectively. In both age groups, 8 kHz was the test frequency with the lowest mean threshold (figure 1; tables 1 and 2). The highest thresholds were those at the extremes of the audiogram, about 5 dB at 0.5 kHz and about 32 dB at 12 kHz, reflecting the decrease in sensitivity at both ends of the basilar papilla [40]. Individual thresholds were most variable at 6.3 kHz (tables 1 and 2), however, without any relation to age. Two young individuals as well as one of the old individuals showed relatively high thresholds, whereas the remaining two young and two old individuals showed rather low thresholds. The most sensitive frequency of the individual audiogram was at either 6.3 or 8 kHz (tables 1 and 2). We probed for significant differences between the two age groups by means of a repeated measure ANOVA. Test frequency had a significant effect on auditory thresholds (F = 76.700, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.939). This main effect explained most of the variation in thresholds, as indicated by the effect size. By contrast, age group was not a significant predictor of auditory thresholds (F = 1.407, p = 0.289, η2 = 0.220). There was no significant interaction between frequency and age group (F = 1.729, p = 0.134, η2 = 0.257). We used multiple-comparisons to identify test frequencies that were significantly different from each other. The test frequency of 12 kHz was significantly different to any of the other test frequencies (Tukey tests, q-values between 27.0 and 16.9, all p < 0.001). Similarly, 0.5 kHz was significantly different to all other test frequencies (q-values between 10.1 and 4.6, p ≤ 0.001 with one exception: p = 0.047 for 0.5 versus 1 kHz). We also found a significant difference between 1 and 8 kHz (q = 5.5, p = 0.01). None of the remaining pairwise-comparisons were significant. Figure 1. Thresholds in quiet as a function of frequency in barn owls. Open symbols represent the mean values and s.d. of our young barn owls (n = 4) and closed black symbols represent mean values and s.d. of the old barn owls (n = 3). The green triangles represent data from Konishi 1973 (n = 1). To improve visibility of the error bars, the symbols for young and old owls were slightly shifted off the actual test frequencies (tables 1 and 2). (Online version in colour.)
Table 1.Thresholds in quiet in dB SPL, and mean values of four young barn owls (Sova, Ugle, Grün and Rot) as a function of signal frequency (kHz). (The age of each animal during measurement is shown below the name.) Collapse frequency (kHz) Ugle 14–18 months Sova 16–19 months Grün 19–23 months Rot 19–25 months mean s.d. 0.5 3.8 5.7 3.8 10.5 5.9 3.2 1.0 −2.8 1.7 −3.5 −7.0 −2.9 3.6 2.0 −6.9 −4.7 −9.8 −6.0 −6.9 2.2 4.0 −10.2 −5.3 −13.4 −12.6 −10.4 3.6 6.3 −20.2 3.8 −15.7 6.2 −6.5 13.4 8.0 −17.2 −16.3 −13.1 −15.5 −15.5 1.8 10.0 −18.0 −13.8 −8.0 −14.1 −13.5 4.1 12.0 25.5 32.8 30.3 28.0 29.1 3.1
Table 2.Thresholds in quiet in dB SPL, and mean values and s.d. of three old barn owls aged more than 13 years (Lisa, Bart and Weiss) as a function of signal frequency (kHz). (The age of each animal during measurement is shown together with the name.) Collapse frequency (kHz) Bart 13 years Lisa 13 years Weiss 17 years mean s.d. 0.5 2.8 −0.3 6.0 2.8 3.2 1.0 −5.0 −2.8 −2.2 −3.3 1.5 2.0 −6.3 −7.6 −3.9 −5.9 1.9 4.0 −8.9 −10.1 −4.4 −7.8 3.0 6.3 −8.0 −12.1 0.3 −6.6 6.3 8.0 −9.3 −11.0 −5.6 −8.6 2.8 10.0 −3.6 −9.0 0.8 −3.9 4.9 12.0 31.5 31.6 42.1 35.1 6.1
(b) Tracking Lifetime thresholds
From one of the individuals (Weiss) we obtained audiograms several times during its lifetime. Thresholds were measured for the first time at the age of 22 months (started at 18 months, completed at 22 months of age), i.e. when the auditory sensitivity of the barn owl is fully developed [41]. Additional audiograms were obtained much later, at the age of 17 and 23 years, as shown in figure 2. Threshold changes were larger between the first and the second threshold estimate than between the second and the third estimate. Between about 2 and 17 years of age, threshold at test frequencies of 2, 4, 6.3, 10 and 12 kHz increased between 10.5 and 14.5 dB, while thresholds at 0.5, 1 and 8 kHz changed much less (−1.0, +7.2, +6.9 dB, respectively). Between 17 and 23 years of age, thresholds were within a few decibels (between about −4 and +4 dB), with the exception at 10 kHz, where thresholds increased by about 11 dB. These repeated threshold estimates from a single individual show that thresholds changed, but did not necessarily deteriorate, with age. Figure 2. Variation of thresholds in quiet of one barn owl (Weiss), measured between 1994 and 2016. Frequency is the parameter. (Online version in colour.)
4. Discussion
(a) Auditory sensitivity in young and old barn owls
Overall, the young owls were more sensitive than the old owls (on average 2.8 dB), the threshold difference and the direction of the difference were frequency dependent (figure 1). Statistical testing, however, found no significant differences between the two age groups. The variability in thresholds between individuals was largest at 6.3 kHz, although the mean thresholds for young and old owls were essentially identical (−6.5 and −6.6 dB, respectively, tables 1 and 2). In addition, threshold variability was not related to the acoustic chamber in which they were measured. Overall, our data from the two age groups and from the single individual measured several times indicate that barn owl ears do not deteriorate with age.
The auditory sensitivity of our barn owls compares favourably to the audiogram of a single barn owl shown in a paper by Konishi [20] (figure 1). At first glance, Konishi's owl seems about 8–10 dB more sensitive than our owls. There are, however, a few differences between the two studies. Firstly, the threshold criteria between our study and the Konishi study were different. While we used the signal-detection measure d' with a threshold criterion of 1.8, Konishi [20] defined 75% correct responses as the threshold criterion, with no indication for the rate of spontaneous responding. Secondly, Konishi [20] presented the audiogram of only one of the three owls tested in his study and stated that these were the data from the barn owl that was the ‘most carefully tested’. We thus have no knowledge about the ‘average performance’ of Konishi's owls. Thirdly, we used barn owls from the Old World species group (Tyto alba), while Konishi employed New World barn owls (Tyto furcata, formerly Tyto alba pratincola) [42,43]. These two groups have different body sizes [41]; the size of their basilar papilla is, however, the same [30,31,44]. Many studies have also employed barn owls from both groups as an animal model in central auditory physiology or anatomy and there appears to be no substantial difference between the species groups [30,31,44]. We thus conclude that the species difference between our study and the Konishi study is negligible.
(b) Long-lived birds with ageless ears
The lack of hearing loss in our old barn owls is remarkable, given that the average life expectancy of barn owls is rather low. Individuals that survive their first year have an average life expectancy of 3–4 years [22–26]. It is assumed that the high mortality rates of first year birds probably arises from a lack of experience in locating and catching prey [25,26] and the low abundance of prey [24,26]. Although barn owls are generally short-lived birds, some may get quite old in the wild. There are observations of free-living barn owls reaching an age of between 11 and 18 years, with exceptions reaching 21 years or even older [22,23,25,45]. Three of our laboratory-reared barn owls (Bart, Lisa, Weiss) thus exceeded the average lifespan by far, but were still within the range as naturally observed. We were able to obtain several threshold estimates for a wide range of test frequencies from one of these individuals (Weiss) during its 23 years of life. Over the whole time period, thresholds both increased and decreased; on average, thresholds increased by about 10 dB over 21 years. Thus we did not find shifts in sensitivity that were comparable to the typical mammalian pattern. Thresholds in aged mammals are typically elevated by at least 20–40 dB (see below). Langemann et al. [17] investigated aspects of presbycusis in another bird species, the European starling, that has an average lifespan of about 22 months. Similar to our barn owls, old starlings did not show any evidence for age-related hearing loss. The starlings' threshold variation over 11 years was on average less than ±4.5 dB [17]. So far, to our knowledge, European starlings and barn owls are the only two bird species where auditory sensitivity in quiet has been investigated in old individuals and both studies clearly indicate that birds are not subject to age-related hearing loss.
(c) Ageing birds and ageing mammals
Compared to birds, auditory sensitivity in mammals deteriorates significantly with age. Moreover, threshold shifts in mammals are most prominent at high frequencies [1]. Although most studies in mammals assessed auditory sensitivity with the use of electrophysiological methods such as auditory brainstem responses (ABR) [2,5], there are a few studies that investigated ageing in the mammalian auditory system with behavioural methods [3,4,46,47]. Mills et al. [2] showed that aged Mongolian gerbils (older than 24 months) experience a shift in ABR thresholds of about 20–35 dB compared to young animals. Behavioural measurements by Hamann et al. [3] in the same species revealed thresholds shift of about 20 dB with ageing. Sinnott et al. [47] found shifts in thresholds for vowel stimuli in Mongolian gerbils by about 10 dB per year when testing animals up to the age of 36 months in a behavioural task. Dum and von Wedel found shifts in ABR threshold of about 30–40 dB in guinea pigs aged 24–36 months, as compared to young animals of six months of age [48]. Studies in rats by Cooper et al. [49] (ABR measurements) and in mice by Ehret [4,46] (behavioural procedures, NMRI mice) and by Li & Borg [50] (ABR measurements, CBA/ca, C57BL/6 J mice) have shown thresholds to be elevated by about 15–50 dB in aged individuals. McFadden and colleagues showed that thresholds in 10–15 year old chinchillas were significantly elevated at several test frequencies, as compared to animals up to 3 years of age [5]. In summary, the loss of auditory sensitivity in these laboratory mammals was always observed at multiple test frequencies within the animals' hearing range and resembled the pattern typically found in humans suffering from presbycusis [51], i.e. a greater loss of sensitivity for high frequencies compared with low frequencies.
One major difference between mammals and birds that helps to explain this difference in ageing of ears is that birds are able to restore auditory function after cochlear damage while mammals are not. In contrast to mammals, birds and some other vertebrate groups have the capacity to regenerate lost hair cells in the auditory basilar papilla [6,9,52]. Although mammals have limited capacity to regenerate hair cells in their vestibular sensory epithelia, hair cells in the organ of Corti cannot be replaced [52]. In order to understand the mechanisms of regeneration in the avian basilar papilla, various methods have been used to induce damage. For example, local application of the ototoxic drug gentamicin to the round window of the inner ear in the pigeon led to extensive damage, wiping out hair cells over most of the basilar papilla. About 48 days later, hair cells seemed to have fully recovered [7]. Another method used injected ototoxic substances: chickens treated with ototoxic substances also regenerated new hair cells [53,54]. Similarly, in a more recent study by Woolley et al. [8], Bengalese finches (Lonchura striata domestica) were treated with an ototoxic substance. The treatment resulted in hair-cell loss especially in the basal, high-frequency region of the basilar papilla. Four weeks later, hair cells were almost fully regenerated [8]. The recovery of hair cells after the application of ototoxic substances has also been shown in European starlings, canaries (Serinus canaria) and budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulates) [14,15]. Beside the application of ototoxic substances, physical methods of inducing acoustic trauma were also used to study hair-cell regeneration in birds. Acoustic stimulation with intense SPLs induces overstimulation and death of hair cells. Regeneration of hair cells after acoustic trauma was shown, for example, in quails and in chickens [10,14,55]. In sharp contrast to mammals, all of those studies have conclusively shown the ability of birds to regenerate hair cells after damage and restore auditory function to a remarkable degree [10,14,52].
The ability for continuous regeneration of the sensory epithelium is probably the key feature for retaining ‘ageless ears’. This was previously suggested to prevent age-related hearing loss, as illustrated by behavioural data from the European starling [17]. Also in the barn owl, a bird with superbly sensitive hearing and a highly specialized cochlea, we found no evidence for age-related hearing loss up to an age near the upper limit of its life expectancy. This suggests that the innate capacity for hair-cell regeneration protects birds from age-related hearing loss. As a human being, we can only regard this capability of birds with great respect (if not with envy). Evolution has favoured birds to still benefit from regenerative abilities that were ‘lost’ in the mammalian cochlea. Mammals, including our own species, commonly suffer from a serious loss of auditory sensitivity in old age. Humans being about 65 years old will have lost on average more than 30 dB for frequencies of 4 kHz and above [51], whereas aged birds will probably experience only minimum loss in sensitivity or no deficit at all. The hope and interesting question remains whether, someday, our knowledge on preservation of sensitive hearing in birds will provide new treatment options that could counteract human sensory deficits.
Ethics
All procedures were performed in compliance with the Guidelines for the Use of Animals in Research (Animal Behaviour, 2012, 83, 301–309).
Data accessibility
All data used in statistical analyses and figures are provided as the electronic supplementary material.
Authors' contributions
B.K. and U.L. carried out or supervised data collection for the 2010 and 2016 datasets and performed the statistical analysis and manuscript preparation. The final version of the manuscript resulted from input and discussion between all four authors.
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Funding
This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SFB TR 31 ‘the Active Auditory System’).
Acknowledgements Threshold data from 1994 to 1995 were previously published in Dyson et al. [37]. We thank Maike Niebuhr and Jella Voelter for their help with behavioural training and data collection and Rainer Beutelmann for continuous technical support. Geoffrey Manley kindly supported us with the final draft reading.
Footnotes
Electronic supplementary material is available online at https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3866659.As PayPal and GoFundMe have recently done with alt-right figures doing fundraising, Airbnb has taken a stand against users who appear to be intending to host gatherings in Charlottesville, Virginia this weekend in connection with a rally that is drawing support from neo-Nazi and white supremacist organizations around the country. As BuzzFeed reports, various self-proclaimed members of the alt-right heading to the Unite the Right rally on Saturday have been complaining on Twitter, and Airbnb has confirmed their actions based on the site's Community Commitment.
Airbnb issued a statement saying they wanted to "make good on our mission of belonging" and that "those who are members of the Airbnb community accept people regardless of their race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, or age."
Saturday's rally is specifically centered around a park in Charlottesville that was previously named Lee Park and featured a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, and where recently the statue was removed. The park was recently renamed Emancipation Park by the Charlottesville City Council. Noted alt-right figures Richard Spencer and Baked Alaska are scheduled to speak, and BuzzFeed reports that staff from neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer are also going to be in attendance.
The image in the tweet above comes from a torch-lit vigil during another rally in this same park in May.
The Airbnb Community Commitment is like a Terms of Service that's signed by all users of the platform, and Airbnb says the company is deactivating the accounts of people who are "antithetical" to this policy. Per BuzzFeed, "They added that they are able to find these users who violate the policy 'through our background check' and the 'input of our community.'"
At least one Twitterer noted that this "background check" seemed to be connected to one's Facebook account.
If your Airbnb account is linked to your edgelord Facebook, expect cancellations and an account ban for Charlottesville. — Reinhard Wolff (@contentmancy) August 7, 2017 Canceled my account with airbnb pic.twitter.com/CBwhN6lB0s — Cracker Factory (@EarthBoisRDumb) August 6, 2017
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups nationwide, suggests that Saturday's rally might be a "historic alt-right showcase," attended by hundreds if not thousands of white nationalists, Ku Klux Klan members, and various members of the alt-right and racist spectrum.
A number of intended attendees have been using the alt-right-favored crowdfunding platform Rootbocks to help fund their trip to Charlottesville, with campaigns like this one.
The city of Charlottesville has already stipulated that the rally will only be permitted if it is moved to a larger park in the city called McIntire Park, because more than 400 people are expected to attend.
Related: Alt-Right Calls For 'Free Speech Alternative To PayPal' After Company Begins Freezing AccountsJOAN BURTON HAS resigned as the leader of the Labour party.
Following a parliamentary party meeting in Leinster House this afternoon, the Dublin West TD confirmed she was stepping down after two years in the leadership role.
She said that she will step down once a new leader has been elected.
“Like most of the party, I entered government with both hope and fear in my heart – hope that with unyielding effort and sustained policy implementation, we could turn things around, fear that the situation had already deteriorated to a point of no return,” Burton said today.
She said she was “immensely proud” of what the party had achieved in government, but also acutely conscious that for many people, “we couldn’t deliver quickly enough, and that the recovery still hasn’t been felt in all homes”.
The results of the election had been “disappointing”, she commented, as the party lost many “able politicians”.
We didn’t do everything right, but I believe we left Ireland a better place than we found it – the true test for any party in government.
https://vine.co/v/i2WgdKmntBb
She told the packed room at the RHA Gallery in Dublin today that the decision to step down was a “difficult one”.
Burton said she would have liked more time in government to make improvements.
It will remain the party’s objective in this Dáil to match business recovery with social progress, she told reporters.
Sean Sherlock described it as a “sad day”, adding that Burton had made a valuable contribution to the party as leader.
‘Rescuing the economy’
Taoiseach Enda Kenny also paid tribute to his former government colleague, stating she and her ministerial colleagues “played a major role in rescuing the Irish economy, which was on the bring of collapse” back in 2011.
Many of the tough decisions that had to be taken to turn the country around were unpopular and politically difficult, but Joan Burton and her colleagues were steadfast in doing what was right for the country.
“In her role as minister, Joan Burton spearheaded many of the welfare reforms that helped the last government to surpass our job creation targets to the point where the unemployment rate has been reduced from over 15% to 8.4%,” he added.
The new boss
Labour’s rules state that if the party doesn’t enter government after an election, then the leadership comes up for review. Due to government formation finally becoming a reality last week, the party’s spotlight moved to focus on Burton’s future.
https://vine.co/v/i2W603VEbre
Her deputy Alan Kelly becomes caretaker leader until an election for the top position is held. The Tipperary TD is a frontrunner, and he said today he would be making his intentions clear once the process of election is announced.
Sean Sherlock and Brendan Howlin are also in the leadership mix. The voting process could take up to six weeks.
- With reporting by Christina Finn and Michelle Hennessy.FILE - In this Aug. 25, 2016, file photo, Sam Clovis speaks during a news conference as then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, left, watches before a campaign rally in Dubuque, Iowa. Clovis, a former Trump campaign official who has been linked to the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, has withdrawn his nomination for an Agriculture post. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
WASHINGTON (AP) — A former Trump campaign official linked to the Russia investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller has withdrawn his nomination for an agriculture post.
Sam Clovis, a former Trump campaign national co-chairman and chief policy adviser, wrote in a letter to President Donald Trump dated Thursday that he does "not want to be a distraction or a negative influence."
Questions had been raised about his qualifications to serve as the Agriculture Department's chief scientist. Clovis is a self-described skeptic of climate change.
Republicans were preparing to hold a hearing on his nomination next week. But it was revealed this week that Clovis had communications with George Papadopoulos, who has admitted to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian intermediaries last year.
In his letter, Clovis said the political climate in Washington "has made it impossible for me to receive balanced and fair consideration for this position."
"The relentless assaults on you and your team seem to be a blood sport that only increases in intensity each day," Clovis wrote. "As I am focused on your success and the success of this Administration, I do not want to be a distraction or negative influence, particularly with so much important work left to do for the American people."
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: "We respect Mr. Clovis' decision to withdraw his nomination."
Clovis was a professor of economics at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa, before he joined the Trump campaign.
A lawyer representing Clovis confirmed this week that Clovis was the person, identified as the "Campaign Supervisor" in court papers, who brought Papadopoulos onto an advisory committee on national security.
In court papers, the unnamed supervisor receives some of Papadopoulos' email exchanges about his attempts to line up a meeting with the Russians, appearing to encourage the effort at one point by responding "Great work." He also later encouraged Papadopoulos to travel to Russia on his own.
The lawyer's statement said Clovis opposed any trip to Russia for Trump or his campaign staff but noted that Clovis may not have made his opposition known when "a volunteer made suggestions on a foreign policy matter."
If his nomination had been confirmed, Clovis would have overseen the department's nearly $3 billion investment in research and education grants. He also would have helped set the research priorities for the department and ensure that research is conducted with integrity.
___
On Twitter follow Ken Thomas at @KThomasDC.Elves live overall relatively longer lives than most other sentient species. Often living well till about 250ish years naturally before any real aging begins to set in. Elves do not suffer from debilitation or senility in old age. Elves with solid medicine and alchemy or the right sorcery can extend that life till about 400. The longest recorded Elf lifespan is allegedly 600 years, though Bronwyn of Caer Cari is said to have lived to the age of 1000. But this is likely a legendary folktale.Elves take longer to mature physically and mentally. Elves typically don't enter adolescence until the age of 20 and do not become full grown adults until 40-50.Elves have the slowest fertility cycle other than dragonoids, specifically Dragonborn. Typically Elven woman without magical interventions or alchemy can only become pregnant easily four times out of the year.Elves speak, read and write in very distinctive languages. Being the first race to develop complex language, writing, ect theirs is the oldest Elven languages are regarded as very difficult to speak. Many Elves on top of their native languages speak an Informal Pidgin/Creole called Sylvanim that acts as an auxilliary language among themselves, though even this is complex for non-Elves. But it is considered easier to learn than many Elven languages.Elven peoples are the third most populous race. Beaten out by Humans, and Orcs.As an elf, you have all the following racial traits.Increase ones Dexterity score by +2Medium.If there is no light within 30 feet of you, you treat shadows in that radius as normal light, and you treat darkness in that radius as shadows.Elves innately add their proficiency bonus to Acrobatics and Athletics checks to climb trees, move through forests and swim. Elves also have advantages om saves to resist drowning.You have advantage on checks made to listen to, search for, or notice something.You are immune to the charmed condition and to any effect that would put you to sleep.Elves in this setting sleep as humans do, but only for 4 hours to get the same level of rest as a human.Elves speak a variety of languages within the Elven branch. Due to Elven longevity, Elves tend to be able to speak 6 languages within the Elven Linguistic Branch.Choose a subrace.With land available for building new homes declining at an unanticipated pace, the price of the scarce land available is well beyond what most people can afford. To address this daunting issue designers at People’s Architecture Office and People’s Industrial Design Office have teamed up to create the Tricycle House and the Tricycle Garden. The house, which was showcased at 2012 Get It Louder Exhibition, suggests a future where there could be a temporary relation between homeowners and the land they are occupying.
The experimental house, which as the name suggests is installed on a tricycle, is made using folded plastic. Using a CNC router, each piece of the house is cut and then folded and welded into its shape. The plastic used is polypropylene, which ensures that the house can be folded into any shape without losing its strength.
The folded off-the-grid house can be taken along using a tricycle and can be expanded out like an accordion to make more space inside. Moreover, the house can also connect with other houses to create a community. The plastic used for the construction is translucent and hence allows the interiors to remain illuminated with sunlight during the daytime and street lamps after dark.
Even after being one of the most portable housing solutions we’ve ever come across, the Tricycle House is not dumb on the amenities list. The human-powered off-the-grid house features a sink and a stove, a bathtub, a water tank and furniture that can transform from a bed to a dining table. Arch Daily states that along with the house is a tricycle-mounted portable garden that can be planted with grass, trees and vegetables.Stoner icons Cypress Hill are looking to cash in on the "inevitable" legalisation of marijuana in their native California by preparing to open their own dispensaries.
The hip-hop trio, who are among the celebrities leading the charge for the legalisation of the drug, insist it won't be too long before state lawmakers agree to allow weed lovers to smoke up a storm in special cigar store-like businesses, and Cypress Hill want to be a part of the explosion of 'hash houses'.
Bandmate B-Real tells Hustler magazine, "They have to figure out where you'll be able to purchase it (marijuana). I don't think it will be available in a normal liquor store right away. I think it will stay in (medical) dispensaries, but the dispensaries will change to being more like cigar shops.
"Then you'll see a Cypress Hill Shop. We're looking towards that now... We're going to be involved in some capacity."- A man exposing himself to students on campus prompted an alert from University of South Florida Police on Thursday.
Around 6 p.m., August 18, USF Police Department were called to Juniper Popular Dining Hall, near USF Beard Drive, for a report that a white male, who appeared to be in his 30s, flashed a student.
"Officers responded to that call, but were unable to locate the suspect," said Lt. Charlotte Domingo with the USF Police Department.
At 9 p.m., the police department received a similar call that a man matching the same description exposed himself outside the Fresh Foods Dining area in the Argos Center.
Less than 15 minutes later, police received a third call.
"There was a naked male running on the fifth floor of the Beard Garage," said Domingo.
Police responded quickly to all three incidents, but never located a suspect.
"It's scary. What's going to happen if, what if one night somebody just comes and does something more extravagant and somebody gets hurt?" said Chrisna Lindor, a freshman who just moved onto campus on Thursday.
USF had four flashing incidents reported in 2015. Three more incidents were reported this April, with only one leading to an arrest.
Anyone with information on the recent incident is asked to contact the University of South Florida Police Department at (813)974-2628.On Monday evening Mark joined Tucker Carlson on Fox News to discuss the latest developments in Robert Mueller's "Russia investigation". Click below to watch:
Mark will be back with Tucker on Thursday. If you prefer Steyn in non-visual form, on Wednesday he'll be joining the great John Oakley at Toronto's AM640 live at 5pm Eastern.
~We had a busy weekend at SteynOnline, including a Christmas movie that's oddly timely as the Pervnado sweeps on - Billy Wilder's The Apartment. We also presented a seasonal live-performance edition of our Song of the Week, and the concluding episodes of Mark's latest audio entertainment, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, plus a whimsical postscript. If you were tied up with Christmas shopping this weekend, we hope you'll want to play catch up with one or two of those offerings. Alternatively, if you've yet to hear any of Mark's Dickensian serialization, you can always go back to the beginning and enjoy it throughout this pre-Christmas week. Patrick Keel, a first-weekend Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club, writes:
Your take on the Dickens classic is superb. I have thoroughly enjoyed every episode. Thank you for a wonderful Christmas gift. God bless us, everyone!
If you're still seeking a great Christmas gift for a loved one, over at the Steyn store there are bargains galore in our Steynamite Christmas Specials. Oh, and we're a convivial band in The Mark Steyn Club, so, if you fancy signing up a chum for our limited-time-only Christmas Gift Membership, it includes your choice of a handsome hardback book or CD set personally autographed by yours truly. More on that here.MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian court has banned a book about Adolf Hitler by late British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, saying quotes attributed to the Nazi leader insult Russians and Jews, prosecutors said on Tuesday.
Under anti-extremism laws the court banned the 1953 book “Hitler’s Table Talk: 1941-1944”, which records Hitler’s sometimes racist ramblings on a wide range of topics.
Trevor-Roper, Regis professor of history at Oxford University between 1957 and 1980, wrote what is considered one of the classic accounts of the fall of Nazi Germany: “The Last Days of Hitler”.
Russia’s Prosecutor-General said in a statement that texts published in “Hitler’s Table Talk” are of “an anti-Slavic and anti-Semitic character”.
“A host of statements by A. Hitler in the book insult the dignity of Russian and Jewish peoples who are presented in quotes as inferior and primitive people because of their nationality.”
The Prosecutor-General said certain Hitler quotes in the book — such as “Russians are beasts,” “Slavs are a mass of inborn slaves” — had caused offence.
The |
last year, restaurant options in the Texas Union include Quiznos Subs, Chick-fil-A, Smokehouse BBQ, Starbucks and Field of Greens Fresh Market.
Taco Bell’s departure came after the restaurant decided to not renew its contract with Aramark, said James Buckley, director of facilities and operations at the Texas Union. After looking at college dining trends and hearing student feedback on the Texas Union board, Aramark officials negotiated a contract with Panda Express.
“Our executive director and Aramark board person strived to meet the needs of our students and found it important to not fill the vacant gap quickly but make sure that whatever we put in there was something that the students wanted,” Buckley said.
Sports management senior Brandy Harrison said she prefers the food options at the Student Activity Center, but her lunch stops may now switch to the Texas Union.
“I will now be frequenting the Union a lot,” Harrison said. “The Union will win my heart now with Panda Express.”
As a college senior on a budget, Harrison said she was excited because Panda Express’s menu offered some of her favorite meals at a low price.
“First off, let’s start with the orange chicken and the honey walnut shrimp. And the wontons. Wow. I can get all of this food for under $10,” Harrison said.
Computer science sophomore Travis Garbe said he eats at the Union when meeting with friends who have different food tastes.
“The options here are pretty solid,” Garbe said. “I’ve never eaten at Panda Express before, but if people wanted it, then I’d say it’s not a bad choice.”
Buckley said demolition and remodeling is scheduled to begin during spring break. Despite speculations the restaurant would open in April, Buckley said the official opening date is unknown.“We’re keeping our fingers crossed that everything runs in a smooth, timely manner, but once the construction process starts, sometimes you never know what you may run into,” Buckley said.This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's Dec. 26 / Jan. 2 issue. Subscribe today!
The cabin is about two hours outside of Los Angeles. Directions come in the form of a screenshot -- cell service is spotty up here, so it's best to have a backup.
Ronda Rousey's all bundled up when she answers the front door. She knows what this looks like. She's broken, right? She's been hiding out in a basement since her stunning loss to Holly Holm last November. Shattered in a million pieces. Listening to Adele and hissing in the dark. She smiles. It's fun to feed it sometimes.
"It's like I'm doing the chick version of growing a beard and living in a cave, you know?" Rousey says. "You remember when Batman goes off to this ninja place, then time lapses and you see he's grown this beard? My woman version of growing a beard was letting my highlights grow out and changing my number."
But this isn't some remote cabin at the end of a winding dirt road. This is a small mountain community. Her neighbors know who she is and what she is doing, but they don't bother her here.
On this crisp November morning, Rousey wears a hoodie and Ugg boots for the short walk from the cabin to the detached garage her longtime trainer Edmond Tarverdyan has turned into a dojo. Six days a week, twice a day, Rousey makes this trip to train for her comeback fight against Amanda Nunes on Dec. 30.
Sometimes, as she walks over, she'll stop at a small chicken coop.
"The chickens don't need me to entertain them," she says.
It's a joke. Sort of. Because damn, she really spent way too much energy trying to put on a show last time.
Back then, when she was undefeated, she'd spend hours and hours thinking of all the things she was expected to do to be successful: Sell the fight, build the women's division of the UFC, take photos with fans, pose on the red carpet. Tweet, Facebook, Instagram. Entertain. She'd stew and swirl all night until an alarm clock would sound way too early.
Now she just wakes up whenever the sun bursts into the back bedroom of the cabin.
"That loss saved me from becoming what I hate," she says. "One of those people who live their lives to impress everyone else. Who put up a front for the world to admire. Who make sure every charitable act is posted and shared for their own image gain. Who posture and pose for people they care nothing about except for the opinion they have of them."
This year, this space she's created for herself is for one purpose.
"I'm just getting my life back," she says.
She always used to spend a few weeks up in the mountains during training camp. That was the plan last year before the Holm fight, as she and Tarverdyan scheduled out her typical two-month fight-prep routine.
But then the January 2016 fight was moved up to November 2015 after UFC 193 headliner Robbie Lawler injured his thumb. UFC president Dana White needed someone with enough star power to replace him for what became the largest crowd in attendance at a UFC fight in history, at the 55,000-seat Etihad Stadium in Melbourne, Australia.
The change in schedule meant Rousey and Tarverdyan had just 44 days for camp. It meant no cabin. But Rousey still said yes because saying no felt like admitting she couldn't do it.
"Ronda was basically like, 'What do you need? I got it,' " White says. "'And if anybody else turns something else down, I'll do what they were supposed to do too.' "
"I was just trying to make too many people happy," Rousey says. "But when I try and do favors and make everybody else happy, at the end of the day, they walk away happy and I'm the one who has to deal with the depression. All the pay-per-views in the world, all the money in the world, it means f---ing nothing to me because I lost."
She's had a year to think about all the things that went wrong in that loss. She remembers how weak and dehydrated her body felt from an excruciating weight cut. Afterward, Tarverdyan had doctors analyze her body chemistry with blood and hair samples. Her cortisol levels were off the charts. But all those are symptoms of a simple truth that looks so obvious in retrospect.
She just should've said, "No."
Rousey still cries sometimes as she relives details from the fight. It's painful and embarrassing. But she is the one who kept saying yes to everything. She left herself vulnerable going into the fight, and Holm made her pay. Rousey's got to own that.
It's easy to fall back down that shame spiral, but that's not productive anymore. Now she has to train and feel strong again. To remember why she fights. That was the point of coming up to this cabin. Having a physical boundary is essential for someone who has trouble setting any limits on herself. It's a way of compartmentalizing.
The other night, for instance, she painted a scene of pine trees on top of a snowy mountain. The trees in the center of the mountain cast a long shadow. Maybe twice as long as the height of the trees themselves. It could be seen as an artistic expression of the weight she's been carrying around all year. Long shadows, fallen trees, distorted perspective.
"Nope," she says. "It's paint by numbers. I'm going to paint more trees on the side of the mountain. It won't look that way when I'm done."
It's cold in the dojo when she enters. Rousey stretches while a space heater warms the room.
"Keep the door closed," she says as Tarverdyan walks in. "Don't let the heat get out."
Rousey slides her legs up and back on a foam roller, breaking up the stiffness in her hamstrings and quadriceps. Then she grabs a long wooden staff and twirls and twists it through a series of poses that look like an action sequence in a Bruce Lee movie.
This summer she had surgery to get her knee into better shape. She can throw kicks and put weight on her leg when she steps back on it now.
But it's better. Not fixed. "My ACL is gone. My cartilage is gone," she says. "It's been gone. I don't even know when it left."
A year ago, it would have been shocking to hear her talk this way. But she's done pretending like things are fine when they're clearly not.
Tarverdyan comes over to start wrapping her hands. He's done this hundreds of times over the past few years. Each piece of tape and gauze has a message written on it, and after the workout, she'll crumple it into a ball. If they were back at her home gym in LA, she'd toss the ball over the wall of the Octagon cage. A little game to break up the monotony of training camp.
There are hundreds of balls of tape and hand wraps from over the years. Many say, "Retire Undefeated." During this training camp, she's writing a new slogan on her used wraps: "FTA." F--- Them All.
That includes rivals who try to get press for themselves by drawing her into faux fights on social media. Everyone who cheered that she lost. "Fans" who promise they won't tag her location in photos but violate the trust as soon as she's out of sight. "I'm being geotagged like a rhino," she says.
But her mom, a former judoka herself, keeps reminding her that her motivation has got to be more than "FTA."
"F -- everybody is not a good reason to fight," her mother, AnnMaria De Mars, told her. "I think that's stupid and bulls --."
De Mars has never been afraid to challenge her daughter. This time, her message to Ronda was simple: "You need something to fight for."Today at Hockenheim less than 50,000 Formula One fans are expected to turn up to see Nico Rosberg start his and the Mercedes team’s home race from pole position.
That is 35,000 less than watched the Friday Free Practice sessions at Silverstone two weeks ago.
Yesterday, an even more sparse crowd took their places to see their home racer take his fifth pole of the year in a field which also contains a German four time world champion. And Friday’s crowd was more like that seen at races in F1 unfriendly outposts such as Korea in recent years.
On Friday afternoon the situation led Mercedes boss Toto Wolff to brand the poor turnout as “not satisfying”.
“If you compare Hockenheim Friday to Friday at Silverstone and Friday in Austria it’s a different world and we have to understand why that is,” he said comparing the poor figures forecast for race day in Germany to Silverstone’s full house of over 120,000 a fortnight ago.
“We have to analyse the phenomenon,” he added. “If the weekend continues like it does now, we need to think about it.”
Wolff’s Mercedes colleague Niki Lauda yesterday went a step further, however, blaming the low crowd numbers on Formula One’s failure to embrace new media.
“Formula one is seeing a serious cultural change,” the Mercedes non-executive director told Germany’s Die Welt newspaper. “The audience wants to watch sport in a different way than before, due to the rapid growth of the new means of communication.
“It is logical that the young people of today have other priorities,” he added. “Everything in the world is changing, but only Formula 1 is staying where it was.” Lauda went on to target Formula!'s broadcast and that model’s resistance to new media as a key issue.
While other sports have embraced online platforms, including live streaming, video on demand services and the free availability of broadcast material across web channels such as YouTube, Formula One has remained resistant, with commercial rights holder Bernie Ecclestone seeing no way to monetise such content. For Lauda that lack of access is contributing to the sport losing fans.
“Young people do not want to stay at home on Sunday when the sun is shining to sit in the lounge with their father for two hours,” he said. “The problem is that today, there is no alternative. You can’t just sit on the beach and watch the race highlights on your smartphone.”
The loss of fans due to lack of access to content was just one thread of Lauda’s argument, with the three-time champion also targeting the sport’s controlling attitude to its stars,
“We have a generation of drivers that, if they were not wearing their racing overalls, you would simply walk past some of them and not notice,” he said. “The ‘formula one system’ is to supervise, monitor, regulate. But we must again have the drivers, not the bureaucrats, in the foreground.
“If we continue like this, no one will be bothered about formula one anymore. It’s five minutes to twelve,” he concluded.
Those opposed to Lauda’s arguments might point to the huge crowds present at the three preceding races; Montreal, Silverstone and at Austria’s Red Bull Ring, where capacity crowds saw exciting racing throughout.
It should also be pointed out that the crowd forecast for Hockenheim this year, while a fall on the circuit’s recent appearances on the calendar, are in line with the circuit’s popularity or lack of it since the heady days of the Schumacher era. Indeed, when the Baden-Württemberg track last hosted F1 in 2012 it’s race day crowd was put at a disappointing 59,500. This is not sustainable financially.
The reasons, then, are not simple and cover a multitude of bases – from poor accessability and lack of personality, to the complex nature of the sport and undoubtedly to ticket pricing.
The cheapest grandstand ticket available for Hockenheim was this year priced at €99, while a weekend adult Category 1 ticket, granting accessa to the upper deck of the Motodrom section weighed in at an eye-watering €515. Even a race day only adult ticket for the Motodrom section cost €279, though the tickets do give you access to general admission areas as well. Three-day tickets at this year’s US Grand Prix range in price from $180-$1035. However, there, the race is largely sold out.
That translates to £220 or $377. According to figures compiled by the BBC in 2013, a face value ticket for Champions League Final came in at £60 (€75/$102), while a ticket for the British round of the MotoGP championship was £70 (€88/$119). Even an comparatively expensive sports event, the Wimbledon Men’s Final, had a 2013 face value ticket price of £130 (€164/$222). The discrepancy is clear.
Lauda’s warning of F1 being at “five minutes to 12 o’clock” might be sensationalist but the message is clear: F1 needs to change how it positions itself. Whether it can do that in time to secure its next generation of fans remains to be seen.Yesterday saw the debut of Essential, the latest brainchild of the creator of Android—Andy Rubin. While everyone is talking about the Essential Phone, the Essential Home looks like a real contender to knock the Amazon Echo off its smart speaker throne.
On the surface, it doesn't seem like the Essential Home will do much more than what we've seen in other smart speakers like the Echo and Google Home. It can play music, set timers, ask the internet for information (like what a baby kangaroo is called), and control your smart home. But it's not what the Essential Home can do that makes it unique, but rather how.
That starts with your privacy. The processing is all taken care of locally on the device whenever possible (including the AI engine that would help manage your life). The amount of data being sent to the cloud will be limited, which will hopefully keep it safe from any malicious threat.
According to Wired, the Home will be the one smart home hub to rule them all. It'll be able to coordinate and work with SmartThings, HomeKit, Nest, and more, and will even extend into Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant. Whether or not Essential will be able to deliver on those promises remains to be seen, though. They're certainly lofty goals, but the danger of writing a check they can't cash is very real.
While no pricing details for the Essential Home have been released yet, Wired notes it'll be available "later this summer."The women of CW's Arrowverse don't just play heroes on television. They're trying to be heroes in real life as well.
Supergirl's Melissa Benoist and Chyler Leigh, The Flash's Candice Patton and Danielle Panabaker, Legends of Tomorrow's Caity Lotz, Maisie Richardson-Sellers, and Tala Ashe, along with Arrow's Emily Bett Rickards, Juliana Harkavy, and Katie Cassidy have joined forces to create the Shethority initiative. Shethority is an online global collective with the goal of creating a positive, inspirational space, as the campaign's Twitter bio reads, "a positive place for women and the feminine to inspire, empower, and share."
❤️ @dpanabaker ‘s thoughts on accepting yourself. “It’s something we ALL struggle with” pic.twitter.com/E9LsvpTzh1 — SHETHORITY (@shethority) November 18, 2017
The women have been sharing their own stories on the initiative’s social media accounts. Recent posts have included video clips of Panabaker and Rickards talking about self-acceptance as well as other personal stories and photos. They've also shared outside content as well, including a TED talk about ending sexual harassment in the workplace, a timely piece of content with Andrew Kreisberg, executive producer for the CW Arrowverse shows, being suspended amid sexual harassment allegations.
Feeling fresh in the first ever #shethority shirt AND sweatshirts? link to buy in bio. Proceeds go to @girlsinc and the development of the Shethority platform??? worldwide shipping available #wegotyourback A post shared by SHETHORITY (@shethority) on Nov 15, 2017 at 9:20am PST
In addition to creating an empowering community, they've also added fundraising for charity to their efforts. The campaign is selling special "Shethority" t-shirts that feature the actresses faces on the back with the words "we've got your back." The proceeds of the shirts go to Girls, Inc, a nonprofit organization that serves girls ages 6-18 through support, mentorship, and helping them develop strengths. Lotz also shared on the initiative’s Instagram that some of the proceeds will go "the development of the Shethority platform" as well.Employees face many temptations to behave unethically at work. Resisting those temptations requires energy and effort. But the energy that is essential to exert self-control waxes and wanes. And when that energy is low, people are more likely to behave unethically. This opens up the possibility that even within the same day, a given person could be ethical at one point in time and unethical at another point in time.
Over the past few years, management and psychology research has uncovered something interesting: both energy and ethics vary over time. In contrast to the assumption that good people typically do good things, and bad people do bad things, there is mounting evidence that good people can be unethical and bad people can be ethical, depending on the pressures of the moment. For example, people who didn’t sleep well the previous night can often act unethically, even if they aren’t unethical people.
Our research started from this idea. Drawing from recent research indicating that people can become more unethical as the day wears on, we asked whether this plays out the same way for people who show different patterns of energy during the course of a day. Fatigue researchers have discovered that alertness and energy follow a predictable daily cycle that is aligned with the circadian process. However, different people may be shifted in their circadian rhythms. Some people are “larks” or “morning people” in that their circadian rhythm is shifted earlier in the day. They are most easily detected by their natural tendency to wake early in the morning. Others are “owls” or “evening people” and they are shifted in the opposite direction. Larks tend to get up early, and owls tend to stay up late.
Building from this research, we predicted that larks and owls would follow different patterns of ethical and unethical behavior over the course of a day. Because their energy levels should follow different patterns, and this energy is crucial for resisting temptation, we expected larks to be more unethical late at night than early in the morning, and owls to be more unethical early in the morning than late at night. To test this prediction, we conducted two laboratory studies.
In our first study, we focused only on behavior in the morning. We brought research participants into a laboratory, and gave them a simple matrix task in which we paid them additional money for each additional matrix that they said they solved. Participants believed that their work was anonymous, and could thus over-report to earn more money. But we were able to go back and determine how many they actually solved. In other words, we could determine who cheated by over-reporting the number of solved matrices. Consistent with our prediction, since these were morning sessions: night owls were more likely to cheat than larks.
In our second study, we tested the full prediction—that unethical behavior would depend on both circadian rhythms and the time of day. We randomly assigned a new set of research participants to a laboratory session either early in the morning (7-8:30am) or late at night (midnight-1:30am). Participants undertook a die rolling task previously established as a test for unethical behavior. In this task, they anonymously rolled a die and reported the number back to us, and we paid paying them based on the number they reported (higher amounts for higher rolls).
Although we didn’t know what numbers participants actually rolled, we did know that everyone should report an average of 3.5. So any systematic differences across conditions (morning people in the morning vs. evening people in the morning, for example), would indicate cheating. Consistent with our prediction, an interesting and statistically significant pattern emerged. Larks in the night session reported getting higher rolls (M=4.55) than larks in the morning sessions (M=3.86), and owls in the morning session reported higher rolls (M=4.23) than owls in the night sessions (3.80). This evidence is consistent with the idea that larks will be more unethical at night than in the morning, and that owls will be more unethical in the morning than at night. A more detailed description will be provided later this year in our forthcoming article in the journal Psychological Science.
The important organizational takeaway from these findings is that individual may be more likely to act unethically when they are “mismatched” -that is, making a decision at the wrong time of day for their own chronotype. Managers should try to learn the chronotype (lark, owl, or in between) of their subordinates and make sure to respect it when deciding how to structure their work. Managers who ask a lark to make ethics-testing decisions at night, or an owl to make such decisions in the morning, run the risk of encouraging rather than discouraging unethical behavior.
Similarly, people who control their own work schedules should structure their work with their chronotype in mind. Many of us are tempted to squeeze in that extra hour of work. If we’re a morning person squeezing it in at night, though, we create a situation in which resisting temptation may be harder than ever. Owls who schedule extra hours for themselves early in the morning face the same issue.By Tom Geoghegan
BBC News Magazine
As England's players faced up to a rare defeat against Ukraine, the fans reflected on their first experience watching the team exclusively on the web. How was it? If this really is to be the future of television sport, then someone needs to think about cushions. A desktop PC makes for uncomfortable viewing A wooden Ikea chair is not made with two hours of football viewing in mind, which meant that by the final whistle, I was longing for the comfy sofa. How many other fans paid between £5 and £12 to watch the match live was later revealed to be close to half a million. Some were angry about being asked to pay anything. There was a lack of enthusiasm in my peer group, partly due to the fact that England had already qualified, but also because a 20-inch computer screen does not have the same appeal as a 40-inch plasma. Millions of people view programmes in this way on the iPlayer, but watching a live event for two hours would be a new experience for many. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? Original broadcaster Setanta went bust England qualified for World Cup in September, so this match not pivotal Swiss firm Kentaro owned the rights Internet sports broadcaster Perform were chosen to provide the coverage Even with a laptop sitting in comfort, or viewing the web on your television via a PC, the picture will not usually be approaching high-definition quality. So for most people, computers can't yet offer the modern football experience. What they are good at, however, is forcing people through mundane processes of registration. Finding the official Ukraine v England website was an ordeal, with a quick Google search throwing up many others that also promised a live stream. Rather wary of getting a hand-held camera peeking out from a duffel coat in the crowd, it required a double-check on the BBC Sport website to make sure this website was the real deal. Then there was a number of hoops to jump through, starting with a demo video to check the technical capability (the basic BT broadband package passed with flying colours), then the creation of a PayPal account to pay the £10 charge. 'No technical problems' There was a further hold-up as PayPal remembered that five years ago, I once used eBay to sell something or other, so I still had a PayPal password. What it was I didn't know, so there was another delay as it emailed me the answer. Some England fans were angry the only live broadcast was on the web Eventually I was in, clicked "pay" and we were up and running. Half an hour before kick-off, I logged in and the live streaming sprung into action effortlessly. There in the studio was James Richardson, known to Channel 4 viewers as a classy presenter of Italian football, and Sven-Goran Eriksson, who used to manage Mexico and one or two other teams. If this really was a test case for web broadcasting, the major success was there were no technical problems. The picture didn't buffer or freeze once, but the quality was not great, more akin to watching footballers in a computer game. There's the little fella (Lennon), passing it inside to the gangly one (Gerrard), on to the pale, chunky guy (Rooney). Distractions Costume dramas and nature programmes you might watch on iPlayer have lots of close-ups. But the action in a football match like this is streamed and is so far away that trying to make out the small figures is difficult. Certainly, faces, shirt numbers and names is hard to identify. Pubs were not allowed to show the match One of the most interesting differences with the television experience is the distraction of the mouse. The equivalent of channel-surfing was to flick on to gmail or Facebook or Twitter, when the action on the pitch got a bit dull. It's a good opportunity to engage in the kind of banter you'd enjoy with mates if they were on your sofa. One emailed me to say: "Didn't even notice Stevie Gerrard. It got so bad I found myself online banking." Another said on his Facebook update: "Missing my TV remote." So, there is a dimension to webcasts that televisions can't match. But no number of humorous tweets can make up for the joy of five friends on your sofa, munching pizza and watching a big match. And until web viewing through TVs really takes off, strange days like this for football fans may prove to be an isolated and quirky experiment. Add your comments on this story, using the form below. This sort of thing is obviously the future. But until I can watch it in high definition via my big screen telly I'm not interested. As I also pay my TV licence fee and my broadband bill I fail to see why I should pay out yet more money to watch it.
Chris Taylor, Warrington Very poor quality when put up to a 22" full screen. Luckily I pre-ordered so it only cost £5, but still it wasn't worth the money. I expected the quality to be at least that of iPlayer, but was disappointed. Shame there wasn't a HD stream available. The stream was steady, but just not good enough.
Will, Kidderminster Some of us watch almost all of their television via a computer - I'm in a non-Freeview area (yes, despite being in a city) and so it's the only way to get BBC3 and BBC4, among others. The only irritation in this case should be that it required payment. I found the lack of a picture accompanying a text commentary frustrating at first, but I wasn't too bothered that I couldn't watch this match once I found that highlights were going up on Youtube only a few minutes after anything had happened. I watched coverage of the penalty perhaps five minutes after it had happened; I didn't have to wait for post-match highlights.
Jenna, Bath I don't understand the outrage, the rights were sold to Setanta, they went bust and nobody else was prepared to buy it so another method had to be used. It's quite simple either it's worth 4.99 or 11.99 on the day to watch this match. As it turns out, my decision to do something else instead was brilliant as this match was not worth 1p. It's just football that's all, and watching something on a computer will be the future, there will be a vast reduction in licence fee payers and people will just use their computers to download/stream stuff instead.
Spoontown, Cheltenham Yes, as John Pickavance notes correctly, and Chris Booth doesn't - it's the PROVIDER (or possibly your ISP's network congestion) that generally has the problem if the picture quality is low or the streaming not seamless. As long as your home equipment and your ISP is working efficiently, watching matches online can be a pleasant experience. However, forget paying unless it's HD and perfect! There are many peer-to-peer services out there - no provider's server overload to worry about as the load is shared between all the viewers. Picture quality is poor, but then it's 12p-worth of electricity you're paying, not £12...
Ben, London, England, UK It's not the fact that the company were charging the English fans to view their own team that really bothers me or even having to watch it on the computer its the fact that they refused point blank to give permission for it to be shown in pubs. Surely the whole tradition of being able to enjoy an England game especially a World Cup Qualifier (regardless of whether we had already qualified or not) at your local with a pint and an amazing atmosphere is half the reason that many people bother to watch the games. I honestly do not think I would bother to watch any of England's games if they were all shown in this way. For me and I am sure many others a big game like that is all about the atmosphere and the people you enjoy it with and by enforcing such unfair conditions the internet company ruined that experience for a great many people.
Rosamund Moger, Dorchester I connected my laptop to my TV via HDMI, and the picture quality was very poor. It was worse than a standard definition TV broadcast and worse than high quality streaming media from other internet sources such as BBC iPlayer HD. It was certainly not worth £11.99, and I was disgusted that subscribers were subjected to advertising at half time. This experience proved to be a retrograde step, and until broadband allows higher quality content to be reliably streamed to the masses, such broadcasts should remain on TV.
Chris Booth, Bristol I had to wait for someone to post highlights on Youtube. It's not watching it on a PC that bothers me. It's having to pay to watch my national team playing the national sport. It's been said before but it's a disgrace.
Anthony Butler, Manchester Well I think we'd better get used to it. As a proof of concept, it came across as vaguely successful, however there needs to be a better technical element attached. Many computers (including my own desktop) have a TV out line which can then be fed into a proper sized television (which is what I did). However, as a result of the low quality of picture being transmitted (probably because HD for example takes about six times the amount of data as even a normal high quality picture) the actual quality of picture was more akin to watching a cartoon in a cinema on a Saturday morning 20 years ago. If that makes sense. As media-centre style PCs become more popular, acting not just as a word processor but also a method of playing, recording and generally controlling all forms of media in the household, this will proliferate as time goes on. But the picture quality will need to improve, which will mean wider broadband capacity and bigger servers. Something of an implementation headache for the broadcasters one would imagine. Sleep tight Mr BBC reporter!
Matt Saunders, Bristol, UK I think any proud England fan who is angry that 1) they had to pay to watch their team play an international match & 2) were disappointed about having to watch the game on the internet, should take a good look at themselves because the last time I checked we Scots are rarely given ANY game to watch no matter how important the game is. The fact that England had already qualified was good enough reason to pull the plug!
Richard, Edinburgh It's usually very easy to plug a computer into your TV. My two-year-old computer has an HDMI port, older computers will have an s-video port, cables are cheap and easy to come by. Our fairly inexpensive three year old TV has inputs for both.
Jamie Kitson, London, UK Some of us don't get our interests - sporting or otherwise - broadcast on television at all, so being pushed to the internet and getting whatever weak online stream you can isn't anything particularly new. Thus: I'm really not seeing the big upset here.
M. Kelly, Stockport I've been watching the NFL like this for over a year now, and there is nothing "isolated or quirky" about it. As long as the stream is a HD stream and you're capable of streaming 1.5mbps, you can get a cable for £3 that you plug into your TV (the picture is BETTER than standard cable). Its just like watching TV with the added incentive that it's exactly what you want to watch, and there would be no other way of getting it. And yes, I have sat on a couch with 4 friends, munching pizza, and watching a big game. The problem is not with the form of media - with the right equipment the experience you attest to is moot. The problem is with the providers that fail to provide a reasonable stream quality and can't deal with excessive amounts of people all logging on at once.
John Pickavance, Leeds, England I had friends visiting for the weekend and had no intention of sitting around my laptop to watch the game so we went down to my local pub where I knew that if there was any chance of legally or illegally obtaining the game on television, they would most certainly have it. True to form, I believe it was a Dubai station, they supplied the busy pub with normal England game viewing.
James Bradley, Manchester Tom may not have enjoyed sitting on his Ikea chair instead of his comfy sofa, but supporters of teams the world over pay more than £10 to sit in the cold and rain on hard plastic chairs to support their team, and are happy to do so. Maybe being a real supporter rather than just a TV fan is a step too far for some.
Magnus, Edinburgh, Scotland It's really not that hard to hook a PC up to a TV, in fact a lot of modern TVs (especially large screens) already have a VGA input. That said, I wouldn't have paid - on principle. But there is certainly no reason to sit on a hard office style chair watching on a PC/laptop screen.
Jon Cooper, Camborne, Cornwall I didn't watch the game in question, so can't comment on picture quality. However, I do frequently watch computer generated film and sports broadcasts on line, and when I want a larger picture, simply connect my computer to my 42 inch plasma TV, A simple and cheap fix.
Pete, Leeds England I didn't mind watching the England game on the PC as I also watch all the Premier League games on the PC also. The advantage of watching PC Premier League games is that you can watch any game you want for example all the Liverpool games and it's all free of charge. All I can say to the fools who paid to watch England games is that you are all fools as I watched the same game with no delays completely free of charge.
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionIf you liked this article, listen to Dialexa’s VP of Software Engineering, Andrew Turner, on Custom Made talk technology reliability and security and how in today’s current landscape CIOs won’t get promoted if everything works. But they will get fired if anything doesn’t: Listen to all episodes of Custom Made for insights and perspectives from industry disruptors and technology leaders.
Node is continually being used in new and exciting ways in everything from microservices to computationally-heavy operations. One example of that is how Node is being leveraged to control microcontrollers to build everything from simple mechanical systems to very complex robotic systems and even wearable technology.
The Ins and Outs of Microcontrollers
Microcontrollers are an important piece of the puzzle in the discussion of Nodebots, thus a brief discussion of what they are and the different kinds there are is warranted.
Quite simply, microcontrollers are small programmable computers that accept various components and can be controlled through the use of Node. Several different microcontrollers are available commercially, such as the Raspberry Pi, Particleboards, Spark Core, and the more common - Arduino boards. Each of these boards can be used however, Arduino is the most utilized microcontroller and works right out of the box with the Nodebot libraries. One reason why they are the most utilized is that Arduino is open source, and there are numerous starter kits available which include an array of components that can be connected and controlled by the board. Because of this, it makes rapid prototyping with an Arduino-based system easy and affordable. Although the kits |
desire to do more. You decide to analyze the search results to gauge the popularity of Perl. The criteria will be to find the first 1,000 search matches, find the users that posted them, and measure these users' popularity. Popularity will be half the number of friends plus twice the number of followers (though the formula can certainly be adjusted depending on the goal). The disproportionate weight is because it's much easier to follow others than to be followed on Twitter.
To do this, use Net::Twitter::friends_ids() and Net::Twitter::followers_ids(). The hook for measuring popularity will be in the rather boring function print_post(), to make it a bit more interesting. The new version will have a scoped hash, meaning only the function can access the hash directly and it is persistent through every call, so it will be a good cache). This cache will allow popularity to be stored so those expensive methods don't have to be called repeatedly.
Listing 6 shows the new version of print_post(). The global options also had to be adjusted to allow a --popularity switch and the usage text was adjusted (Listing 1 has that updated text).
Listing 6. Easy analyzing of Twitter popularity by search term
{ # this hash is scoped to the print_post function only my %popularity; sub print_post { my $t = shift @_; printf("%s (on %s)
\t%s
", $t->{from_user}, $t->{created_at}, $t->{text}); if ($opts{verbose}) { foreach my $key (sort keys %$t) { my $v = $t->{$key}; $v = '(UNDEFINED)' unless defined $v; print "...$key=$v
"; } } if (exists $opts{popularity}) { my $user = $t->{from_user}; unless (exists $popularity{$user}) { $popularity{$user} = scalar @{$handle->friends_ids($user)}/2 + 2* scalar @{$handle->followers_ids($user)}; } print "
\tPOPULARITY for $user = $popularity{$user}
"; my $sum = 0; $sum += $_ foreach values %popularity; printf "\tAVERAGE POPULARITY = %.2f
", $sum / scalar keys %popularity; } } }
The average is calculated and printed each time for simplicity, but it's really not hard to move that out of the loop. Run this with./twitter_do.pl -n 10 -y perl and step up to 1,000 when you're sure you need to.
Conclusion
You've examined posting and searching with Twitter. A full working example of each function was demonstrated, aggregated inside a single script to simplify handling of options and other wrappers.
Finally, you saw how the Twitter connectivity of a single user can be quantified by using their number of friends and followers.
There are many possible ways to use Twitter. I hope this article gave you some practical ideas and suggestions, illustrated by working Perl code. Do check the Net::Twitter documentation and the Twitter API wiki to find out what else you can do with this service.
Downloadable resources
Related topicsNew Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday said that it was not inclined to change the method for the upcoming auction of media rights for the Indian Premier League (IPL).
The auction scheduled to begin on Monday has now been postponed for 1 September. The rights would operate for a period of five years.
“We are not inclined to entertain prayer for e-auction of media rights at this stage. Needless to say, e-auction at this stage stands closed," said a bench headed by chief justice Dipak Misra.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy had moved the apex court on 11 July, seeking e-auction of media rights for IPL matches.
The court, however, kept the matter pending to address issues relating to conflict of interest between IPL chairman Rajiv Shukla and Star TV, as claimed by Swamy. He has been directed to file an affidavit on the issue.
“Media rights should be done through an e-auction. The current process is a sham and we want to ensure that e-auction is opted," Swamy had earlier told the court.
An e-auction was sought so that the process could be made more transparent.
Currently, IPL’s TV broadcast rights are held by Sony Pictures Networks Pvt. Ltd, which will expire in 2017 with IPL’s 10th edition. The internet and mobile rights, however, were awarded to Novi Digital Entertainment Pvt. Ltd, a unit of Star India, for a period of three years to 2017.
The ninth and 10th editions of the IPL in 2016 and 2017, respectively, are the last two seasons before the current broadcasting rights expire.
Singapore-based World Sport Group bagged the IPL broadcasting rights for 10 years in 2008 by spending $918 million. A year later, the contract was replaced when Sony Group (through Multi Screen Media Pvt. Ltd) paid $1.63 billion for nine-year broadcasting rights.
The auction process was delayed last year on the apex court’s directive to comply with the reform recommendations of the Lodha panel first.*Update 4.30.14: Folks have been speculating at the identity of Dr. A in the comments and in e-mails. To be clear, I encountered Dr. A in a grad program that I attended briefly, and I left this program to begin a different program because of the experience described below. Dr. A’s home institution does NOT appear on my CV, and I did NOT co-author any manuscripts with Dr. A (so his name does not appear on my CV either). I have had great experiences working at the institutions and with the professors listed on my CV.
Some very brave men and women have come forward this week to share their sexual harassment stories (see some of these stories here). I would like to share mine as well.
About a decade ago I worked for a professor whom I will refer to as “Dr. A.” Dr. A was a big name in a field I wanted to work in, though I later moved in a different scientific direction (perhaps because of interactions with Dr. A).
I was 21 when I began working with Dr. A. Although I was young, I felt that he was not making good use of my talents. My time was often filled with cleaning tanks and windows or filing things. But, I convinced myself that these were simply the tasks that needed to be done at the time and it had nothing to do with the fact that I was a woman. Eventually I was given a more intellectual, computer-based task that would be part of a product that we would share with the general public. I was told my name would be featured on this product as I had done a significant amount of the work, but when the day came my name was no where to be found. Dr. A told me that sometimes we all have to “take one for the team,” and I convinced myself that this treatment was reasonable since I had, after all, been paid for the work I had done. So at the time, I brushed this off.
The real trouble started on the day Dr. A came into my office and told me I needed to drive to a field site and help a fellow student with their field work for a week or so. I was told that I would not be working alone, which suited me fine as I was not comfortable being alone in the woods at the time. I ran home to pack and came back to the office wearing slightly less professional clothing than usual: I wore a tank top and a knee-length skirt. It was nothing too dramatic, but it was the first time Dr. A had seen me in anything sleeveless. When I entered his office to get directions to the field site, he shut the door behind us, told me that I looked nice, and then began to rub my shoulders. Dr. A told me he was a “touchy guy” (which now sounds so much like Bora’s explanation the he is ” a very sexual person”), and that he would miss having me around for a week. I informed him that I was not a touchy gal, grabbed the directions, and got out of the office as soon as I could.
When I arrived at the field site I was informed that my job would be identifying and mapping out different habitat types. I would be doing this job alone. I had absolutely no experience using GIS (Geographic Information System), or identifying the plant species present at the field site (or any plant species for that matter). I was absolutely set up to fail at this task.
Something you should know about me is that I often throw myself into projects with which I am completely unfamiliar. However, the “throwing” usually comes at the end of meticulous preparation, so that when I land on my ass there’s a cushion. My father hammered the 6 P’s in to my head (“prior planning prevents piss poor performance”), and I pretty much live by this motto. Had I been told ahead of time that I would need to identify plants, I would have picked up the appropriate field guides and learned how to ID the plants before heading to the field site. The woman I was working with informed me that the plan had always been for me to work independently to identify and map out habitat types, so I had clearly been misled. Eventually the student for whom I was working decided it would be faster for her to do the job than to train me to do it, so I was sent home. When I explained to Dr. A that I would have prepared for the task if he had told me ahead of time that I would be doing it, he informed me that, “Well, not everyone is cut out for field work.”
This was crushing. I was very interested in doing field work, and being told by a leader in the field that I wasn’t cut out for it because I couldn’t pick it up on the fly was a huge disappointment. Fortunately for me, I shared this story with a colleague (male, as it happens) who subsequently took me out and taught me what I needed to learn about navigating in the woods and conducting field work. I have since completed a number of studies involving field work and have led a number of field crews, and I think I run a pretty damn tight ship.
That wasn’t the last time I was set up to fail by Dr. A.
We next decided to work together on a technical project, which involved rebuilding a device that had since been broken down into many small pieces. I was told to put the machine back together without having any idea about how the machine once worked or confirmation that all of the necessary pieces were still in the box. At about this time I heard complaints from other students about working with Dr. A. These complaints included other stories of sexual harassment, and mentoring promises made that hadn’t been kept. I won’t go into detail as these stories belong to those who experienced them, and it is not my place to share. I decided to jump ship.
After some mental effort (remember, I’m 21 at the time) I got up the guts to tell Dr. A I was leaving. While explaining why I was leaving I mentioned that I had been unable to put together the device, to which he exclaimed (to the best of my recollection), “You shouldn’t leave because of that! The plan was to rush in and save you like a knight in shining armor after you discovered that you couldn’t put the device back together!”
This was infuriating. He was supposed to be my mentor, NOT my knight in shining armor. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect the male students weren’t positioned to receive knightly rescue. “Sink or swim,” I can do. “Sink and be saved,” is not something I’m interested in from a mentor.
By his inappropriate attention towards me on the day I wore a tank top in his office, Dr. A made me wonder if I had made it into the lab based on something other than my professional qualifications. This feeling was made worse by his repeatedly setting me up to fail, and then upon failure being told that there was something wrong with me. I entered the situation feeling like I could do anything, and left feeling like maybe I wasn’t cut out for a career in science.
On my way out it did occur to me that I should share my story with another faculty member, to ensure that a pattern would be forming should other women come forward in the future with a similar story. I scheduled an appointment with a male faculty member holding high rank in the department, but when I began to explain how Dr. A made me feel uncomfortable I was told, “If you have a problem with Dr. A, you should take it up with him.” To be fair, this professor bent over backwards to help me get out of some department obligations so I could leave for a new position, but this certainly increased my feeling of helplessness and my belief that, as a woman, you are largely on your own if you experience sexual harassment.
Fortunately for me I have a gigantic ego and a lot of encouraging friends and family, so I didn’t let Dr. A deter me from staying in science. Also fortunate is the experience I have had with my other male mentors. I have engaged with many male mentors who treated me the way women in science ought to be treated (i.e., like people), and who told me I could accomplish anything to which I put my mind. I am incredibly indebted to them for their support.
To this day my biggest regret is that I did not do more to expose Dr. A for his actions. Looking back, I believe I did not speak out because, 1) I tried to do so and hit a brick wall, 2) I wanted to stay in the same field of study and didn’t want to make enemies with a big name in the field, and 3) I just wanted to escape and put the situation behind me. The third reason now seems incredibly selfish, as other women have almost certainly experienced harassment and degradation, and perhaps I could have spared these women from this experience.
Ten years after the fact seems too far removed, and I don’t know that I can trust myself to accurately recall all of the details after all this time. This is part of why I’ve taken care not to name names and to keep the setting vague. But, I do know that the environment was made uncomfortably sexual in a way I had neither explicitly nor implicitly consented to. And I know my professional performance was tested and judged in a way that appeared to be different from that of my male coworkers.
I hope that sharing my story will lend solidarity to those who are afraid to speak or who feel alone in their struggles, and to those of you who remain skeptical in the face of a few of these stories. When I was 21, there wasn’t a rich online community available to share stories and uncover bad behavior like there is now. If you come forward, I and many others are here to have your back.
Kelly Weinersmith
P.S. You will not find Dr. A’s real name on my CV, so please do not speculate on his real identity.The 60-second story
“Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy,” Robert Half said. Cristiano Ronaldo, Nani and Ricardo Quaresma all have had an enormous talent and a lot of things in common. They are all Portuguese wingers who graduated at Sporting Lisbon’s renowned Alcochete academy and who were predestined to reach the absolute pinnacle of football in their careers.
Not everyone can be a new Cristiano Ronaldo, of course, but also not everyone is another Ricardo Quaresma destined to disappoint
While you could make a case that Nani has had a decent career, the same cannot be said about Quaresma who never fulfilled his potential. Cristiano Ronaldo, whom some said at the time was the least talented of the three, outworked his fellow countrymen in the following years and is now considered one of the greatest players this sport has witnessed.
Sporting’s academy was producing great players before them and has continued to do so after, but many clubs are now more cautious and are taking their time in assessing their youngsters. Not everyone can be a new Cristiano Ronaldo, of course, but also not everyone is another Ricardo Quaresma destined to disappoint.
Gelson Martins, their latest gem, who’s taking the same path at the early stage of his career as the aforementioned players, can no longer be ignored. He has been scouted by Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United, Bayern Munich, Chelsea and other top club across Europe in the past two years, but it seems that Liverpool will reportedly be the first club among them who will make an attempt to lure the player into their arms.
Embedded video for Recommended by Ronaldo: inside story on Gelson Martins, as Liverpool and Man United vie for his transfer
Why you need to know him
Born on 11 May 1995 in Cape Verde, Gelson Martins arrived in Portugal in 2008 and actually started his youth football career in Benfica at Futebol Benfica. In 2010 he moved to Sporting and continued his development before making a debut for the senior team four years later.
During his time at Sporting B, he was often used in a right-back position due to a high number of wingers and attacking players in the squad. Despite being praised for his contribution and displays, the feeling was he was wasted by being played outside of his natural position.
That however didn’t prevent him of being a part of Portugal U19 squad at the European Championship in 2014 and Portugal’s team at the 2015 U20 World Cup in New Zealand, where he showcased his skills and was one of the most impressive players.
Gelson is no longer a promise; he is a confirmation - Jorge Jesus
That same summer, Jorge Jesus was appointed as the new head coach of Sporting Lisbon, who had developed a reputation of not giving enough chances to youngsters and home-grown players. Peruvian winger Andre Carrillo was a regular member of the first team in the last four years for the Portuguese giants and it seemed an unlikely scenario for Gelson to make his breakthrough with Carrillo in the team and with Jorge Jesus in the dugout.
Luckily for Gelson, Carrillo experienced problems with injuries during the 2015/16 campaign and he took his chance. By the time his team-mate recovered, Gelson already became an indispensable member of the Lions and not even his manager could deny any longer he has a precious jewel in his ranks.
“Gelson is no longer a promise; he is a confirmation,” Jesus declared, now fully convinced in the abilities of his player.
Gelson has impressed at U19, U20 and now full international level for Portugal
He finished his maiden campaign by featuring in 42 games in all competitions and notching up seven goals and four assists, but more importantly by cementing his place in the starting XI.
Last season started even better for the now 22-year-old winger, who in his first six league matches netted two goals and provided four assists. A Champions League match against Real Madrid in September at the Santiago Bernabeu was a great opportunity to behold what kind of player Gelson Martins really is.
The fleet-footed attacker tormented Marcelo and the rest of the Real Madrid defence with his runs and tricks and was rewarded with a Man of the Match award
Despite Sporting losing the match 2-1, the fleet-footed attacker tormented Marcelo and the rest of the Real Madrid defence with his runs and tricks and was rewarded with a Man of the Match award for his performance. After such a blistering kick-off to the new season, he was called up by Portugal and made his international debut against Andorra by the of the month.
As the time went by, Gelson continued to improve and so the list of his potential new suitors grew bigger, while the former Benfica manager Jesus continued to praise the youngster. “He’s going to fail you a few times, but he’s already at a level that can give you very good things,” he explained. “From the kids I worked with at Benfica and Sporting, he is the most talented I felt. He is a player for very high levels."
He finished last season as the Primeira’s assist leader, providing nine of them, and added six league goals to his account.This article is over 4 years old
Wildlife including giraffe, rhino and zebra are under pressure from roads, railways, factories and houses
It is an image famous in a thousand postcards: giraffe, rhino and zebra pacing the savannah with city skyscrapers towering in the background.
But flanked by one of the continent’s fastest growing cities, Kenya’s capital Nairobi, east Africa’s oldest national park is under threat.
“There is huge pressure on the park,” said conservation activist Paula Kahumbu, who heads the Wildlife Direct campaign group.
Set up by British colonial settlers in the 1940s, pressure now comes from all sides: roads, railways, factories and houses.
The park, some 117 sq km (45 sq m), is a wilderness where buffalo and rhino roam just seven kilometres (four miles) from the bustling high-rise city centre.
But like countries across the continent, Kenya is weighing the difficult balance between conservation and development.
The century-old colonial railway yard is now a traffic-clogged major city growing at breakneck speeds.
To the south, the reserve has already had to face the development of a large urban area, pressing on a key wildlife corridor for animals moving to find grazing.
Now fresh infrastructure projects threaten the park: a major road bypass and expansion of a railway line, seen as vital to modernise freight lines bringing goods to Kenya and onwards to landlocked east Africa nations.
“The more we reduce the park, the more the animals’ territory shrinks,” said Ali Tanvir, president of the Friends of Nairobi National Park group.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A herd of adult and baby elephants walks in the dawn light in southern Kenya. Photograph: Ben Curtis/AP
Supporters say the projects are crucial to decongest the capital of four million people, but the road and rail could slice through the reserve.
“Kenya is a developing country, we need roads, railway lines, bridges,” said MP Francis Nyenze.
“But it is unfortunate that most of the major infrastructure projects in Kenya will swallow parts of the park.”
Nairobi prides itself on hosting the regional headquarters of multinational companies, and of being the powerhouse driving the east Africa economy.
But it is crippled by traffic jams, with vehicles coming from the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa to the rest of Kenya – as well as to landlocked Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan – all travelling through Kenya’s capital.
Conservationists do not oppose the need for new transport links, but question how those plans are being implemented.
Shadowy deals have seen land sold and houses sprout up, at times apparently unchecked. Land in Kenya is both increasingly expensive and a highly political issue.
“How have people been able to acquire titles to the land?” Nyenze asked.
Any development encroaching on nationally protected reserve must be approved by parliament, said Nigel Hunter, from the East African Wildlife Society.
Although fenced in on the city side, the park is open-sided elsewhere to allow the annual wildlife migration in search of grazing.
“We want the rules to be respected,” Hunter said, adding that if granted, land should be opened elsewhere to allow animals still to move.
Without that, the parks risks becoming an “island”, as if a giant zoo, he said.
Home to more than 550 species of birds and attracting some 150,000 visitors a year, activists say the park also acts as the lungs of the city, bringing in fresh air to an increasingly crowded capital.
But the challenges and threats are huge.
New homes and fences block ancient wildebeest migration routes, and so many cheetahs have been killed on the increasingly busy roads there are none left in the park, said Kahumbu.
“Roads are fragmenting the ecosystem and preventing animals from moving,” she said.
Conflicts between lions and livestock communities living close to the park have also grown. And if the steady encroachment on the park was not enough, animals inside are directly targeted.
Amid a wave of rhino and elephant killings across the country, armed poachers have also slaughtered rhino in the heart of the park, despite it being close to the headquarter of the Kenya’s wildlife rangers.
For MP Nyenze, the future is gloomy, fearing the park could disappear within 20 years.
“If the voices are not many and loud enough, the destruction will go on and elephants, lions and so forth will disappear like dinosaurs,” he said.
“It will be a world without wildlife and we will lose all this biodiversity once and for all.”Today’s Member Spotlight features an incredible endurance athlete at the top of Fitocracy’s leaderboards. If you’d like to nominate someone for a member spotlight, email fitocracymemberspotlight@gmail.com or contact users lexyloowho or xJenYxvx.
[Editors note: apologies for not running a spotlight for the past couple of weeks! New feature releases and the holidays crept up on us faster than we expected. But no worries, we’re back on track now.]
Username and current Fitocracy level: fellrnr, level 38
Age and Sex: 45, Male
Current, and any ‘before’ photos :
Before - fellrnr, circa 1995 at ~205 pounds:
After - circa 2010 at 135 pounds
What sports or fitness activities are you involved in? Do you compete at any
level?
I’m an ultramarathon runner, and I compete at a local, national and next year, international level.
What’s your story? When, how and why did you get into your chosen sport or
fitness plan?
Because of my skin condition I never did any exercise as a child. By my early-30s I was overweight inactive and not terribly healthy. It was at this point I got my “wake-up call” in the form of a particularly severe migraine. This migraine was unusual in that the early symptoms included not only loss of vision but also impaired the speech center of the brain. I was unable to speak coherently, understand what was said to me, or even read and write. In many ways the symptoms mirror those of the stroke, and were quite frightening. This migraine did not last long and I recovered fully but it made me realize that unless I did something can to improve my health than the stroke was a very real possibility. I started off by joining an aerobics class and got into running as a way of getting to and from the class. My weight dropped from its high of 205 pounds and I started getting into longer distance running. I entered my first half marathon woefully unprepared having only run a maximum of 6 miles before. I was nearly the last one to finish the race competing for DFL with a 70-year-old woman. I could barely walk for a week afterwards, so naturally I signed up for the London Marathon. I finished the London Marathon in 1999 and moved to the US in 2000, where I continued running marathons. After a few years of marathon running I realized that speed was not my forte but I did have a lot of endurance. I found the world of ultrarunning rather more relaxed and over time found myself becoming competitive in the longer distances.
What are your current athletic or fitness-related goals?
I’ve qualified to represent the United States at the 24 hour world championships in Poland in 2012. I also want to break 150 miles in 24 hours, and I will compete at 50 and 100 mile distances next year as well.
What is your workout or training regimen?
I have to go running four days per week, with each run relatively long (marathon distance on longer). A few months ago I changed to running every day. I haven’t come to any definitive conclusion on the merits of each approach, and so the experiments continue. I do no strength training, stretching, or core training, though I’ve tried each of these several times in the past and found them relatively ineffective.
What does your diet look like?
I often joke that I have the genes of a professional athlete, but the sport is sumo wrestling. Keeping my body weight under control is a continual battle for me and I struggle with overeating. I generally try to keep my carbohydrate intake low and slow, with a lot of protein and good fats.
What have you achieved so far? What are your ‘numbers’ (times, weights, heights, etc)?
146 miles in 24 hours, 100 miles in 15:58, 100K in 9:31, 50 miles in 7:08, 50K in 3:38, 26.2 in 2:53.
What is your competition and/or training philosophy?
I believe the competition and training is in many ways more about mental toughness and physical endurance. The ability to keep going when you desperately want to stop is a core aspect of long distance running.
What challenges do you face?
My biggest challenge is my skin condition.
How do you motivate yourself?
At the core, my motivation is a simple refusal to quit.
What advice do you take, and what do you ignore?
I tend to favor scientific study over anecdotal advice, but I’m aware of the benefits of both.
What are some training or diet-related things you know are true but cannot
prove?
There is remarkably little scientific evidence around the effects of endurance training. I believe that there are long-term, slow acting changes that occur in the muscles that make them more efficient and more fatigue resistant. I believe it endurance training has effects that accumulate over months and years.
What injuries have you dealt with? What are the injury risks that come with your athletic endeavors?
At one time or another I have had most running related injuries. I sometimes suspect that my success is related as much to do with my ability to fix myself as anything else.
Any advice on how to deal with these injuries and risks?
I’m a big believer in using self massage to diagnose and treat minor injuries before they become major. I’m also a big proponent of using ice (not gel packs) to repair muscular damage.
What are your favorite sports/fitness books/DVDs/websites?
Is it too self-aggrandizing to suggest my own website http://fellrnr.com?Business social network LinkedIn, fresh off its milestone of 50+ million users, is now getting a makeover, and it definitely changes the way you use the social media website.
In a detailed blog post, the company announced that it has begun a limited test of its new design. It features a newer, longer top-level navigation bar, the removal of the dreaded left-hand navigation bar, and a cleaner overall look.
Screenshots
The best way to describe the new layout though is to place the old design and the new one side-by-side. First, here is the homepage as it currently exists:
Now, here is the new design for the homepage, courtesy of LinkedIn:
You'll notice immediately that the emphasis is on the top navigation, that the main content has been pushed to the left hand side of the screen, and that each of the top menu items have a deeper web of subcategories under them (just look at the options under "Groups" as an example).
One more comparison. This is a profile page currently:
And here is the new one:
You'll notice that content has been moved up the page (this is very important - it requires less scrolling and thus less chance of people bouncing off of the page) and a far stronger focus on the profile and its content.
The key to this entire design it seems is the removal of the left hand navigation bar, which we are fans of. It distracted users away from the important information on the page. While the design is still being tested and iterated upon, more and more users should be seeing this layout relatively soon.
Let us know what you think of it in the comments.At a Saturday farmers’ market, two little girls in floral sundresses gaze up at a tall, red-lipped, ponytailed busker with a guitar. Among the stalls, crowds and opportunistic seagulls, Georgie Stone is performing hits by artists such as Taylor Swift, as well as songs she’s penned herself. The coins that people toss into the pink-and-white polka-dot tin box at her feet are for a trip overseas, so she can present her music to a producer. That, Georgie tells me during a break, would be the culmination of a dream she nearly gave up on last May.
Shortly after her 15th birthday, Georgie had turned up for her routine appointment at the Gender Service of the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne’s inner north. She thought she would just collect the result of a blood test, and perhaps a hug from her paediatrician, and then talk about needing to go to the Family Court of Australia soon, to get approval for moving on to the next stage of her treatment.
Her doctor had other news. Georgie’s testosterone count was almost ten times higher than it was supposed to be. It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened to her. Four years earlier, Georgie had found out her pubertal development was equal to that of a 14-year-old boy’s. It had knocked the air from her lungs then too. She’d rather die, she’d told her mother, than have her voice break.
Almost as soon as she could talk, Georgie, who was assigned male at birth, had declared she wanted to be a girl. The only memory she has of any of this is seeing Cinderella and knowing she had to have that dress. As her identification as a girl intensified, her parents took her to a GP. When she was seven, Georgie was diagnosed with gender dysphoria, a term used for people who do not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. For the next eight years, the family would take regular excursions to the hospital for treatment.
During the sudden pubertal burst she’d had when she was ten, Georgie had stretched more than 3 centimetres in three months, the contours of her face had begun to toughen and her testosterone seesawed. Her parents and doctors rushed to put an application together for a court hearing so that she could begin a course of medicine that would stave off the approach of puberty. Taking GnRH agonists (a type of “puberty blocker”) gives transgender children who are approaching puberty time to decide whether to go ahead with serious change. At the time, those aged under 18 had to go to the Family Court if they wanted to start this first stage of medical treatment. Georgie’s parents and her specialists managed to get that precedent overturned, and in 2011 she became the youngest person in Australia to receive permission to take medicine that would suspend puberty. From then on, any child seeking access to puberty blockers needed only medical and parental consent.
Although the court granted Georgie access to the puberty blockers, it also decided not to give her automatic access to the second stage of treatment (cross-sex hormones) when she reached the key phase of puberty. For that, the families of adolescents like Georgie had no choice but to apply for another hearing, and the costs of having to apply each time ranged between $8000 and $30,000.
The family appealed and 18 months later went to court for a second time. For them it wasn’t about Georgie per se. It meant a lot for the wider community. For many families with transgender children, it could mean the difference between going broke and just being able to get on with their lives.
The judgement handed down in 2013, the Re: Jamie decision, was a mixed result. While confirming the earlier judgement about stage-one puberty blockers, it ruled that transgender adolescents who wanted to take the stage-two cross-sex hormones would first have to prove to the court that they were capable of understanding the changes they sought. Georgie would still need to apply to the court when the time came to start the hormones.
She had always been warned that it was impossible to stall biology forever. Because these hormones cause infertility in transgender women, however, this stage is considered partially irreversible. This is one of the main reasons that it is against the law in Australia for a transgender adolescent under 18 to access the treatment without Family Court approval.
For the small but fast-growing group of transgender children like Georgie, and their families, it is this law that separates them from many of their Western counterparts overseas and, it seems, is at the heart of a cycle that erodes their wellbeing.
Although Georgie’s doctor administered large doses of a blocker, to try to bring her testosterone levels down, her body was already thickening, darkening and lengthening. Two things stayed at the front of her mind. What if, as she waited to get the hormones, her voice was already breaking? And what if the court just didn’t think she ought to be a girl?
Georgie tried to find peace in her music. She’d write, and then she’d stop. She’d compose the lyrics but not sing the songs. She’d study the edge of Pink’s jaw, the span of Taylor’s shoulders, imagine a lump at Lady Gaga’s throat, and consider Miley’s voice – did it ever reach any heights, anyway? Then she’d turn her forensic gaze on her self and start to think about all the things that might possibly stop the course of puberty.
Shortly after giving birth to twins on a Melbourne autumn day in 2000, Carol* took them for a tour of the hospital, proud as a queen as she showed them off. When George announced at two and a half that he wanted to be a girl, Carol thought it might be a phase. But she was scared when she anticipated how bumpy Georgie’s path might become.
Primary school, in particular, was hard for Georgie, Carol recalls. One day, at a swimming carnival, school authorities insisted her child change in the boys’ toilets. Inside, Georgie endured slurs from the other children, eventually emerging sobbing and half-clothed. Carol dressed her behind a tree, then went to confront the principal and teachers who were refusing to acknowledge her requests for help. They didn’t address the incident at all, she says, and she soon went looking for a new school.
Carol knew the most dangerous time for transgender children usually begins when they ask for help to change their biological sex. From then until they get the interventions they seek, about 50% might start to self-harm, while 30% may attempt suicide.
It was Georgie’s mutedness at home after the testosterone scare that rattled Carol the most. Georgie would go to school composed, play with her friends, pay attention in class, but at night there were tears. Carol would hover near her room, hoping to hear Georgie’s usual trilling, but there was no singing in the shower, no music at all. “The whole house felt different.”
After Georgie’s fateful blood test last year, Carol called the family’s lawyers and spent a great part of that morning crying on the phone. She remembers pacing back and forth, imploring them to have the doctors get their papers together. They had to act now.
She’d dreaded the idea of going through the court process again. Their first experience with it, when they’d secured Georgie’s access to puberty blockers in 2011, was, Carol says, nothing short of |
nor optimistic about the future. I don’t think we’re going to see the wasteland I depict in Black River. I have more faith in people than how I depict them in BR. Even if we did get to full on Mad Max world, I think people would do awful things, but would also work together and help each other out more often than not. It’s just useful with certain stories to take them as far as you can in a particular direction, for various reasons. I think we’ll see and experience both wondrous and exceptionally horrific things in the next 40 or so years that I’m (hopefully) still alive to see. Wee!
4. What was the last good movie you’ve seen?
In the last week I’ve watched Blood Simple, Bone Tomahawk, and Beasts of No Nation.
Blood Simple took a little while to get into, but about halfway through the movie it grabs you and you start to see hints of the Coen brothers’ greatness.
Bone Tomahawk was really good. My only complaint about the movie is that I wish it had a little more visual flair, but the controlled, matter-of-fact pace and look of the film really probably only helped make the climax as effective as it is.
Beasts of No Nation, I’m halfway through and it is making me feel very sad.
5. Which artists(comics or otherwise) do you admire the most and have you gotten the opportunity to meet any of them?
Gunnar Hansen and Linda Blair I met at a Halloween hayride festival thing in Massachussetts when I was 14, it was a huge thrill. Al Columbia and Renee French are two cartoonists I admired as a teenager who I got to meet and get to know a bit as an adult, also an awesome thing. I would love to meet ABBA and John Carpenter.
6. Did you have any experiences growing up that contributed to your dark sense of humor and twisted imagination? What does your family think of your work??
Oh yeah. That’s a whole long story for another day. I like to imagine doing a giant, 1,000-page memoir when I’m in my 70s, where I’ll spill all the beans. My life story would be just as fucked up and tragic and horrific and funny as my fiction, yessir.
I don’t show much of my work to my family, aside from my brother and niece. I think they appreciate it.
7. Describe your worst dating experience.
Nothing in particular springs to mind. In the last couple years I’ve tried online dating for the first time, and that’s its own kind of slow burn nightmare. You meet and one person likes the other more and then it’s a matter of shaking them or them shaking you by being flaky or being direct and however you slice it, I find it pretty depressing. Although I have friends who swear by it, so, y’know, I’ll keep trying.
That’s the spirit! -AY
8. I loved your bootleg Batman comic from 2007. Are there any other well known characters you’d like to take a stab at someday?
I have another Batman story I’d like to tell. This one features shit-eating. Also a pornographic and hyper-violent Green Lantern/Wonder Woman/Superman story. Call me, DC.
Punisher. Call me, Marvel.
Freddy Krueger. I could add some dimensions to that old rascal.
Marvel, you’ve gone pretty extreme with Frank Castle, before, so no excuses! -AY
9. Do you have any funny or strange road stories from your recent summer tour or just anytime you’ve gone to signings/conventions??
At one of the first APE conventions I went to in the early ’00s, a young man and his friend who was in a wheelchair stopped in front of me and the young man exclaimed, “DUDE, you’re Josh Simmons!? Your comics are so fucked up, you must do so many drugs!” and he turned to his friend and started slapping him on the top of his head, practically yelling,”Dude, you gotta check his shit out, it’s so fucked up!” and his friend just looked at me and around the table sadly as the excited young man kept slapping him on the top of the head harder and harder and yelling louder and louder for all to hear how great and fucked up my comics are. These are my people.
At one stop on the tour this past spring a young man who was acting very manic and strange like someone with a pronounced mental illness or someone on cocaine or meth came up to my table and seemed very excited about my work and bought a poster and my book The Furry Trap. A day or two later I got a long crazy rant email from this gentleman telling me I’d tricked him and my work was atrocious and he demanded I send him his money back. That was fun.
10. Your latest work, Habit #2, premiered at this year’s Short Run Comix & Arts Festival in Seattle,WA(Oct. 31st). The lead story is the unnerving, yet darkly funny “The Incident at Owl’s Head”, a 33 pager about a young drifter staying at a strange man’s house. Plus, you collaborated on 3 other stories with friends Eric Reynolds, Tom Van Deusen, and Ben Horak. Are you planning future issues of Habit, and what else do we have to look forward to from you in 2016 and beyond?
Yep yep. Ideally I’d like to do 4 issues of Habit all together. I have nothing at all done for the third issue. But I’ve talked to a couple people about collaborating on it. I’d like each issue to have 3 first-time collaborations with other artists.
Eventually there’s be another short story collection along the lines of The Furry Trap, but it will probably be a lot longer and will have a lot of the collaborations I’ve been doing. Also probably less horror-focused in general.
Jessica Farm Volumes 1 + 2 come out next spring from Fantagraphics. This is the comic I’m drawing at the rate of one page a month between January of 2000 and December of 2049. We’ll be putting out a 96-page volume every eight years. I’m excited for this because we’re completely re-designing the first volume to work with the second, I think these books are gonna look pretty sharp.
The White Rhinoceros is the next big book I’d like to get out at some point before the end of the decade. A first volume anyway, that’s going to be another very long comic. A racial wonderland fantasy adventure story. Written by The Partridge in the Pear Tree.
A couple secret projects, but they’re secret.
Thank you, Josh!
*Pictures of Josh Simmons and his work were provided by the internet. Thx!“Either Director Pompeo had no idea what people in the C.I.A. reportedly knew about Michael Flynn, or he knew about the Justice Department’s concerns and continued to discuss America’s secrets with a man vulnerable to blackmail. I believe Director Pompeo owes the public an explanation.” Senator Ron Wyden — Member of the Senate Intelligence Committee
By January 2017, Senior officials across the government became convinced that the incoming national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, had become vulnerable to Russian blackmail. And yet, Flynn was allowed to listen to the President Daily Briefs (PDB) almost every day for the next three weeks. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
While the CIA knew about the concerns about Mike Flynn, CIA Director Mike Pompeo continued to deliver briefings on U.S. secrets with Flynn present.
Time and again, the Trump administration looked the other way in the face of warning signs about Mr. Flynn. Mr. Trump entrusted him with the nation’s secrets despite knowing that he faced a Justice Department investigation over his undisclosed foreign lobbying. Even a personal warning from President Barack Obama did not dissuade him. Mr. Pompeo sidestepped questions from senators last month about his handling of the information about Mr. Flynn, declining to say whether he knew about his own agency’s concerns. “I can’t answer yes or no,” he said. “I regret that I’m unable to do so.” His words frustrated Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
After Mr. Pompeo’s Senate testimony, The New York Times asked officials at several agencies whether Mr. Pompeo had raised concerns about Mr. Flynn to the president and, if so, whether the president had ignored him.
One administration official responded on the condition of anonymity that Mr. Pompeo, whether he knew of the concerns or not, had not told the president about them.
A C.I.A. spokesman declined to discuss any interactions between the president and Mr. Pompeo.
“Whether the C.I.A. director briefed the president on a specific intelligence issue during a specific time frame is not something we publicly comment on, and we’re not about to start today,” said the spokesman, Dean Boyd.
Mr. Trump waited 18 days from that warning before firing Mr. Flynn, a period in which Mr. Pompeo continued to brief Mr. Flynn and the president. The President’s Daily Brief is a rundown of what America’s spies consider the most pressing issues facing the United States.
Mike Pompeo Still Briefed Mike Flynn On Secrets As CIA Knew Concerns
REFERENCES
Despite Concerns About Blackmail, Flynn Heard C.I.A. Secrets — NYT
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Flynngate — Senator Ron Wyden: ” CIA Director Pompeo owes the public an explanation.”Structure as witness
Deep in the heartland of Donnybrook, hidden in a crescent, surrounded by apartments, houses and leafy trees there sits, intact, a building which embodied part of our cruel social history. Known locally as the laundry or Donnybrook laundry, but more widely known in sub-cultures and State reports as the Magdalene laundry of the Sisters of Charity.
It is for sale now as in investment property at Donnybrook crescent. No mention in the brochure of its former use and its past. No mention of the many women who toiled there, scrubbing shirts, washing socks, endless ironing, endless starching, endless washing; no let up, just let down. No mention of the clients that came from the affluent families in the surrounding areas, nor that Áras an Úachtaráin was a client too. The basket that carried the laundry – pressed, starched, immaculate spotless – now lies discarded with a pile of others, rotting and abandoned.
What would the nuns think of such disrespect, of such irreverance for such an important basket. Back in the day these baskets were sacred. Revenue. Handle with care. These baskets, these boxes for laundry were very important. The people who worked, the women, the young girls, were never as important as these baskets.
Memory is something that fights an eternal battle with the passage of time and forgetfulness. Time is a great healer for those who can heal and those who are offered healing. There is no healing here. Time stands still like a festering wound in a well-to-do suburb as somebody attempts to erase a grave and mortal wrong. The McAleese report, the Justice for the Magdalenes, the hundreds of women still alive and their families should know of this place. Should be present here to witness what can only be witnessed by them. So that they can understand what’s lost, what cannot be given. What was taken from them for generations.
.
The world and its mother should be brought through these doors to see for themselves, to feel for themselves what it was like, that this actually happened. That this place exists. All around it the religious lands are being sold for development. Somebody somewhere pocketed the money for profit. The laundry is and its history is othered, cut off by walls, sliced away from the well-manicured, well -kept, well-preserved and well-managed convent that remains on the site in the heart of Donnybrook, respected, revered.
This is private property now and people use the local dry cleaners or their Zanussi washing machine or a launderette in town. The sound of hand scrubbed collars if you listen you can still hear it. The vast drums of the washing machines, the slushing of the water, the mangle of the manglers, the rinsing of the dirty laundry. Nobody in Donnybrook wore dirty clothes in those days, they all turned up spic and span spotless, scrubbed by ‘sinners’.
The chimney stack of the laundry is a defiant hand of a female inmate. Screaming out ‘we were here’, ‘we were treated badly’, ‘you wronged us’, ‘you took all from us’. The tall mast of RTE broadcasting strange half-truths to the Nation doesn’t hear this. The world passes by here unbeknownst. The presence of presence is something all of us should never miss. Our bones give us a sense of place, a sense of now. Like Caesar, like Brutus, like Marc Antony the good is in the bone, the memory is in the marrow, living.
The Magdalene laundry is still intact and this State and its people need to ensure it stays intact and all the paraphernalia there within, the ledgers, the industrial machines, the woven baskets, the statues, the cupboards, the stairways, the furniture, the windows the atmosphere remain intact. This place should not be turned into an artificial artefact. This is the real thing. If ever there was to be a monument, a memorial, a gesture, an acknowledgment – this is it. This is a place of anger and atonement. A place of rage and fury. A place of loss and maybe a place to be found.
Thousands upon thousands of women and young girls suffered in the Magdalene Laundry system. Thousands of children suffered in the Industrial school system, they were by and large the children of the poor. The children that this State regarded as surplus to need and that the Catholic Church and the religious congregations enslaved, exploited and abused as their sexual playthings.
The uniqueness of this site and this location is that its not separated from the surrounding community in their fine Victorian redbrick houses. Not separated entirely from their history. The Sisters of Charity have an obligation to preserve this building as a testament to their own past and as some sort of atonement to the many women who feel gravely wronged. It is also important to preserve it as an educational centre to inform future generations of just what way we treated those who were not strong.
All across the country from the Good Shepherds in Limerick to the wood turning college in Letterfrack, Connemara they are trying to erase this landscape, this memory by turning these sites into Art Colleges, hostels, homeless accommodation etc None of them have yet to be made or let be what they are – sites of anguish, sites of suffering, which form a vital part of our social, political and religious history.
With all we know about what happened to individuals in this country, with all we know about this State and the Irish Catholic Church and its congregations, with the continuous ongoing injustice to the Magdalene women and the Mother and Baby home (women and children) it would be an absolute disgrace and a further insult and injury if this site was not preserved, exactly as it is. In many ways, this site in my view, is as important as any of the battle sites of 1916 that are getting so much attention. Indeed, the men and women of 1916 laid down their lives for the women of the Magdalene laundries and the children of the institutions.
People of Donnybrook, people of Dublin lets do the right thing here and own our past. All of it. Let’s not try smooth it out with a bit of cash, a bit of compensation or an inappropriate architectural monument. We have the real thing and all its uncomfortability for us all. It is high time we stopped running from it. Stand still and face it.
These institutions and their memories are among us, were always among us, but we have chosen to deny them, to make them invisible, to make them secret to shove them into a past, into a history. But they are not done with us yet. Time to embrace our own unpalatable truth.
Kate O’Connell TD, Jim O Callaghan TD, Eoghan Murphy TD, Eamon Ryan TD make this your first task.
Please sign the petition and pass it on Protect Donnybrook Magdalene Laundry PetitionBreitbart editor and writer Milo Yiannopoulos spoke at the University of Delaware Monday as part of “The Dangerous Faggot Tour.” A figure controversial enough to be permanently banned from Twitter, Milo lived up to his reputation with his speech, titled “Trannies are Gay.”
His show unofficially began Monday morning, when students found posters not-so-subtly advertising the event throughout campus. University police reportedly took the posters down as word began to spread.
University of Delaware everybody!! Where bigots like Milo Yiannopoulos are allowed a platform & hate speech is posted on our buildings!! pic.twitter.com/bymGZxGlLL — moose (@almazapatista) October 24, 2016
The conservative-blogger-turned-performance-artist, who identifies as a gay man, acknowledged the flyers, expressing how troubled he was to hear about them.
“Most upsetting is someone is using my logo and they didn’t license it,” he said to a cheering crowd.
The tour has experienced several bumps along the way — Yiannopoulos’ appearances at New York University and The University of Maryland, College Park (among others) have been canceled because of heightened security costs and the possibility of confrontations leading to violence.
In anticipation, the police set up barricades on The Green to keep protestors back. It went without saying that Milo’s event would draw campus activists and local social justice warriors in record numbers.
The barricades remained protestor-free. The “regressive left” must be slacking.
This was set up for potential protests, but so far it remains empty #miloUD pic.twitter.com/yyPpUxmQGX — The Review (@udreview) October 24, 2016
Instead, the many student organizations opposed to Milo’s appearance on campus organized a counter-event dubbed Unity Fair, complete with puzzles, swing-dancing, and food.
Senior Sage Carson, one of the organizers of Unity Fair, criticized the College Republicans’ argument that “if you don’t go to Mitchell Hall, you can avoid [Milo’s speech],” citing the posters scattered through campus.
“We want to provide a space for students to go who may be feeling ostracized,” she said, “[students] who may be feeling unwelcome on campus, especially after the distribution of posters this morning. To provide a space they can come and engage with other students that want them to feel safe and want to promote a campus of inclusion.”
Those choosing not to attend Yiannopoulos’ show missed such thought-provoking comedy as:
His portrayal of “a typical transgender individual,”
The three genders, according to Milo,
And him comparing transitional therapy to the historic use of shock therapy.
Carson called Milo’s invitation to campus “a gross neglect by the College Republicans” and said it shows a lack of understanding of some students’ day-to-day lives.
“I think inviting someone here that promotes such hate and bigotry,” she said, “it’s just disgusting. I think it really shows a lack of understanding, and maybe also on their part a lack of understanding of what he really stands for.”
Many members of the audience, such as sophomore Shan Siddiqui, came out of sheer curiosity, drawn by Yiannopoulos’ internet infamy and contentious views. He didn’t know much about Milo’s background, preferring to experience the event without spoilers.
“His ideas are kind of radical,” Siddiqui said, “and anytime I personally hear anything radical it kind of broadens my perspective. So that’s what I’m going for.”
Over 20 different student organizations and university departments criticized university president Dennis Assanis for not using his own free speech to condemn Yiannopoulos’ comments. Such a statement would have sent a powerful message to students who felt unwelcome on campus without stomping on Milo’s freedom of expression.
At the core of Yiannopoulos’ views, whether he believes them himself or not, is the sanctity of free speech. While others condemn him for hate speech and making students feel unsafe on their own campus, he relishes the controversy, inviting students to speak out.
“You can speak up,” he announced. “This is a traveling free speech zone. There is a mile-wide safe space for dissidents, mischief-makers and lovers of free speech.”
Milo said there probably aren't any members of the #LGBT community in the audience. Got proven wrong. #UDel pic.twitter.com/bYTF7ZuEzk — Eddie Lyubchenko (@EddieLyubchenko) October 24, 2016
Although many audience members didn’t share Yiannapoulos’ intense views on other issues, free speech united them. Conservatives such as UD alumni and second-year law student Ariana Woodson who feel underrepresented on campus appreciated someone just bringing up controversial views for the sake of argument, even if they did not necessarily see eye to eye.
“Do I agree 100% with what Milo says? No. But he does raise valid arguments when it comes to different things such as Black Lives Matter, social justice warriors, and in this case, it was about transexuals and transgenders.
“I did appreciate the points that he raised, even if some of them were kind of radical for my own political beliefs. But I do appreciate him speaking out and giving a voice to some of the people who feel like they’ll be shouted down if they don’t have the right opinion.”
I asked if she had been shouted down for her opinion before:
“Uh, yes I have! I’m actually a black conservative, so I’m basically like a unicorn.
“I know if I come out with an opinion that people feel I shouldn’t have…I’ve been called an ‘Uncle Tom’ before; I’ve been called someone who mustn’t have gone through the ‘black struggle.’ So I have experienced that before and I don’t think it’s fair at all, which is why I appreciate people like Milo.”
@EddieLyubchenkoSo what's wrong with this team? With one game over the next nine days there will be plenty of time to try and fix what ails the 0-5-1 Leafs.
Six games into the season the Maple Leafs are still searching for their first win.
Today we'll be keeping a close watch on what's happening and will keep you in the loop with up-to-the-minute updates in this space, starting with news from this morning's practice which starts at 11 a.m.
Up first today, columnist Damien Cox dusts off his mailbag for the first installment of the season and there is plenty of blame from readers. Damien writes:
"Among this week's questions, of course, there are few that highlight the positives about the Leafs. When the Leafs are down or when they are up, it overshadows pretty much everything else on the hockey horizon in this town. Needless to say, a six-game losing streak to start the season means lots of questions about Ron Wilson, Francois Beauchemin, Mike Komisarek and Luke Schenn, but surprisingly few about the goaltending, which to me, is at the root of all the club's problems at the moment."The GT-R just keeps on getting better and it appears as if Nissan is not planning on slowing down any time soon. This is courtesy of Nissan North America’s senior vice president saying to “stay tuned later this year for news that will electrify our legions of GT-R fans worldwide” at the 2013 New York International Auto Show. A rather innocuous statement on the surface, but if you look at that statement in a literal sense and also remember that Nissan has already planned a hybrid racer in the future, that makes you wonder if there was a more literal meaning to that statement.
Reading between the lines makes us wonder if this statement means that the hybrid system that Nissan is planning to use at the 2014 Le Mans may make its way into a production GT-R in the near future. Now we’re not talking about a hybrid system to drastically improve mpg – though it usually will just a little. Rather, we are talking about a high-performance hybrid system seen in the likes of the Porsche 918 and the Ferrari LaFerrari.
We already saw a shrunken down variant of the GT-R engine – a 3.7-liter V-6 – strapped inside the Infiniti Essence Concept with a powerful electric motor to add some extra ponies. Chances are, this concept was simply the first example of what Nissan plans to do with the existing 3.8-liter.
Imagine the GT-R with the added boost of an electric motor. We’re talking well over 700 horsepower and we are thinking conservatively here. That sounds like sweet music to our ears but also a nightmare to our wallets. Chances are that if Nissan does pull the trigger on “Electrifying” fans in a literal sense, the base GT-R would likely remain as a – dare we say – “cheaper” option.
We’ll keep you updated.Wildlife Revisiting Malheur, one year after the occupation The wildlife refuge system is more vulnerable than ever.
Alice Elshoff first saw Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 1959. The 82-year-old, who lives in nearby Bend, Oregon, still goes there “whenever I can get away,” to bird-watch and volunteer. But this spring, on her first visit after the January 2016 occupation by armed anti-federal militants, everything felt surreal, she says: She had to notify refuge staff in advance and stop at the gate for an identification check by armed U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees. There were no other visitors and few employees, so it was unusually quiet. Elshoff, vice chair of the board for the Friends of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and a team of volunteers had come to reseed native grasses destroyed when militiamen bulldozed a new road. “It felt good to be there,” she says, working in the place where the Bundy brothers and their supporters did so much damage. “(We were) trying to make things real again. To undo the bad that had been done.”
Today, a year after the occupation, most of Malheur’s 188,000 acres are open to the public again, but the headquarters, museum and visitor center remain closed as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees the National Wildlife Refuge System, improves security to the buildings and gates. The agency has already spent $4.3 million repairing damaged buildings, rebuilding kicked-in walls, and cleaning up trash and backed-up toilets. That’s on top of the roughly $2 million it spent during the takeover placing temporary law enforcement officers at understaffed refuges across the West to help avoid more militia-type occupations. The agency hopes to have the Malheur headquarters open again by early spring, when the Ross’ geese and sandhill cranes arrive.
The cost of the 41-day occupation has only added to the financial burden on a system that has seen repeated budget cuts and staff reductions. Half the refuges in the U.S. lack their own managers, an increase from 2007 when a third of them lacked managers. Law enforcement employees are at an all-time low, leaving refuges across the U.S. vulnerable. And an unfriendly Congress isn’t likely to provide relief, especially in light of the federal hiring freeze imposed by President Donald Trump.
“It’s a system that’s under greater and greater stress,” says Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), which just released a survey of refuge supervisors assessing agency morale and support. “They have less resources with which to operate, but a bigger job.”
Devan Schwartz/ EarthFix
The National Wildlife Refuge System’s 850 million acres provide vital habitat for wildlife, including more than 380 endangered and threatened species. Hunting, fishing and wildlife-watching opportunities draw 48 million visitors annually to sites ranging from the remote wilderness of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the arid mountain ranges of Nevada’s Desert National Wildlife Refuge. Under former President Barack Obama, 14 more national wildlife refuges and conservation areas, seven in the West, were created. But as with national parks, funding hasn’t kept pace with the expansion; since 2010, the refuge system’s budget has dropped approximately 20 percent when adjusted for inflation, and 13 percent of the workforce has quit or retired without being replaced.
“It’s a matter of prioritizing,” says Cynthia Martinez, chief of the National Wildlife Refuge System, “and making those hard decisions of what we’re not going to do.” Many visitor centers have had to reduce their hours or even close completely. Staffing cuts mean that, with no one to oversee volunteer projects such as trail maintenance, refuges lose out on services worth an estimated $2 million per year. Invasive species eradication programs have been severely reduced or done away with altogether. Prescribed burns have suffered, too, declining 44 percent in the last five years as the agency spends ever more on fighting wildfires.
Funding cuts also lead to a rise in “complexing”: the practice of consolidating staffing and equipment for multiple refuges. Not all refuges need a full management staff, but complexing has been used more frequently as budgets and staffing have fallen from the high point of 2010. In PEER’s January survey of national wildlife refuge managers, 94 percent do not have enough staff to “meet the core conservation mission” of their refuges. That means problems take longer to be addressed, important projects go undone, and deferring them gets more and more costly. As a whole, the system has a $2.7 billion maintenance backlog.
Fish and Wildlife has always had a shoestring budget, says David Houghton, president of the National Wildlife Refuge Association, and is now seeing a “perfect storm” of funding problems; the National Wildlife Refuge System is just one of many programs in need. In November, the agency released draft plans for reorganizing the refuge system in eight states, including Colorado, Montana and Wyoming, to reduce staff numbers and decrease the amount of land that’s actively managed. “You’re not just cutting out the muscle, or the fat,” Houghton says, “but you’re deep into the marrow of the agency and it has had profound operational issues.”
The agency’s budget woes and reduced staffing have impacted refuges all over the West. At the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge Complex, which encompasses six different refuges totaling 1.1 million acres in central Montana, there are now 19 employees, down from 28 in 2010. That means even necessary projects at the second-largest refuge in the Lower 48 get postponed. Staffers can no longer control some common invasive plants on the refuge like Canadian thistle; they’ve stopped mule deer and elk population surveys and reduced the number of prescribed fires that keep trees from encroaching on plains where ground-nesting birds live. Instead, they spend much of their time maintaining an 800-mile network of roads and other projects for visitor safety and to keep basic operations running.
The remaining employees are overloaded and work longer hours, says manager Paul Santavy, mentioning a wildlife biologist who spent 150 days studying black-footed ferrets, occasionally alone in a remote camp. “I sing the praises of all my colleagues for their dedication, but the cost of that is they’re always fighting burnout,” Santavy says. “They’re always on the edge of having had enough.”
The Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement, a national coalition, has reported many examples of problems caused by cutbacks. In Senate testimony from 2016, CARE documented how budget cuts affected outreach to rural communities in Alaska. The Innoko, Nowitna and Koyukuk national wildlife refuges were complexed, and the staff was cut, leaving just one outreach staffer who is now struggling to maintain connections and communication with locals.
In New Mexico’s Bosque National Wildlife Refuge, employees have fought to eradicate invasive tamarisk for two -decades. But reduced funding for the project has allowed tamarisk to return to areas where it was previously eliminated to prevent it sucking up vital water from refuge waterways.
Before the January takeover, Malheur had 16 employees, but five left afterward, and replacements have yet to be hired. Compare that to the 1990s, when 37 people worked at the refuge. During the occupation, all staffers had to stay away, which meant that an annual project to remove invasive carp, which harm water quality, couldn’t occur. Other long-term efforts suffered as well. Chad Karges, the refuge’s project leader, had been working with ranchers, tribes, environmentalists and community members for years, one-on-one and through partnerships. That work played a role in the outcome of the occupation; not many locals flocked to the occupiers’ cause. Such efforts, including the High Desert Partnership, have resumed post-occupation and are vital for all refuges in terms of volunteers, public-lands dialogue and support, Houghton says, but often there’s not enough time to do necessary outreach.
While the Malheur occupation was in full swing, Santavy says, “the overwhelming message we were getting from our local communities was that they didn’t have any patience for that kind of stuff. That wasn’t going to happen in their backyard.”
Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian
The occupation catapulted Oregon’s Harney County into the spotlight, along with awareness of national wildlife refuges. This year, the Harney County Bird Festival sold out faster than ever before, out-of-town visitors to the refuge have increased, and the Friends of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge has grown from approximately 100 to 2,000 members, mostly non-locals.
Raising public awareness of national wildlife refuges could be key to helping them recover some funding from crippling budget cuts. “(Refuges are) not well known, and that’s a problem politically,” says Gary Ivey, president of the Friends of Malheur. Ivey first visited Malheur in 1979, and was dazzled by the hundreds of different bird species that can be seen at the refuge. He worked there as the refuge biologist for 15 years. The out-of-town occupiers’ claims that they were returning the refuge to the people rang painfully untrue to him, Ivey says. “It’s like somebody being in your own house, breaking in and taking it over.”
Now, faced with a Republican Congress that is paving the way to transfer federal land to state control, Ivey, Houghton and others are lobbying for more public support for refuges, to increase their visibility and funding. “Refuges need help,” says Ivey; the Malheur occupation was a sign of that. “We’re ground zero for threats to refuges.”
This past October, Alice Elshoff was working at Malheur again, this time on trail construction, when news came that the first trial of the occupiers had resulted in a not-guilty verdict. A fellow volunteer checked his phone, saying, “You’re kidding — on all counts?” Elshoff describes the verdict as “heartbreaking,” but says she still looks forward to the refuge headquarters reopening in the spring. Last summer was unusually dry, so she didn’t see her favorite long-legged wading bird, the black-necked stilt, in shallow Malheur Lake. But this year, with such a good snowpack in the Steen Mountains, the runoff may yet fill the lake. “Hopefully, this will be a wonderful spring.”
Note: This story has been corrected to update the acreage of the National Wildlife Refuge System. In the fall, two marine national monuments expanded the system to a total of 850 million acres, not 150 million.
Anna V. Smith is an HCN editorial fellow. Follow @annavtoriasmithSupernova “shock breakout” observed for the first time in visible light
NASA's planet hunter, the Kepler space telescope, has captured the brilliant flash of an exploding star’s shock wave—what astronomers call the “shock breakout” of a supernova—for the first time in visible light wavelengths.
An international science team, including two astronomers from the University of Maryland, analyzed light captured by Kepler every 30 minutes over a three-year period, searching some 50 trillion stars spread across 500 distant galaxies. The astronomers were hunting for signs of massive stellar death explosions known as supernovae. The researchers describe their results in a paper accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal.
In 2011, two massive stars, called red supergiants, exploded while in Kepler’s view. The first behemoth, KSN 2011a, is nearly 300 times the size of our sun and 700 million light years from Earth. The second, KSN 2011d, is roughly 500 times the size of our sun and about 1.2 billion light years away.
“To put their size into perspective, Earth's orbit about our sun would fit comfortably within these colossal stars,” said Peter Garnavich, an astrophysics professor at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana who led the analysis efforts.
Whether it’s a plane crash, car wreck or supernova, capturing images of sudden, catastrophic events is extremely difficult but tremendously helpful for understanding the event’s root cause. The steady gaze of Kepler allowed astronomers to see, at last, a supernova shock wave as it reached the surface of a star. Catching this flash of energy is an investigative milestone for astronomers, because the shock breakout only lasts about 20 minutes.
“Like police getting surveillance footage of a crime after the event, we can study brightness histories from Kepler to find out what was happening in the exact hour that the shock wave from the stellar core reached the surface of the star,” said Edward Shaya, an associate research scientist in astronomy at UMD and a co-author on the study. “These events are bright enough that they change the brightness of the whole galaxy by a measurable amount.”
Supernovae like these—known as Type II—begin when the internal furnace of a star runs out of nuclear fuel, causing its core to collapse as gravity takes over. The two supernovae matched up well with mathematical models of Type II explosions, thus reinforcing some existing theories.
But the supernovae also revealed an unexpected variety in these cataclysmic stellar events. While both explosions delivered a similar energetic punch, no shock breakout was seen in the smaller of the two supergiants. Scientists think this is likely due to the smaller star being surrounded by gas—perhaps enough to mask the shock wave when it reached the star's surface.
“That is the puzzle of these results,” said Garnavich. “You look at two supernovae and see two different things. That’s maximum diversity.”
Studying the physics of these violent events allows scientists to better understand how the seeds of chemical complexity and life itself have been scattered in space and time in our Milky Way galaxy.
"All heavy elements in the universe come from supernova explosions. For example, all the silver, nickel, and copper in the earth and even in our bodies came from the explosive death throes of stars," said Steve Howell, project scientist for NASA's Kepler and K2 missions at NASA |
ado Boulevard South, Cape Coral, FL
(239) 945-1013
Patent application number: 20090313274
ALSO WORTH LOOKING INTO;
Meeting/training class between NSA, USAF, HBGary, Booz Allen & other various sec companies
Note: Why are the exact same companies that are intrested in Metal Gear have a seminar about a malware analyzing software?
The purpose of the meeting/thing was to school them in Responder Pro
Phil Wallisch was the instructor..
Dox of guys in the meeting
Parties involved;
NSA
IBM
USAF
HBGary
Booz Allen Hamilton
Here's the list of folks who will be attending 'class':
Protip: call these people, ask them about Metal Gear, ask them about the air force, NSA, USAF, Aaron Barr. Get them worried, get them talking.
Keesok Han USAF Keesook.Han@rl.af.mil
keeseok @kangwon.ac.kr
http://bit.ly/dPFV23 - some document aboutKeeseok.
DEPARTMENT OF FUCKING HOMELAND SECURITY
http://www.ksea.org/KSEA/Newsletters/FullVersion/Archived/Vol_11_3_1982.pdf <- someone check this out, search for his name
<- whitepages say 3 or less with this name, it may also be Kesook, misspelt on purpose?
Jose Faura NSA NTOC faura2@gmail.com
Zane Lackey iSEC Partners zane@isecpartners.com
http://hbgary.anonleaks.ch/phil_hbgary_com/15070.html <- check this out
Have written book about :
H.323 Attack And IAX Attacks
Txt msg attacks
Scott Brown NSA - Blue Team sbrown@dewnet.ncsc.mil
> Scott K. Brown
> Technical Director
> NSA Blue Team
> (410) 854-6529
> sbrown@dewnet.ncsc.mil
George Peslis DISA george.peslis@disa.mil
Jimmy Lloyd DISA James.Lloyd@disa.mil
Eric Potter DISA Eric.Potter@disa.mil
Phil Geneste BAH geneste_philip@bah.com
Patrick Upatham Verdasys pupatham@verdasys.com
Patrick Upatham
Security Solutions Manager
Verdasys, Inc.
Mobile: +1 339.222.4022
David Black IBM david.black@us.ibm.com
David Black
Engagement Manager
Emergency Response Service
IBM Security Services
Kansas City, Missouri USA
Office: (+001) 816-525-5494
Tim Sherald DISA timothy.sherald@disa.mil
> Tim Sherald
> Computer Scientist
> DISA FSO - IRRT (FS42)
> timothy.sherald@disa.mil
> timothy.sherald@disa.smil.mil
> Comm: 717-267-9370
> DSN: 570-9370
> Cell: 717-414-3450
Christina Smyre NSA clsmyre@nsa.gov
http://www.facebook.com/clsmyre <- real, matches with email
clsmyre@gmail.com
http://n-design.com/EN/other_pubs/Entries/2002/5/9_SANS_Beyond_Firewalls_files/SANSDenver.Sample.pdf <- someone dig in this
John Laliberte NSA
AAPC G-PPE Task Force Members <----Natalie*, a mum from South Australia, has watched the ugly debate over the Safe Schools Coalition anti-bullying program take a toll on her transgender daughter.
BuzzFeed News
11-year-old Rebecca* moved schools when she transitioned, with the help of staff from the LGBTI anti-bullying program. She's going well at her new school – but the past weeks of intense debate over the Safe Schools Coalition has been hard. "She does read the paper now, we can’t shield her from everything," Natalie told BuzzFeed News. The anti-trans rhetoric from lobbyists, politicians and the media has left Rebecca terrified of being outed. "She has a fear that someone will kill her if they find out about her. We say, no, that will never happen." A government review into the Safe Schools Coalition was triggered after conservative MPs raised concerns about the content of the program aimed at supporting LGBTI students.
Mick Tsikas / AAPIMAGE
As a result, education minister Simon Birmingham announced several changes to the program on Friday, including amending lesson plans and restricting certain resources to one-on-one counselling sessions between students and staff.
Birmingham also introduced significant changes around communication with parents. Schools will now have to seek approval from relevant parenting bodies, such as Parents & Citizens (P&C) groups, before Safe Schools can be introduced to a school, and permission slips will be sent out to parents with an option for their child to sit out of the program. However, parents of transgender children are deeply worried about the toll these changes might take on their children.
Samuel Kubani / AFP / Getty Images
One function of Safe Schools is to help schools where individual students are transitioning genders. When Rebecca started at her new school, Safe Schools Coalition staff took care of the "nitty-gritty", Natalie said. "They helped with everything from how to organise enrolment so her confidentiality could be maintained to answering questions from the classroom teacher and the principal about how best to support her."
Rebecca's principal is very supportive, but her classmates do not know she is transgender. If they find out, the plan was to have a Safe Schools Coalition staff member speak to her classmates and help explain what being transgender means. BuzzFeed News understands that Safe Schools staff will be free to continue their work advising principals and teachers on how to help individual transgender students without gaining the permission of parental bodies or individual parents.
However, from now on, if a transgender student's classmates are involved in the process – as Rebecca's would be, if she is outed – the full parental consent measures will apply. These changes are frightening for Natalie and Rebecca, because if she is outed and the school P&C doesn't approve the program, 11-year-old Rebecca could be left to explain her identity by herself. "Before school started this year, my daughter couldn’t sleep. She was frightened about the other kids finding out," Natalie said. “I don’t think it’s been thought through, the implications of this change."
A spokesperson for the Department of Education confirmed that consent from parents committee and from individual parents as well would be needed for any Safe Schools Coalition discussion in the classroom. Jo Hirst, the mother of a transgender seven-year-old who transitioned with the help of the Safe Schools Coalition, told BuzzFeed News her reaction to the changes was "horror and shock and bewilderment".
BuzzFeed NewsThe national group representing credit unions says its members are being treated unfairly by a federal regulator that is prohibiting them from using the terms “bank,” “banker” and “banking” to describe their services. The Canadian Credit Union Association says the ban on the terminology makes it difficult for credit unions to compete fairly with banks.
The Canadian Credit Union Association says it's an "unecessary and expensive undertaking" for its members to change references to banking in their promotional materials. ( Martin Meissner / The Associated Press )
The directive was contained in an advisory issued last Friday by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI). The association says it has interpreted the advisory to mean that any member who continues to use these terms can face criminal charges. The group also notes that due to the changes, credit unions will have to remove any banking references from their advertising materials and their websites — a move it called an “unnecessary and expensive undertaking.”
Article Continued Below
OSFI says it issued the advisory to provide clarity after observing increased use of the words “bank,” “banker” and “banking” by financial service providers that aren’t banks. The directive will take effect in stages, with companies required to remove banking references from websites by the end of this year and from printed materials by June 30 of next year.Beyond Code: Using GitHub for Every Company Workflow
Roham Gharegozlou Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 10, 2014
After experimenting with many collaboration environments, our company decided to centralize all workflows into a single tool, GitHub, supplemented by an internal product we built from scratch, ZenHub. ZenHub is now released publicly and already in use by teams at Facebook, Microsoft, and Sony (to name a few).
Centralizing onto one platform has given us much better focus; we’re sharing our journey to help others achieve similar efficiency.
It feels incredibly rewarding to have awesome evangelists!!
Here are some things we’ve learned along the way.
1. Define axioms for difficult decisions
In the earliest days of our company, we spent quite some time trying out different products and processes. During our search for the perfect workflow we looked at Asana, Pivotal Tracker, Trello, even Basecamp, Google Docs, the dreaded JIRA, and plain old email.
To focus our search, we employed the same decision-making framework as we do when building products. We defined a series of axioms (cf. Axioms and Anchors) to focus and guide us in the midst of making difficult decisions.
Three initial axioms to guide our search for the perfect workflow
Working asynchronously is essential for a global team: Most of our team is based in Vancouver, Canada, but we have had folks working remotely from Italy, France, Chile, China, and Brazil as well as throughout the rest of the U.S. and Canada (often before moving to Vancouver). This means the tools we use have to be used by everyone, all the time, or else people start feeling — and being — left out.
Most of our team is based in Vancouver, Canada, but we have had folks working remotely from Italy, France, Chile, China, and Brazil as well as throughout the rest of the U.S. and Canada (often before moving to Vancouver). This means the tools we use have to be used by everyone, all the time, or else people start feeling — and being — left out. Empowering leaders, minimizing meetings, and minimizing management leads to higher-quality results: It was always surprising to us that companies hunted for the best talent and immediately began stifling them with rules and regulations. We wanted a project management tool that let us cut down on unnecessary busywork while at the same time increasing transparency and collaboration.
It was always surprising to us that companies hunted for the best talent and immediately began stifling them with rules and regulations. We wanted a project management tool that let us cut down on unnecessary busywork while at the same time increasing transparency and collaboration. Using good products makes us build them better: We hold the tools we use to a high standard, believing that a high-quality product starts with high-quality building blocks. For product management, we wanted something dynamic and agile. We build certain values into the products we create: it would be counter-productive and hypocritical not to demand them from the products we use in the process.
2. Don’t give into babysitting tools
Technology is truly at its best when it simply disappears. We think the same is true of process. We struggled with the tools we evaluated because at each turn they seemed to be adding to our workload, not reducing it. Every tool created new queues for us to check, tasks to be assigned and priorities to be colorfully sprinkled throughout.
It was a full-time job being a nanny for every system. Our product team spent more time curating how the tasks looked on screen, making sure meta information was complete and assignments were made correctly, and then following up with devs to sync up than actually Building Things, which is what we’re all here to do.
From one of our heroes:
Our trust is in people rather than process.
- Warren Buffet
Our fourth axiom: reduce complexity
We decided to adopt a fourth axiom, one that runs counter to the app-happy culture we’ve grown accustomed to in our personal lives:
Minimizing the absolute number of products we use is a Good Thing: Additional accounts increase complexity, process, and overhead in many unpleasant ways ⇒ BAD FOR STARTUP.
3. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication
During this process we realized something surprising. As product-people and early-adopters, every member of our team is naturally very aggressive: trying new tools, experimenting constantly, and hacking every problem they face. However, as a team we are quite conservative: we prize simplicity, reliability, and an elusive quality we’ve termed “getting-out-of-the-way-ability” in the tools we use.
One tool to rule them all
So we did what we should have done in the first place, and looked with fresh eyes at the place where a majority of our team lives, day in and day out: GitHub.
GitHub is the most popular version control system for software developers, beloved by 7M+ people around the world. That said, it’s not perfect as a generalized team collaboration platform and many team members (especially non-coding ones) were doubtful GitHub could work as a strategic tool. We were willing to give it a try because everyone agreed we needed a solution that worked for the entire team: no more silos!
Scratching our own itch
ZenHub is the only project and workflow tool natively integrated into GitHub’s UI, adding features built specifically for fast-moving, software-driven teams: real-time task boards, integrated file sharing within GitHub, instant feedback on Issues, and a host of other features enabling teams to complete their projects on-time and more efficiently. To read more about ZenHub’s features, check out our post Supercharge GitHub Workflows: Introducing ZenHub or visit ZenHub.io.
4. Get things done
Today we use GitHub with ZenHub for every single company workflow: Hiring/HR, Sales/CRM, Support, and internal communications, as well as actual software development. Here are some of our biggest wins.
Transparency
ZenHub for GitHub makes radical company-wide transparency manageable.
The biggest win from this for us has been in our recruiting/hiring workflow. In a distributed hierarchy that assigns high responsibility to all individuals, the single most important process is finding, attracting, and vetting new team members. ZenHub allows us to bring our hiring process into GitHub, such that the whole team can be involved in all aspects of the hiring process without being distracted and interrupted.
This is a snapshot of a hypothetical hiring repo:At the fourth Maptime Copenhagen event, we met up to celebrate the 12th anniversary of OpenStreetMap, the wonderful crowdsourced mapping initiative that keeps on gaining ground.
OpenStreetMap - a diversity of people contributing to a common map of the world for 12 years already
Last weekend OpenStreetMappers around the world organised local meetups to celebrate the 12th anniversary of OpenStreetMap. Mapillary was proud to partner with Maptime Copenhagen and everyone involved with #MapLesotho in a joint celebration involving Copenhagen, Dublin, Berea and Maseru. In the spirit of Maptime, we had a diverse group of participants, most of whom were encountering OpenStreetMap and Mapillary for the first time. It was thus a perfect opportunity to introduce the concept of crowdsourced mapping to a new audience.
After a brief introduction by Mapillary Ambassador Søren and myself, we got straight to it with a photo walk around Ballerup, the small town not far from Copenhagen where the local library kindly provided us with the space to hold our event. Selecting routes was particularly challenging, given the tremendous effort locals have put into mapping the area. There are very few streets in the area that haven't already been covered on Mapillary. Nonetheless, participants had no trouble quickly mapping the streets around the Ballerup library with their smartphones. We made it back inside just as Copenhagen weather set in, and refuelled with lunch as we uploaded our photos.
Walking towards the library in Ballerup
The technology gods were against us as we then tried to join a video call with Dublin (Ciáran and Dave) and both Berea (Mzwandile & Ts'epang) and Maseru (Lineo & Tshedy) in Lesotho. At long last we managed to hear His Excellency Paramente Phamotse, the Ambassador of Lesotho to Ireland (and, interestingly, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Finland and Norway) address us.
It was a fitting testimony to the potential of crowdsourcing as Paramente eloquently covered the journey of #MapLesotho and how tools like OpenStreetMap and Mapillary continue to support decision making and service delivery in the country. Ciáran and Dave spoke next as Maseru and Copenhagen listened in. Their tireless support and enthusiasm towards the project is evident in the countless hours they've spent organising, educating and map editing with all involved.
Finally the time to map with your party hat on!
Lineo and Tshedy, two of the wonderful local people that are key in #MapLesotho
At this point everyone was excited to start editing in OpenStreetMap and to see the Mapillary photos they had just uploaded. We sat down at our computers and started going through the basics of iD editor. Søren and I were lucky to have Michael (hjart) in attendance, an OpenStreetMap legend in Denmark with over 13,000 edits under his belt. He had travelled all the way from Jutland in Western Denmark to be there.
Everyone picked up OpenStreetMap very easily so it wasn't long before we started working on some Humanitarian OpenStreetMap tasks in the HOT Tasking Manager. As the participants explored areas as far afield as Nairobi, Maputo and Northern Poland, it became evident how much mapping remains to be done. The progress since 2004 has been remarkable, but the momentum must continue to create the world's most accurate map. Here the value of street level photos was apparent with satellite coverage of the aforementioned locations insufficient for truly accurate mapping. Enabling citizens to photo map their localities is an important next step towards more accurate maps.
We stopped mapping briefly to dig into the delicious carrot cake my fellow community manager Katrin had baked. Let's just say I brought an empty tray back to Sweden.
Katrin vowed that next time she'll invest the cake decorating time into mapping instead
Another hour of mapping and an introduction to some handy tools to edit in OpenStreetMap rounded out the afternoon. Ideas sparked along the process - like with one of the attendees, Louise from Aalborg University. She was enthusiastic about adding a mapping component to an upcoming hackathon the university is hosting in October. Stay tuned for more details on this front.
Overall, it was a wonderful day full of meeting new people, photo mapping and editing, and celebrating 12 years of crowdsourced contributions to OpenStreetMap.
Sincerest gratitude to all the attendees who approached the day with the utmost enthusiasm. It was also a pleasure that both Ireland and Lesotho could join us in the celebrations. Ballerup library were exceptional hosts and provided the perfect venue. They kindly invited Maptime back for future events.
Thanks to Ballerup Library for helping promote the event!
Lastly, I would personally like to thank Søren Johannessen, not only for the tremendous effort he put into organising the weekend, but his continual commitment to Maptime Copenhagen.
To 12 great years and many more!
Ed & The Mapillary Team
P.S. You can read Søren's impressions of the event on his blog (in Danish).A brawl involving multiple passengers on a Spirit Airlines flight that had arrived at LAX from Baltimore on Wednesday was caught on camera by a passenger.
In the cell phone video, women can be seen pulling hair and at least one punch was thrown.
It all started, witnesses said, after the plane had landed and a few passengers were playing their music loudly. According to CBS Baltimore, five women were involved in the melee that began because the music was apparently being blasted on a boombox.
Other passengers asked them to turn the volume down. From there, tensions rose and the passengers came to blows.
“I’d be really afraid just because of all the security and all the issues going on right now. I would think that’s bigger than just girls fighting over music,” said LAX traveler Shamaila Taj. “A plane is probably the last place you would want to do something like that … I would freak out, more so than anything else, because there’s nowhere else you can go.”
Flight attendants and passengers were able to quickly diffuse the fight, witnesses said, and no one was seriously hurt.
Airport police and the FBI also arrived on the scene. No arrests were made but one person was cited.A married couple are divorcing after they chatted each other up on the Internet using fake names.
Sana Klaric and husband Adnan poured their hearts out to each other over their marriage troubles.
Using the names ‘Sweetie’ and ‘Prince of Joy’ in a online chatroom, the pair thought they had found a soulmate with whom to spend the rest of their lives.
It should have turned out like a real-life version of the 1979 Rupert Holmes song, Escape, where a couple meet through advert by someone ‘who likes pina coladas and getting caught in the rain’.
But, unlike in the song, there was no happy ending after they turned up for a date and realised their mistake. Now the pair, from Zenica, Central Bosnia, are divorcing after accusing each other of being unfaithful.
Sana, 27, said: ‘I was suddenly in love. It was amazing, we seemed to be stuck in the same kind of miserable marriages. How right that turned out to be.’
But when it dawned on her what had happened, she said: ‘I felt so betrayed.’
Adnan, 32, said: ‘I still find it hard to believe that Sweetie, who wrote such wonderful things, is actually the same woman I married and who has not said a nice word to me for years.’The years-long effort to build a new headquarters for the Federal Bureau of Investigation faces fresh uncertainty as supporters in Congress scramble to secure more than a billion dollars of funding by next month to keep the massive project on track.
A vague, three-sentence statement released this month by the agency overseeing the $2 billion development — as well as silence from President Donald Trump, a former real estate developer — has shifted the discussion from whether the headquarters will be built in Maryland or Virginia to whether its progress will be delayed indefinitely.
At stake is a project that could have enormous economic impact on Prince George's County and the state, assuming it is built in Maryland. With 11,000 employees, the FBI would become one of the state's largest employers.
"I am concerned," said Rep. Anthony G. Brown, a Prince George's County Democrat who used a Wednesday meeting at the White House to deliver a letter to Trump seeking his "direct involvement" in the project.
"I'm still optimistic Maryland is the best site," Brown said, "but there's a large delta in terms of what's been appropriated [in funding] and what's outstanding."
In a letter to Maryland's mostly Democratic congressional delegation reviewed by The Baltimore Sun, Republican Gov. Larry Hogan described the delay as "disappointing and alarming." He encouraged federal lawmakers to "vigorously advocate for the funding."
Of immediate concern is whether lawmakers can secure $1.4 billion for the building in whatever legislation Congress approves to keep the government running past April 28, when current spending authority expires. Consumed by Trump's Cabinet, a Supreme Court nominee and the effort to repeal Obamacare, Congress has made little progress on that front.
The General Services Administration was expected this month to choose one of three sites under consideration — two in Prince George's County and one in Fairfax County, Va. Instead, the agency issued a terse statement announcing it would not proceed without more funding.
It is the third time site selection has been delayed.
Given the lack of time in the legislative calendar, many observers believe a large portion of the federal government will by funded by a stop-gap spending measure through September. Such arrangements generally freeze funding at current levels, making a billion-dollar-plus addition a tall order.
"It's difficult to come up with that much capital expenditure in one appropriations process," said Rep. Steny Hoyer, the House Democratic whip, Southern Maryland lawmaker and longtime champion of bringing the FBI to the state. "It's going to be difficult. But we're working very hard at it."
Even if funding comes through, there are deeper political questions at play about the Trump administration's commitment to the development. The White House didn't mention the FBI building in its recent proposed budget. Trump is seeking billions of dollars to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, which could drain resources from other large projects.
And his campaign is under investigation by the same agency that would benefit from the new headquarters.
The White House also has not nominated anyone to lead the General Services Administration, which oversees federal property. A GSA nominee would face difficult questions from Congress about another real estate project — the Old Post Office building in Washington — which Trump renovated into a luxury hotel last year before the election.
Democrats are eager to point out that Trump International Hotel is leasing the building from the GSA despite a clause in the contact that says no "elected official... shall be admitted to any share or part of this lease." The GSA said Thursday that the clause is not violated because Trump had resigned from his company.
Multiple White House spokespeople did not respond to emailed questions about the administration's thoughts on the FBI project, whether it supports funding or whether it believes the GSA has handled the process correctly. Presidents typically would not engage in a federal real estate process that is ostensibly apolitical, but nothing would prohibit the White House from offering its support or disapproval.
A leading justification offered by supporters of a new building is that the FBI's current headquarters, the J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown Washington, cannot accommodate all the agency's employees. The headquarters workforce is scattered among about two dozen annex buildings in the Washington region.
Opened in 1975, the Hoover building needs an estimated $80.5 million in repairs and upgrades. Parts of the building have been covered in netting to prevent falling chunks of concrete from hitting the sidewalk.
Through leadership changes and fights over spending, the GSA has been inching forward on the development, narrowing down the number of sites and collecting public input. In 2014, the agency said the project would be built at one of three locations: Greenbelt or Landover in Maryland, or Springfield, Va.
Supporters say the FBI building will have to be built eventually because the status quo is unsustainable. In the meantime, every year of delay adds to construction costs and forces the FBI to spend millions on rent.
Those points traditionally have found sympathetic ears on both sides of the aisle. Republican Rep. Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, authorized $834 million for the project in December, saying it would "improve the FBI's security posture and its operations, and save money."
Neither Shuster, nor Republican Rep. Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania, chairman of the subcommittee that oversees public buildings, responded to questions about their current assessment of the development.
But there has been criticism on Capitol Hill for years over how the GSA structured the deal, specifically the idea of giving the winning developer rights to the Hoover building to offset the total cost. Hoover sits in an increasingly tony part of Washington — less than a block from Trump's hotel — and some believe it could fetch a higher price for taxpayers if were sold independently of the FBI project.
The frustration was apparent in report language approved by the House Appropriations Committee last year explaining its funding choices.
"GSA's insistence on using its exchange authorities to fund the design and construction of a new headquarters through the sale of the J. Edgar Hoover Building is another example of weak property disposal," the committee wrote. "GSA's request for $1.4 billion for the FBI in fiscal year 2017 is evidence of its inexperience and inability to execute an exchange of this scale."Seattle's Neighbours Nightclub reportedly set a new record for the world's largest drag show during this year's Pride celebrations.
A total of 42 queens and 1 king donned sequins, stilettos and the most outré ensembles imaginable as they took to the stage June 19 for a performance which also commemorated the 40th anniversary of Seattle Pride. The show, which was organized by Sinfinite Productions, edged out a previous Guinness World Record set by Pride Niagara in 2012, when 39 drag artists performed onstage.
“Seattle has so many reasons to celebrate Pride this year, and we’re thrilled that we get to break a Guinness World Record in recognition of our 40th anniversary,” Adam McRoberts, Communications Director for Seattle Pride, said in an email statement. “We know Seattle has one of the biggest and best drag queen communities in the country, so bringing everyone together for this historic event just made perfect sense."As regular readers of this blog will be aware heat was a central component of the healthy early modern body, as long as it was moderate. Excess heat in the body could cause disease, but it was also a key component in many remedies. Medicines based on the humoural properties of plants would take into account the natural qualities of the plant being used, including heat. An edition of Nicholas Culpeper’s Pharmacopoeia Londinensis, for example, described one plant in the following manner, ‘Golden Rod: hot and dry in the second degree; clenseth the Reins, provokes Urin[e], brings away the Gravel.’1 Many of the remedies that I have come across for a range of disorders were to be applied to the body as hot as a patient could stand them. These include remedies to prevent miscarriage and remedies for the stone, as well as some remedies for headaches that were discussed in a recent post.
In the Hartlib papers I also came across extracts from a letter by Mr Carew (1640) discussing his new heating stones, which he was calling Gambathoes.2 Much of the letter described the curative properties of the stones. However, he was careful to explain the form that they took and how they were used.
‘I have fitted the stones to bee put into a Case, & the stone & case put into a Muffe, which will both keepe the hands hot there; & the thighes hot with resting uppon the thighes; & if the hands bee in the beginning laid uppon the Case, the harder they are prest, the sooner they will receave heate, & the stone will retaine it so much longer’.3
Carew believed that these warming stones would help a range of distressed people throughout their lives. The two particular uses of the stone were,
‘the preservation of young Children in the Cradle by the heate of them, & of the recovering of hearing unto deafe folkes by sleeping uppon them, being laid under their heades as hot as they could suffer them.’4
These cures seemingly had little to connect them but, as an avid reader of Jaipreet Virdi’s blog on cures for deafness and as someone with an interest in the life-cycle and all thing connected to childbirth, these cures caught my attention.
Although Carew saw these as particularly notable actions of the stone, he was keen to point out that they could be used in a variety of disorders. Indeed of the two cures he recounted in the letter only one had any connection to these ‘special attributes’. He recorded how a woman in Drewstainton, Devon (a sister of one of his servants) was ‘lying soe desperately sicke, as that shee had lost her speech-sence, & was deadly cold, from the soles of the feet to the knees, & from the hands to the elbows, & continued soe for three houres, had this cold recovered, by keeping of a strong heat unto her feet by these stones, & the like unto her stomacke & hands’.5 He then explained that a maid in a house in Linkinhome in Cornwall was cured of ‘her Toothach, & recovered her deafenes to the wonder of all the family’.6
As with many sellers of remedies Carew was convinced about the supreme efficacy and benefit of his product. He exclaimed that ‘I verily beleeve there hath not beene an invention found out these many hundred, scarce thousands of yeares so generally beneficiall to all mankind as this will prove’.7
Having discovered such a wonderful cure he also evidently felt threatened by ‘pretenders’ who wanted to get in on the action. He wrong of a ‘wise man’ from Cornwall who had claimed to find two quarries of the healing stone that he was an ‘Arrogant Asse’ who did not have Carew’s learning and knowledge about the stone or quarrying.8
Carew’s belief and faith in the healing power of heat was no doubt connected to the fact that this was also a business venure. Yet he still concluded that ‘The Cures by this Stone God bee paised grow every day more and more for by their heate they helpe both deafnes and the tooth-ache and I praise God they have seldome wanted their desired effect for the curing of any grief they have beene used for.’9
__________________________
1. Nicholas Culpeper, Pharmacopoeia Londinensis … (London, 1653), p. 17.
2. Greengrass, M., Leslie, M. and Hannon, M. (2013). The Hartlib Papers. Published by HRI Online Publications, Sheffield [ available at:http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/hartlib ],[71/17/1A].
3. Ibid, [71/17/4B]
4. Ibid, [71/17/1A]
5. Ibid, [71/17/3B]
6. Ibid, [71/17/4A]
7. Ibid, [71/17/4A]
8. Ibid, [71/17/6B]
9. Ibid, [71/17/7A]
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On February 26, ISIS released a video of its militants smashing ancient Assyrian artifacts in the central museum in Mosul, Iraq. In a matter of minutes, they jackhammered the face of a famous 3,000-year-old Assyrian winged bull* and broke apart four 2,000-year-old statues of the kings of Hatra. That same week, insurgents from the so-called Islamic State burned thousands of rare books and manuscripts from Mosul’s library.
A week later, Ahmed Salem, a 28-year-old former archaeology graduate student, crossed into Syria and entered ISIS-held territory armed with nothing more than a notepad, a camera, and a phone, the contents of which, if he were discovered, could get him killed. His task: to photograph evidence of cultural heritage crimes in his home country.
Salem, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, is part of an underground network of activists secretly documenting the ransacking of Syria’s ancient treasures. ISIS’s handiwork appears often in their photos. What antiquities the militant group doesn’t destroy, it steals to peddle on the international black market—a trade some experts claim is increasingly vital to the organization’s finances. “The looting is much more intensive and criminalized in ISIS-held territories,” says Amr Al-Azm, an archaeologist who has been working with the network from his home in the United States and in Turkey. And these ISIS-held areas are all the more risky for the underground preservationists like Salem. “We have to be really careful, especially with ISIS,” Al-Azm explains. “It’s a lot of money and a real criminal underworld, not a bunch of geeks playing game cards and getting a little frisky with them.”
“We have to be really careful, especially with ISIS. It’s a real criminal underworld, not a bunch of geeks playing game cards and getting a little frisky with them.”
The preservationists send their evidence to Al-Azm, the former head of archaeological research at the Syrian General Department of Antiquities and Museums. Al-Azm and his colleagues use the photographs to pressure international cultural and law enforcement organizations to crack down on the looting and black market. In a nod to the American soldiers who tried to safeguard European art from the Nazis during World War II, Al-Azm calls his network of activists, which includes several of his former students, “Monuments Men.”
Syria is known as one of the richest archaeological regions in the world, with relics dating back to the ancient Mesopotamian era. These include some of the earliest examples of Sumerian writing, the alabaster sculptures of Mari, and six UNESCO World Heritage sites, such as the Crusades-era citadels of Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El-Din. As the region’s war rages on, criminals and militants have plundered many of these fragile sites, fueling a lucrative illicit antiquities market.
The destruction of Syria’s cultural heritage is “the worst we’ve ever seen,” says France Desmarais of the International Council of Museums. While ISIS may be the worst offender, no group involved in the Syrian conflict has clean hands. In return for kickbacks, government soldiers have allowed the plunder of Apamea, an ancient city now riddled with 15,000 looters’ pits. Moderate rebels have traded looted objects for weapons in Lebanon. Jabhat al-Nusra and Free Syrian Army brigades are also known to capitalize on the artifacts trade in areas they control. “ISIS moved into a region and found a preexisting situation,” Al-Azm says. “They exploited it, accelerated it, intensified it, but they did not start it.”
Born in Lebanon to a Syrian father, the 51-year-old Al-Azm spent much of his youth in Damascus. He was part of a wave of young professional expats who returned to Syria in the late ’90s, expecting that the newly installed Bashar al-Assad would be a force for change. Al-Azm became a professor at Damascus University and later joined the department of antiquities. “It was great initially,” he says, “but very quickly we realized it was a sham. After the father died and Bashar took over, the guise of reform went out the window.”
He left Syria in 2006 to teach at Brigham Young University before settling at Shawnee State University in Ohio. As Syria devolved into civil war, he watched as the heritage he’d once preserved was pillaged.
Al-Azm and his Monuments Men were propelled into action in late 2012. The northern Syrian city of Maarat was under siege, being broken apart by rebel shellfire and the regime’s barrel bombs. Near the city’s center stood its centuries-old museum, which sheltered one of the region’s most significant collections of intact mosaics, including Roman and Byzantine-era depictions of the legend of Romulus and Remus, and images of wolves and lions attacking prey, crowded bazaars, and ancient |
, and policy endeavors, leaving the public to wonder whose interests are being served.
In the old world, players had more defined roles and agendas; now they are more apt to glide among them in an ill-defined blur.
In the old world, you could point to the official or lobbyist or interest group wielding influence. Today, players and corporations can use nonprofit or “grassroots” organizations to press their case—but you’d never know it because, more than in the past, they don’t need to disclose who writes the checks.
In the old world, the long term was actually long. In the new world, whether in finance or media, short-term results are prized; actions and impact are measured in hours, minutes, or even micro-seconds.
In the old world, the media were more focused on real news; now, “likes” and page views shape what becomes “news,” and much airtime and Web space consists of mere “performances” to catch our attention and convince us that action is happening when it hardly is.
In the old world, it was easier to locate a bureaucrat who was responsible for solving your problem. Today, you get trapped in an endless phone maze powered by technology, leaving less room to maneuver the outcome to your advantage.
In the old world, we, the public, were not implicated. In the new world, we are complicit the moment we turn on our computers, hand over personal information, and “agree” to conditions that we say we have read but, of course, have not.
In the old world, those who betrayed the public trust might be found with cash stashed in their freezer and end up in handcuffs. In the new world, no money passes hands, and no one lands in jail.
In the old world, people recognized others’ moral failings; now everyone can blame the “system.” Whether it’s trying and failing to figure out whose fingerprints are on public-policy decisions, who is calling the economic shots, or whose dollars are funding various politicians, we are up against shadow influence that is difficult to discern and sometimes even anonymous. This isn’t a conspiracy. As we’ll see throughout the book, many policies that affect us all are no longer molded by conventional power elites, lobbyists, interest groups, or influencers that we can identify and therefore hold accountable. When we can’t pinpoint who has the authority to fix the problem, then lobbying, bribery, or other traditional influencing mainstays don’t work. Meanwhile, there are unregistered lobbyists, campaign financiers, and other shadow influencers who operate in and around government, business, nonprofits, and media. How can we decipher their actual agendas and tangle of roles? How can we know whom to trust, when “experts” besiege the Internet and airways, pronouncing on crucial public-policy issues and presenting themselves as impartial and objective, all the while concealing that they actually have a dog in the fight? In short, how can we have any modicum of trust in public institutions that seem to be so accountability-challenged?
Whether it’s the behavior of public figures or the behavior of public institutions, the new corruption is anchored in unaccountability. Unaccountability, as we shall see in the next chapter, is structured into the DNA of many of today’s corporate and governmental organizations. It is an essential but incomplete condition for the new corruption—the violation of the public trust.
For the past several decades, I have been considering what happens to society when the public no longer trusts its institutions, leaders, and public figures—in places as diverse as communist states (where they seldom did) and Western democracies (where not long ago they did much more so). What happens when the accountability needed to sustain that trust is absent from our interactions with the organizations and functionaries on which we daily rely? Or with our relations with once-respected public figures?
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I began my explorations in communist Poland in the 1980s and have continued them in the United States. Throughout my career as an anthropologist, I have seen it as my mission to explain the changing profile of power and influence, and how people both break and create new rules of the game.
Today I am not surprised that people are outraged. Privacy virtually everywhere is under siege, whether by faceless spymasters at the U.S. National Security Agency, through the likes of Google and Facebook, or by government and corporations in concert. Outrage at government and public institutions on nearly every continent, especially since the global financial crisis of 2008, reflects the public’s frustration. The economy continues to stagger with hardly anyone punished for rampant financial abuses. In this fraught environment, the absence of trust threatens to become a permanent feature of our civic life. Some of the chief culprits are even “failing up”: bubble-wrapped from the adversity they helped create, they continue to land influential jobs despite their spectacular and well-publicized errors of judgment and often of ethics.
That’s in part because they are conquering media, new and old. The powerful are performing and branding themselves and their preferred narratives on every conceivable digital and old media outlet, leaving satirists like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert more truth-tellers than the more sober media, something strongly reminiscent of my time in Eastern Europe under communism.
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Meanwhile, the rest of us are exposed to the consequences of the culprits’ misdeeds, with little recourse to challenge the practices that now govern our private information and public policy.
Betrayal of the public trust is at the core of age-old notions of corruption, such as those revealed in texts in the Bible and the Qur’an. At the same time the most common, internationally sanctioned understanding of corruption today is “the abuse of public office for private gain,” as propounded in the late 1990s and promoted around the globe by Transparency International, the World Bank, and other organizations. Straightforward corruption such as bribery is still common and causes outcry in countries around the globe. Yet the older and, I believe, more currently relevant notions of betrayal of the public trust appear to be closer to the hearts of many protesters—and lie at the heart of the new corruption.
In the United States and many European countries, the new corruption may have surpassed the old. Across Europe, with entire economies devastated, signature Western banks colluded with feckless local leadership.
Look at the destruction and global ripple effects wrought by Standard & Poor’s, which took cash to bestow AAA ratings on worthless investments in the mid-2000s. Then there’s Goldman Sachs, which pursued an express policy of placing its “alumni” in top government positions in the United States and around the world, like former Goldman managing director Mario Draghi, installed in 2011 as president of the European Central Bank. Goldman, along with other top U.S. banks, “helped” struggling European economies like Greece, Italy, and others hide their debt in the early 2000s and, according to the New York Times, was still “helping” avert the inevitable crash in late 2009. Such collusion between Goldman and government leaders cannot help but fan the flames of public mistrust.
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In still another case, known as the ABACUS deal, in 2007 Goldman devised investment vehicles for one client without disclosing to other clients—including pension funds, insurance companies, and foreign banks—that they were being set up to lose billions. Notably, this was a case in which regulators actually did try to accuse the company of outright fraud. Yet the matter was settled in 2010. Why? In the eyes of many observers at the time, the government didn’t have a strong case. But in 2014, a retiring U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission trial lawyer let loose at his going-away party. James Kidney, who’d been with the SEC for decades, was apparently one lawyer gunning for more charges against executives. He lost the internal fight, but his parting shot was memorable. Kidney told colleagues and well-wishers that the SEC is “an agency that polices the broken windows on the street level and rarely goes to the penthouse floors. On the rare occasions when enforcement does go to the penthouse, good manners are paramount. Tough enforcement, risky enforcement, is subject to extensive negotiation and weakening.”
Another parting shot came from a Goldman Sachs vice president. He described the violation of the public’s and client’s trust, exposing inside practices in the New York Times on the day he resigned in 2012. Here he sums up his belief that the firm violates the public’s (in this case, its clients’) trust: “I don’t know of any illegal behavior, but will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.”
Still, we ceremonially attack practitioners of the old corruption. The media (TV, in particular) often cling to narrower definitions of corruption to mean simple bribery and outright fraud. They dish out, and we eat up, the images of former high-flyers handcuffed and perp-walked. In America, these include former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, super-lobbyist “Casino Jack” Abramoff, and Bernie Madoff, architect of the largest Ponzi scheme in history. The media had its role to play in the performance. It used all the visual symbols to cue the viewer: here is corruption, the governor with the absurd hair and endless blather, appearing for any TV audience he could find; the hulking figure with the signature black fedora and trench coat; the disgraced investor’s Italian velveteen slippers monogrammed in gold embroidery.
Blagojevich, Abramoff, and Madoff may have become symbols, but they are sideshows. Those who practice the new corruption and help create deep and lasting inequalities don’t typically land in jail. As for Madoff and his ilk, we can count their victims, they clearly broke the law, and they were prosecuted for it. They are likely to be defined as corrupt; the others rarely are, if ever. But the consequences of their actions pale by comparison to the shenanigans of the rating agencies, the Wall Street “wizards” who helped bring down the global economy, and all manner of lobbyists, including those on the vanguard who simply choose not to register formally as lobbyists, when they are quite obviously still wielding influence that we can’t see or trace. They will continue to have a far greater impact on our health, habitat, and pocketbooks, and on the execution of America’s wars.
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Does that make any sense? Have the practitioners of the new corruption not violated the public trust? Isn’t that corruption at its most basic?
The rub is that the system works to catch old-style corruption, but it doesn’t work for the new corruption.
Where, for example, is the sanction or even the shame for the highfliers who leave public office and take on inscrutable roles of influence within the corporate world or the international relations game? Think, for instance, of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who, soon after leaving office, used his prestige to create a highly lucrative influence brand that’s been dubbed “Blair Inc.,” what the Telegraph describes as a “confusing mix of business, politics and philanthropy that is administered by a complex system of companies.” Blair has advised a Wall Street bank, a European insurer, the government of Kazakhstan (among others), and even Libya’s brutal dictator Muammar Gaddafi. While counseling Gaddafi at the same time that JPMorgan Chase was seeking deals from Libya, Blair additionally served as an official peace envoy to the Middle East. At the very least, these overlapping roles are more than murky, if not suspicious. Blair mixes formal and informal roles—and, as I’ll discuss shortly, informality can create a giant black hole of accountability.
Or what about former Obama budget director Peter Orszag? In 2010, he left Washington for an executive job at Citigroup, one of the very companies that needed and received government help after the financial crackup of 2008. One of his three titles there is Chairman of the Public Sector Group, which smacks of a stealth lobbying department.
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Orszag is not accused of wrongdoing. He is a model of “structural rather than personal corruption,” as journalist James Fallows commented in The Atlantic. “The idea that someone would help plan, advocate, and carry out an economic policy that played such a crucial role in the survival of a financial institution—and then, less than two years after his Administration took office, would take a job that (a) exemplifies the growing disparities the Administration says it’s trying to correct and (b) unavoidably will call on knowledge and contacts Orszag developed while in recent public service—this says something bad about what is taken for granted in American public life.” These kinds of high-level migrations, Fallows observed, “pile up in the background to create a broad American sense that politics is rigged, and opportunity too.”
Meanwhile, these players not only challenge accountability—they have helped to create vast inequalities in income and wealth and will long reap the benefits of the policies and the political climate they have abetted. When their policy influence leads to real-world trauma for what has become known colloquially as the 99 percent, these power brokers don’t generally slink into obscurity: they continue demanding high-profile rewards, and often get them.
Given all this, it’s clear that we must pay heed to the new corruption—which helped spark the outrage that has fueled today’s far-flung protest movements. In the new corruption, no envelope is passed under the table. No laws are clearly broken. Indeed, the players we meet in this book are far too subtle and sophisticated for the bribe-dispensing or even conventional lobbying of yesteryear. They are difficult to monitor and to hold to account precisely because their “corruption” is elusive, hard to detect—and legal.
But don’t they violate the public trust—or get close to doing so? And aren’t their actions often more damaging to society than the old-fashioned bribe?
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Yet many people and even corruption scholars, influenced by the agenda of what has been called the “anti-corruption industry,” have not thought about it in those terms. Following the Cold War, the World Bank, and NGOs such as Transparency International of corruption-ranking fame, powered the industry in a worldwide anti-corruption campaign. That industry has favored targeting what is now called “need” corruption— people managing an impossible system—over “greed” corruption—people gaming the system. That industry has played a significant role (even if not quite knowingly) in this obfuscation, as we shall see in Chapter 4. Meanwhile, it is telling that systemic violation of the public trust—the emblem of the new corruption—today resonates with protesters worldwide. Recall the insistence of SWIMNUT and his or her fellow commenters that the United States should occupy a high place in corruption rankings. They don’t need experts to tell them that they are subject to a corruption that bears little resemblance to the petty bribes that flourish far away. That’s because ordinary people are grappling with the grim consequences of the well-entrenched new corruption. The elites who helped entrench it scarcely face such costs. No wonder many elite experts don’t even recognize that a problem exists.
The financial arena is rife with lapses in accountability and even clear-cut violations of the public trust. But a stunning discovery of my research is that unaccountability invades practically every area of public life. Later we’ll see how stealth influence can quite literally involve life-and-death matters when the pharmaceutical industry and physicians intersect. We’ll see it, too, in cases of unregistered, under-the-radar operatives carrying the water for less-than-savory foreign entities. And it rears its head in once-respected institutions—government, business, the military, and academia, among others.
In all these realms, not only is unaccountability a problem: the public trust is under siege.
Excerpted from “Unaccountable: How Elite Power Brokers Corrupt our Finances, Freedom, and Security” by Janine Wedel. Copyright © 2014 by Janine Wedel. Reprinted by arrangement with Pegasus Books. All rights reserved.One of my favorite foils in the Christian blog world is JW Wartick, (one of many apologists who have blocked me) so I thought I would take one of the favorite posts on his blog, and have a little fun with it. I find it interesting that Christianity is constantly on the defensive, because if it was a logical, with consistently held belief, it would be easier to defend against skeptics without using Humpty Dumpty semantics and/or ad hoc measures. However, since this is not the case, Christians such as Wartick and others of his ilk are constantly trying to defend their inconsistent and illogical beliefs, so Wartick came up with his, " The Case for Christianity in 15 Minutes (or Less). Well, we'll see about that....lol.
1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause
2) The universe began to exist
3) Therefore, the universe has a cause
4) If there are objective moral values, then God exists
5) There are objective moral values
6) Therefore, God exists.
“Objective moral values” here means that moral values are true regardless of what anyone thinks. For example, “murder is wrong” would be wrong even if every single human being thought murder was the way to achieve greatest happiness and encouraged it as an extracurricular activity for teenagers. But the only way to hold that objective moral values exist is to grant God’s existence, because objective laws require an objective lawgiver.
"Some forms of Buddhism say: There is no God; Christianity argues: There is a God; Hinduism states: there are many gods, etc. and the Law of Noncontradiction shows us that therefore, these religions cannot all be true. "
"Show me manuscript evidence that states that Brahman transcends the world and is not the world itself, etc, etc."
"The cosmological argument (of the Leibnizian variety) could only support a necessarily existent deity. Anyone who does any kind of research about gods of the past would know many would not be ontologically necessary (they could be killed, for example)
"The other gods I mentioned (Dionysus, Quetzalcoatl, Krishna) died and were resurrected. According to the bible and Christianity, Jesus DIED on the cross. Either he was dead or he was NOT dead. If Jesus could be killed, then according to what you wrote, he could not be a god. If he could not be killed, and he did not die on the cross, then his pretend "death" would have been meaningless."
My last comments, which he did not post, are below:
"I gather that you know that I set your argument out correctly and showed how ridiculous your claims are, which is why you did not post my last response, which I have repeated below. You want your readers to think that you are correct, instead of just "manning up" and admitting your mistake. Your intellectual dishonesty is pathetic. If you want to redeem yourself, post this, and answer to it. Your best answer would be to admit that you made a mistake. At any rate, I will be writing a post related to our conversation (yes, I take pictures of everything--even the things I write that you do not post out of fear--and for no other reason!) I am making reference to your claim about the cosmological argument and your claim that if someone dies, they cannot be god.
The other gods I mentioned (Dionysus, Quetzalcoatl, Krishna) died and were resurrected. According to the Bible and Christianity, Jesus DIED on the cross. Either he was dead or he was NOT dead. If Jesus could be killed, then according to what you wrote, he could not be a god. If he could not be killed, and he did not die on the cross, then his pretend "death" would have been meaningless. If you do not think that Jesus' death meant his nonexistence, what makes you think the death of Krishna, Dionysus and Quetzalcoatl means their nonexistence?--oh yes, that's right, your religious prejudice. "
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If Jesus were a mere man and not a god, it would also explain various passages in the Bible which make little sense if his parents and family were aware of his divinity. For example, if his parents were aware of his divinity, then they would not have questioned him as to his whereabouts when they found him in the temple after he had gone missing for three days during their Passover trip to Jerusalem when he was twelve years old. If they had known he was divine when they found him in the temple, they would not have questioned him as to why he was there, and they would have understood fully what he was talking about--he was the "son of god" after all. But they had no idea what he was talking about, as the passages below illustrate: We can further illustrate that Jesus is not God via the Bible itself. Christians claim that Jesus made "divine" claims when he said that, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). However, the Bible also states the man and woman "become one" in marriage.(Mark 10:8) Therefore, the best explanation for the statement that 'I and the father are one' is that it is allegorical, and similar to man and woman becoming one in marriage, or that I and my grandmother are one, in that we share the same philosophy in the "loose and popular sense of same, and not in the "strict' sense of same in that we are one and the same being. It is a better explanation because the "strict" sense of same is how Christians view God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost as being "one"--which is entirely illogical. I illustrated this in this post If Jesus were a mere man and not a god, it would also explain various passages in the Bible which make little sense if his parents and family were aware of his divinity. For example, if his parents were aware of his divinity, then they would not have questioned him as to his whereabouts when they found him in the temple after he had gone missing for three days during their Passover trip to Jerusalem when he was twelve years old. If they had known he was divine when they found him in the temple, they would not have questioned him as to why he was there, and they would have understood fully what he was talking about--he was the "son of god" after all. But they had no idea what he was talking about, as the passages below illustrate:
“Why were you searching for me?” he (Jesus) asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house? But they did not understand what he was saying to them. " Luke 2:49-50
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Cathy CooperChief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao has instructed educational institutions in the state to teach Telugu as a 'compulsory subject' to students from Std. I to XII, and has made it clear that only those institutions that adhere to this will be given recognition and permission to function.
Chief Minister Rao also announced that all public and private establishments and institutions in should display organisations' names in Telugu on their signboards.
"Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao has decided to organise a World Telugu Conference here for five days from December 15 to 19. He has instructed that the preparatory programmes should start forthwith. The government earlier decided to organise the World Telugu Conference in October," a press release read.
The Chief Minister has also announced a sanction of Rs. 50 crore for organising the conference.
"Rs. 5 crore is given to the Sahitya Academy and Rs. 2 crore to the Official Language Commission organising expenses. The Telangana Sahitya Academy will be the nodal agency for the World Telugu Conference," the press release said.
Government's Chief Advisor Rajiv Sharma, Advisor K.V. Ramanachary, Sahitya Academy Chairman Nandini Siddha Reddy, Official Language Commission Chairman Devulapalli Prabhakar Rao, Grandhalaya Parishad Chairman Ayachitam Sridhar, Cultural Affairs Director Mamidi Harikrishna, Telugu University V.C. Satyanarayana, Telangana State Government's Representative in New Delhi S. Venugopalachary and others participated in the meeting.
Also, in the wake of the World Telugu Conference in the state, the Chief Minister has announced two important decisions for the protection and preservation of the Telugu language and literature.
"For those opting for Urdu, it should be offered as an optional. The Chief Minister has asked the Sahitya Academy to prepare syllabus for the Telugu subject to be taught to primary, secondary and higher and intermediate classes," read the press statement.
The instruction also stated that the syllabus should be framed and textbooks should be printed at the earliest.
Chief Minister Rao has also decided to pass resolutions on these two issues at the State Cabinet meeting.
Other decisions taken at the high level meeting were:
· Conferences, discussions will be organised at the World Telugu Conference (WTC) how the Telugu language is preserved, protected, enriched in the Telangana region. The programmes should be conducted in such a manner that Telugu that blossomed in the Telangana region should be known to the all corners of the World. The literature that had emerged from Golconda should be known to the people. The proposed WTC will have programmes on several genres of the Telugu language and literature.
· The WTC will be held at the LB Stadium as the Main Venue. Ravindra Bharathi, Indira Priyadarshini Auditorium, Lalitha kala Thoranam, Nizam College Grounds, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Pingle Venktramreddy Hall, Silpa Kala Vedika will host the other programmes.
· Literary events will be held during the day and in the evenings, there will be cultural programmes. Dance by Gonds, Kolatam, Perini performances, songs like Kalupu, Naatu and Bathukamma, entertainment programmes will be the part of the cultural programmes. The relationship between Tanishah and Ramadasu, Ramadasu Padakeerthanalu, Thandanana Ramayanam, Saradakars, Harikatha recital will also be performed. Arrangements for recitation of poems, film light music programmes Cine Vibhavari. The folk songs of the rural region which people sing from dawn break to the dusk should be organised at the programmes.
· Organise for the performance of Classical, Tribal and other theatre forms. Showcase how the songs especially sung by women have been handed over from generation to generation. Invitations will be given to scholars, linguists, literary figures, language exponents, writers, artists, and artistes from all over the world, in the country for the conference on behalf of the conference.
· Preparatory meetings will be held to invite guests from India and abroad and to explain to them the importance of the WTC. Preparatory meetings will also be held in the U.S., Europe, the Gulf, Mauritius, Singapore, and Malaysia. Meetings will also be held in Andhra Pradesh and other States where they are Telugu population as well as in all the major towns and cities in the Telangana State.
· Not only Telugu, but also eminent writers from other languages who won the Sahitya Academy and the Jnana Peeth Awards will also be invited for the WTC. Essay writing competition will be held on the various generes of Telugu in Telangana for the school students. Felicitations will also be given to eminent Telugu poets, writers, novelists, literary figures, scholars, artists, artistes etc., Food, accommodation, travel for the guests will be provided by the Organisers.
· Chief Minister Rao wanted that all the books on development of Telugu language and literature should be printed before the commencement of the conference.
· An exclusive documentary Telangana darshini should be made to introduce Telangana for the guests. Bathukamma's background, which showcases the wonderful Telangana culture and its intra-human relationships should be held. Construct Dr. C. Narayan Reddy memorial in the city. Select the place in two or three days and start the work. Sahitya Academy will act as the Nodal Agency.
· Official Language Commission, Telugu University, Cultural Affairs department, Grandhalaya Parishad will play a key role. Conduct essay writing, elocution, short story writing, writing of poetry competitions in the educational institutions. Decorate Hyderabad city on the occasion, put up cut outs, banners, arches and entrances at the important junctions. Decorate towns and cities too.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Evan J. Smith Freelancer October 16, 2017 Photos By: Courtesy of Ford
Mustang enthusiasts are excited experience the thrill of Ford’s high-tech 2018 Mustang GT that’s equipped with a 460 horsepower 5.0L engine and backed by either the improved six-speed manual or 10-speed automatic. The popular pony wears a lowered, aggressive nose and a list of high-tech features including the optional MagneRide suspension. Thankfully, traction will not be a problem thanks to the all-new Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires developed specifically for the 2018 Ford Mustang GT.
“We took everything we learned at the track, including feedback from professional drivers, to create a tire custom-tuned for Mustang GT,” said Gary Swingle, Michelin tire engineer. Ford and Michelin engineers used data from the Ford GT supercar and the Shelby GT350 Mustang to develop a custom high-performance summer tire that provides optimal wet and dry grip, improved braking distance and enhanced lateral handling performance.
According to Swingle, “Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires have been fitted for some of the top performance cars in Europe, and will make their mass-market North American debut on Mustang GT.”
Rubber meeting the road will measure 275/40-19 out back and 255/40-19 for the front. In fact, the new Michelin tire helped the Mustang achieve record sub-four-second 0-60 mph times and they to go along with its available drag mode and 10-speed automatic transmission. “A variety of factors make the Pilot Sport 4 S tire uniquely tuned for Mustang,” said Swingle. “An ultra-reactive tread pattern adapts continuously to the road, and a hybrid belt of aramid and nylon ensures optimum transmission of steering input to the road.”
Construction of the tire includes a hybrid elastomer to form its outer rib, which delivers exceptional dry grip to help relieve stress under hard cornering. A middle rib, along with an inner rib with a new mix of functional elastomers and silica, delivers excellent wet grip for improved braking. This will equate to high level of grip for the street, strip, occasional track day or autocross. Mustang owners are also interested in aesthetics, and the Michelin tires feature a racy tread design with a premium look along with a velvet effect applied to accentuate graphics on the outer wall.MOSCOW — A Ukrainian court sentenced two Russian men to 14 years in prison on Monday for fighting against Ukraine as active-duty soldiers in the Russian military, a central issue in the separatist war in southeast Ukraine.
The Russian government denies any role in the fighting and the Russian Defense Ministry refuses to acknowledge any ties to the two men. The two were wounded and captured on a battlefield last summer. The government of Ukraine and those of Western nations insist that Russia is actively supporting the pro-Russian separatists.
In the course of the trial, Ukraine claimed to have finally captured — and put in a glass cage in the courtroom in Kiev — two living examples of the suspected thousands of “little green men,” or Russian soldiers fighting on the separatist side in uniforms without insignia.
As such, the pair — Capt. Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Sgt. Aleksandr Aleksandrov — had taken on immense symbolic importance for Ukrainians. The ranks date from their time in the Russian military. The Russian government said both had resigned from the military before leaving the country to fight in Ukraine.With canned tuna in the news due to a recent recall of Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea tuna, a few readers remembered the can under-filling class action that they filed claims in last year. One reader pointed out that it’s been a few months: shouldn’t the checks and free tuna vouchers be coming soon? Well… no. Not yet.
If this is the first time you’ve taken part in a class action, here’s something that may temper your expectations a bit. While tuna is a very different context from diamond jewelry, class members in a lawsuit against diamond sellers de Beers filed their claims in 2008, and found actual checks in their mailbox five years later. That’s worrisome for anyone who moved in the interim, but not unusual. It sometimes takes a while for these cases to get through the courts.
We checked with the law firm behind the suit, and they pointed us to their web page for the class action, the always-memorable TunaLawsuit.com. Their proposed settlement was denied final approval by the court. [PDF] There was a case management conference earlier this week, and the attorneys representing the class of tuna-eaters filed another proposal [PDF] yesterday. A class action needs final approval from the court to even begin sending things out to class members.
It’s hard to make predictions, but if the new proposal is approved, you will probably see those tuna checks by the end of this year. We can’t make any guarantees.The hills are alive with the sound of country music! Grammy winner Carrie Underwood will star as Maria von Trapp in NBC’s live broadcast of The Sound of Music. The three-hour musical telecast, produced by Smash's Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, will air on a yet to be announced date near the 2013 holiday season.
Set in pre-WWII Austria, The Sound of Music is based on the romantic true story of Maria von Trapp, an aspiring nun who leaves her abbey to become a governess for the widower Captain von Trapp's seven children. Maria soon finds herself falling in love with her employer and questioning her religious calling. The musical premiered on Broadway in 1959, where it broke box-office records and won the Tony Award for Best Musical. The 1965 film version won the Oscar for Best Picture. The Sound of Music features music and lyrics by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein and a book by Howard Lindsay & Russel Crouse.
Underwood is the fourth winner of FOX's American Idol. She starred in her own holiday variety TV special in 2009, has sold over 15 million albums worldwide and has won five Grammy Awards. She's well-known for her hit songs "Before He Cheats," "Cowboy Casanova" and "Jesus Take the Wheel."
Click below to hear Underwood perform the musical's title song on CBS's Movie Rocks TV special.How the phone-phreaking Badir brothers ran rings around Israel's telcos for six scam-filled years.
Inside the chintz-filled living room of the Badir family's neat and modest home, a feast of freshly roasted chicken, saffron rice, and seasoned vegetable stew perfumes the air. Friends and relatives pour through the front door to congratulate 27-year-old Munther "Ramy" Badir. He's just been released from prison after serving 47 months for computer-related crimes. Outside, Islamic prayers resonate from speakers on a truck moving slowly down the dusty streets of Kafr Kassem. Everyone in this Israeli village - populated mostly by Arabs - appears ecstatic to have Ramy back.
Ziv Koren/Polaris
From left: Muzher, Shadde, and Ramy Badir in the village of Kafr Kassem outside Tel Aviv.
But he does not see their smiles. Ramy, along with two of his three brothers, has been blind since birth due to a genetic defect. He and his sightless brothers have devoted their lives to proving they can out-think, out-program, and out-hack anyone with vision. (Their sighted brother, Ashraf, is a baker with no tech leanings.) They've been remarkably successful. Ramy says dryly, "A computer that is safe and protected is a computer stacked in a warehouse and unplugged."
Israeli authorities agree. The 44 charges leveled against Ramy, Muzher, and Shadde Badir in 1999 included telecommunications fraud, theft of computer data, and impersonation of a police officer. The brothers' six-year spree of hacking into phone systems and hijacking telephone time ended when they were convicted of stealing credit card numbers and breaking into the Israeli army radio station's telephone system to set up an illicit phone company. Unwitting customers - mostly Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza Strip - paid the fake telco for long distance calls that were billed to the radio station. A lawyer close to the case said that the Badirs' scams pulled in more than $2 million.
Ramy, the leader and most technologically savvy of the brothers, was the only one sentenced to prison. Muzher, 28, was ordered to perform community service for six months; Shadde, 22, received a suspended sentence - not because he was innocent, the judge made clear, but because of his age.
Those targeted by the Badirs feel less charitable. Yekutiel "Kuty" Lavi, a security specialist at Bezeq International, Israel's largest telco and a frequent victim of the Badirs, angrily complains, "Every day people try to steal from us, but nobody has ever stolen from us the way the Badirs did. When they dial, they use the middle finger."
The Badirs pulled off Mamet-worthy phone cons, employing cell phones, Braille-display computers, ace code-writing skills, and an uncanny ability to impersonate anyone from corporate suits to sex-starved females. On the phone, the brothers morph into verbal 007s, intimidating men, seducing women, and wheedling classified information from steely-voiced security personnel. The phone phreakers' term for this is social engineering: using a combination of brains and guile to obtain codes for trespassing into systems to rejigger them via strings of touch-tone code. Combine this talent with supersensitive hearing - the brothers can dissect an international connection the way wine expert Robert Parker pulls notes from a glass of Bordeaux - and you have what BernieS, a legendary phreaker and contributor to the hacking journal 2600, calls "a formidable skill set."
At one point during my visit with the Badirs, I pull out my cell phone and make a call. Before it even connects, Shadde, who is sitting across the room, recites all 12 digits perfectly.
Ramy smiles at the parlor trick. "It used to be disgusting to be blind," he says. "Today, you scare people. You possess skills that those with sight cannot possibly understand."
Two hours into an afternoon-long interview with the Hebrew-speaking Badirs, my translator |
, hopefully it will align with yours, and one of the best ways to get introduced to or expand knowledge of new technologies, practices and tools is by doing something fun. This is not an introduction to the topic, as it's not a research, this is a practical way of using the technologies available to analyze a particular problem.
Speaking of which, is the part about happiness that interests me, and I'm fond of the concept of quantified self, up to the point where I log almost everything into Evernote (where have I been and places I've loved -Foursquare-, calendar events, tweets, people I've met, you name it), use a life-tracking platform and have automated setups with IFTTT and Zapier and all sorts of diary-like entries lying around the digital scene (although not a real journal just yet), I wondered how can I leverage my setup in order to get analysis and meaningful data. Bottom line, once you get an automated/manual setup where you reflect most of your actual life digitally, it opens the door for digital tools to make something out of it.
The goal of this little project is to be able to visualize how happy or sad I've been over the last two years based on different input using sentiment analysis and a set of tools to train, predict, categorize, cluster and visualize results.
My plan is to be able to analyze what I've been tweeting, what kind of music I've been sharing (a.k.a #NowPlaying, Rdio, Last.FM, etc), visualize and graph the results, any maybe expand the timeline to realtime.
The full source code will be available on GitHub once this series conclude, and hopefully it would have even more data sources, functionality and easy ways of customization, it will almost certainly allow to be run on different users. Comments, suggestions and contributions, as well as general usage are more than welcome, but you should be aware of its license though, it's completely open source but the most important part is:
"I (the author), this project (the software) or any contributions (derived work) are by no means to be held accountable or responsible for having you (the user) fire an employee, shutdown a business, or break with your S.O. based solely on the output of the software in scenarios that show that they weren't happy 99% of the time".
You've been warned 🙈. Let's dive in.
As I mentioned earlier, we will be using Scala for most of this project. Advantages and disadvantages, as well as language comparisons are outside the scope of this post, everyone who has at least seen a tweet of mine knows I'm in love with Ruby, and we will be using that too, but... One of the things I keep saying is that, as a developer, you should be able to choose the best tool for the job, and do it confidently. The scientistic side is not really a long-lived citizen in the Ruby community as it is on the Java or Python ecosystems, among other reasons to shy away from it.
The ML engine I'm using, which I've known for a while and recently surfaced in a conversation I was having with @pikitgb about his crazy stock-market analysis ideas (don't ask), is indeed written in Scala. Plus, the language's data manipulation facilities are superb, and there's an incredible amount of work put in their collections, including parallelization, hence in my mind, Scala would be an awesome choice for this project.
It would be foolish to try to reinvent the wheel and implement algorithms, data streaming, storage and all the supporting mechanics of such an analysis from scratch, the project is already complicated to begin with. I've decided to leverage a tool that gives me the plumping so I can focus on my particular problem, and fortunately it does exist in the form of Prediction.IO, which uses Spark, Hadoop/HBase, Spray, and ElasticSearch under the hood (you can mix and match HBase/ElasticSearch with PostgreSQL or MySQL, but this is my preferred stack).
PredictionIO
Prediction.IO would allow the core analysis, basically for everything that there doesn't exist external tools or APIs for, and our custom analysis.
Instead of trying to describe this awesome tool, and falling short, I think the authors have done a pretty good job at What's PredictionIO, please take a look at it, it's certainly recommended reading.
Installing Prediction.io
Ever since I discovered Docker there's very little that I install directly into my operating system (which gets provisioned itself with Boxen, details on a future post), and this project wouldn't be an exception, specially with such a large component. More standard installation methods for every platform are described in the project's Installation page, but here we will use an image that will run inside of our beloved container-based architecture.
I could have created an image that replicated the installation steps from those pages, but luckily for me, @mingfang already did, so taking advantage of that:
[email protected] ~ $ j code [email protected] ~/Code $ g clone mingfang/docker-predictionio Cloning into 'docker-predictionio'... remote: Counting objects: 155, done. remote: Total 155 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 155 Receiving objects: 100% (155/155), 23.10 KiB | 1024 bytes/s, done. Resolving deltas: 100% (61/61), done. Checking connectivity... done. [email protected] ~/Code $ cd docker-predictionio [email protected] ~/Code/docker-predictionio (master)$./build Sending build context to Docker daemon 95.74 kB Sending build context to Docker daemon Step 0 : FROM ubuntu:14.04... Step 1 : ENV DEBIAN\_FRONTEND noninteractive... Step 2 : RUN apt-get update... Step 3 : RUN apt-get install -y runit... Step 4 : CMD /usr/sbin/runsvdir-start... Step 5 : RUN apt-get install -y vim less net-tools inetutils-ping curl git telnet nmap socat dnsutils netcat tree htop unzip sudo software-properties-common jq......
`
Avid readers might notice that my git command is actually hub, else you'll need to prefix with the whole github stream of chars 😆.
After running runsvdir-start& inside the container (if not ran by us), now able to access the dashboard via HTTP at http://dockerhost:9000 (where dockerhost is the IP of your Docker container's host, namely localhost on environments where Docker runs natively, such as Linux; or your VM's address in other setups).
This, for all intents and purposes, should suffice until the latter stages when we start deploying engines such as sentiment analysis.
Exist.io
Exist is a life-tracking platform, as they put it they collect data from the services you already use and find trends and correlations in the results. Start by connecting your fitness tracker, and add other services like your calendar for greater context on what you're up to.
It allows you to integrate several services into a general dashboard, some of those that I really fell like paramount, such as RescueTime, and provides meaningful insights and correlations regarding your digital life, it also allows you to track mood.
The platform will set you back $6/m after a free trial, but it has become a recent and very welcomed addition to my toolbox. Of course, the trick here would be to use it programmatically, and hence I've created an API client for it and several custom integrations, some of which will be shown throughout this series.
Configuring our Ruby client it's pretty simple, although subject to change in its implementation details since the developers are migrating to OAuth2, there are several supported means of configuring it but the simplest one it's to export the environment variable EXIST_API_TOKEN with the one you get from their web interface, probably using something like direnv.
I won't describe how to create a Twitter app, since it's pretty much standard these days. This is a short section only reminding us that the policies of Twitter do require an app to access your own tweets ;).
Setting up project and dependencies
If you're following this along (quick reminder: all code will be pushed to GitHub), you can create a Scala project with your tool of choice, I use IntelliJ for Scala development, but it doesn't really matter, you just need to get to start things off:
Scala 2.11.6
twitter4j ~> 4.0
twitter4j-stream for accessing streaming tweets (not strictly necessary at the beginning, but something it will become handy if we do this realtime).
Configuring Twitter4j is very simple, and they support several methods. For sake of simplicity, I'll paste a close representation of my twitter4j.properties at the root of my project:
debug=false oauth.consumerKey=<REDACTED> oauth.consumerSecret=<REDACTED> oauth.accessToken=<REDACTED> oauth.accessTokenSecret=<REDACTED> includeRTs=false http.useSSL=true
Conclusion
This concludes part one, we're ready to start coding and we've introduced the project and its goals. Stay tuned for Part 2.With Spring Training games starting this afternoon in Florida and Arizona, we have a couple of new rules coming in to play that we should be aware of. One being manager’s challenges, similar to that of the NFL coaches’ challenge, and a new rule regarding collisions at home plate between a catcher and baserunner.
The rule is as follows: If a baserunner goes out of his way to cause a collision with the catcher, the batter is called out, regardless of if the catcher maintained possession of the ball. Also, a catcher may only block the plate if he has the ball in his hands.
At first glance, it seemed like the league, led by Joe Torre’s recommendations, was trying to ban collisions at home plate altogether from the game. But looking at this rule from a logical perspective, it makes sense.
Collisions at home plate are part of some of the most exciting plays in baseball. The moment of suspense while the umpire is making his mind up whether the runner is safe or out leaves us in a state of suspense that seems like it lasts forever. But the idea behind this rule is not getting rid of all collisions, but the ones that don’t need to happen. If a runner is going for the plate, and the catcher has the ball and is blocking the plate, the runner has to try and knock the ball out. That’s fine. But if the baserunner is hitting the catcher just to hit the catcher, or the catcher is blocking the plate hoping the ball will get there soon, then we run into unnecessary violence.
We have had nasty collisions in the past, and the one that comes freshest in my mind is that of Buster Posey’s collision that broke his leg and caused him to miss an entire season, and consider leaving the game of baseball. Whether that collision with Marlins’ Scott Cousins would be deemed “egregious” by the standards of this rule is a bit fuzzy or not, this rule change is meant to help promote player safety. By eliminating these unnecessary collisions, players can be safer around the plate.
There always has been an unwritten rule, regarding these collisions, that if you know you’re out, to just give in and let it go. Also, by the catcher, they usually just wait for the ball to come in, because the other baserunners might advance if the ball gets by him. This rule just puts in guidelines of discipline and results of what an umpire might deem inappropriate. It makes sense to me.
People might be looking too much into this new rule, but it’s simply a good move to help player safety. Tip of the cap for that.
AdvertisementsIt’s not surprising that a liberal like myself would find fault with something Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said. But after a recent interview in which Scalia described his belief in the Devil, some people are saying he deserves to catch a break from the resulting mockery and contempt.
I’m not ready to let up just yet. In fact, saying you believe in the devil should be an embarrassing revelation.
Scalia’s unlikely defenders don’t seem to understand why anyone could be so stunned by his comments. It’s not that we were surprised that a devout Catholic would say he believes in the Devil or even that he said as much in a “bold” fashion. (I mean, is Scalia ever not bold about something?)
It’s the fact that a grown man, in a position of serious power, would believe in something that’s utter nonsense.
I’ll grant that plenty of intelligent people believe in God — It’s a powerful idea, after all — but the nature of that belief varies widely. It’s hard to condemn someone who believes God is like a spirit that’s all around us. But if President Obama said that he worships a bearded old man living on a cloud, we’d begin to look at him very differently. (As we should.)
I mean, just look at how Scalia answered the questions posed to him:
Can we talk about your drafting process–
[Leans in, stage-whispers.] I even believe in the Devil. You do?
Of course! Yeah, he’s a real person. Hey, c’mon, that’s standard Catholic doctrine! Every Catholic believes that. Every Catholic believes this? There’s a wide variety of Catholics out there …
If you are faithful to Catholic dogma, that is certainly a large part of it. … [The Devil] just got wilier.
He got wilier. Isn’t it terribly frightening to believe in the Devil?
You’re looking at me as though I’m weird. My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the Devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the Devil! It’s in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil! Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.
Contrast that with an interview President Obama gave years before he became a U.S. senator:
Cathleen Falsani: Do you believe in heaven? Obama: Do I believe in the harps and clouds and wings? Cathleen Falsani: A place spiritually you go to after you die? Obama: What I believe in is that if I live my life as well as I can, that I will be rewarded. I don’t presume to have knowledge of what happens after I die. But I feel very strongly that whether the reward is in the here and now or in the hereafter, the aligning myself to my faith and my values is a good thing. When I tuck in my daughters at night and I feel like I’ve been a good father to them, and I see in them that I am transferring values that I got from my mother and that they’re kind people and that they’re honest people, and they’re curious people, that’s a little piece of heaven.
He sounds like a guy who believes in God (or says he believes in God, anyway) but knows full well that a literal heaven is nothing more than a fairy tale.
Meanwhile, Scalia believing in the Devil? Not as a metaphor, but as a physical being? Seriously?! It’s frightening to me that anyone would believe that, even though a 2007 Gallup poll said that 70% of Americans would agree with him.
In an article for CNN, Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza, the “deputy national press secretary of the Democratic National Committee during the 2008 election” and someone who normally campaigns against those on the right, says we should be respectful of these beliefs, though she never really explains why:
I believe it’s bizarre that so many find that belief so curious. … [New York Magazine interviewer Jennifer Senior’s] reaction seems to be that it is outlandish to believe in God, much less the devil. … I do not offer evidence of the devil, just a proposition for secularists and atheists: Even if you do not believe as people of faith do, respect their right to believe and hold opinions informed by belief. Starting from this position in discourse and debate might inaugurate a long overdue — and respectful — dialogue about faith in law and politics.
I wish she would have elaborated on why she thinks that, because I don’t understand how it makes better sense to let bad ideas slide. A belief is only as good as the evidence you have to back it up, and Scalia comes up empty in this case.
Hell, so does everyone else who thinks in a similar way. Scalia’s belief in the Devil belongs in the same category as thinking our world was created in only six days (several thousand years ago), that climate change is a hoax, and that Obama is secretly a Kenyan. They should all be greeted with a collective:
To be fair, Scalia isn’t unique in his beliefs. Many politicians would likely say something along those same lines. But isn’t that precisely the problem? I’m incredibly discouraged by the fact that not a single member of Congress is (openly) non-religious. I wish officials who admitted what Scalia did would face the same electoral consequences currently reserved for those candidates whose sexts to strangers go public.
It’s not that I find it “curious” that someone like Scalia would believe in the Devil. It’s just that many of us understand that those beliefs, like your baby teeth, are supposed to be long gone from your system by the time you’re an adult.
Of course “insistent secularists and atheists” like me (to use Buckwalter-Poza’s words) respect everyone’s right to believe. I even understand that people’s opinions may be inspired by those beliefs. But I don’t have to respect the beliefs themselves. I don’t “respect” people who live in fear of the Devil. I pity them.
It’s worth noting that five other justices on the Supreme Court share Scalia’s Roman Catholicism. Do they share his specific belief regarding the Devil? I don’t know. It doesn’t help that Scalia is already a lightning rod for liberals who enjoy pouncing on his every statement. But I think the criticism is warranted in this case.
I expect the American public to overwhelmingly believe in the supernatural. But I wish government officials would know better. Especially for those on the Supreme Court, whose jobs rest on their ability to have excellent judgment, Scalia reminds us that even he, arguably the most powerful voice on the Court, can be swayed by a story as fictional as that of the Devil.
I guess I always held out hope that a “professional judge” of his caliber would take a common belief, hold it up to the light, scrutinize all the evidence, and come to the conclusion that we the people have been duped this whole time. Instead, he sided with the majority.
We would be doing our society a disservice if we didn’t take this opportunity to educate Scalia — and all other Americans — that there’s no evidence of the Devil’s existence and those of us who acknowledge that shouldn’t be afraid to shout it from the rooftops. We wouldn’t be alone — a recent YouGov poll revealed that only 18% of British people believe in the Devil, a vastly lower number than we find in America.
Maybe Scalia will eventually change his mind. But I don’t believe in miracles, either.Idle thoughts while wondering if White Sox fashion guru Chris Sale approved of the Steelers' decision to stop wearing the hideous 1934 throwback "bumblebee uniform" after this season …
Somebody needs to devise a metric for NFL quarterbacks that measures public restraint.
Over the years, the tendency of Jay Cutler to avoid blasting teammates on Sundays or in the offseason, no matter the circumstances, has developed into one of the Bears quarterback's strengths.
It was on display again Wednesday as Cutler deftly avoided getting drawn into any melodrama over comments from former Bears Martellus Bennett and, to a lesser degree, Brandon Marshall. Cutler easily could have escalated a silly war of words with a player in Bennett who has an endless arsenal of nonsense but chose the smartest response.
Those who often criticize Cutler's leadership fail to recognize such moments of clarity illustrate his maturation. Cutler annually leads the league in uninvited controversy. Limiting pettiness can help a quarterback grow as much as reducing interceptions. Both require discipline that Cutler demonstrates with increasing regularity. Notice, people.
My theory why so many NFL peers, including former teammates, tend to say so many unflattering things about Cutler: He's simply an easy target. Inevitably, a media member will introduce Cutler's name, bringing up a polarizing player bound to get a reaction.
In the case of Bennett and Marshall, who was critical last year before pushing Cutler as an MVP candidate this week, perhaps their words represented buried resentment for how demanding he was as their quarterback. He pushed both temperamental players and likely got in their face more than they wanted. Now, with a chance to take a swipe at a guy who was tough to please as a Bears teammate, they couldn't help themselves. They pounced. Typically such criticism from afar says more about the player leveling it than Cutler. This was no different.
Watching the Bears practice the other day, it dawned on me how important of a season this is for cornerback Kyle Fuller. The Bears' front seven could turn into one of the most improved units in the NFC, applying quarterback pressure every defensive back needs. Fuller too easily ceded No. 1 cornerback status last year to late-summer pickup Tracy Porter — a terrific find.
Now entering his third season, Fuller, the 2014 first-round draft pick from Virginia Tech, needs to assert himself more consistently than he has in the past before this regime starts to doubt him too.
Good thing Alshon Jeffery skipped time with his Bears teammates during organized team activities so he could work out in Florida with his personal trainer to avoid the kind of hamstring issue that forced Jeffery to miss practice Thursday.
No big deal, Jeffery apologists say. It's only the first week in August, not September. But suffering from a too-familiar soft-muscle issue one week into camp, for a guy with durability concerns, hardly removed doubts that Jeffery reported for his contract season a different player.
Walking out to Bears practice the other day in Bourbonnais, a voice called out from the crowd.
It belonged to a familiar 6-foot-5 man who towered over other Bears fans.
"Hey, David,'' he yelled. "It's Kris Honel!''
Ah, yes, Kris Honel. Ring a bell, White Sox fans? I met Honel two years ago for a column about the former Sox first-round pick, the 16th overall selection in the 2001 amateur draft out of Providence Catholic in New Lenox. Honel received a $1.8 million signing bonus but never threw a pitch in the majors, retiring in 2007 because of injury after 135 minor-league starts. After undergoing elbow surgery in September 2005, everything changed and Honel topped out at Double A.
Now 33 and living in Kankakee County, Honel says he has begun conditioning workouts with hopes of a baseball comeback.
"I'll resume throwing soon, but I feel like I have to give it one more shot,'' said Honel, admitting to discomfort because of his new regimen. It felt good for him to be sore.
Honel's last major-league opportunity came with the Twins in spring training in 2009. It seems like a long shot that Honel will get another one but he won't rest until he tries again.
When Brett Favre enters the Pro Football Hall of Fame this weekend, he really should thank the Bears during his induction speech. No other team paved the road to Canton any smoother than the Bears did for Favre.
Consider Favre threw more touchdown passes (60) against the Bears than any other opponent and beat them 23 times. His 25 touchdown passes at Soldier Field were the most in any stadium other than Lambeau Field. The longest pass play of Favre's career — a 99-yard touchdown to Robert Brooks in 1995 — came against the Bears.
At least Favre can show his gratitude for his former rivals as he embraces football immortality.
And if he can't, maybe fellow inductee Tony Dungy can give the Bears some love. Without the Bears abandoning the run in Super Bowl XLI, Dungy might not have won the title with the Colts that catapulted him into the Hall.
Cubs pitcher John Lackey was exactly right when he declared he "wasn't here for a haircut,'' and all that mattered was winning a World Series. Winning it all sure would make it easier for the Cubs to justify Lackey being Lackey, a mercurial veteran who occasionally screams at umpires and shows up teammates in an unprofessional manner. If the Cubs weren't winning, my guess is Cubs fans would be less forgiving of Lackey's antics — not to mention management. Just win, baby.
On the other end of the spectrum you have Sox starter Jose Quintana, a model of composure and class. Quintana lowered his season earned-run average to 2.93 Thursday after posting another quality start — three runs in 71/3 innings against the Tigers. Is there a more deceiving statistic in baseball than Quintana's 9-8 record?
dhaugh@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @DavidHaughOberweis on medical marijuana: It's about helping people in pain
hello
SPRINGFIELD -- State Sen. Jim Oberweis said his reason for breaking ranks with most of his fellow Republican lawmakers by voting to legalize medical marijuana is simple: It might help people in pain.
The Sugar Grove Republican typically holds conservative views, and Oberweis said he's received calls from constituents asking why he voted as he did on Friday.
"The bottom line is, who am I to say that they shouldn't be allowed to use that if in fact that will help them?" Oberweis said.
Oberweis said he did receive at least one positive message since his controversial vote.
"I did hear from an individual whose wife is going through cancer and thanked me for the vote, said they really appreciated the opportunity for her to use that," Oberweis said.
At a campaign event last October, Oberweis said he'd be open to legalizing medical marijuana, though he acknowledged at the time the view might seem out of character for him.
"I am willing to look at both sides, which probably will surprise a few of you here in the room," he said at the time.
Oberweis was among the most vocal critics of former GOP Chairman Pat Brady of St. Charles for going against the party platform by supporting same-sex marriage. The Republican platform also says the party should "make our communities safer through reducing crime and drug use."
"Obviously, that means illegal drug use. Once it's legalized, it is no longer illegal, so I don't think there's any conflict there," Oberweis said.
He added it's different for an individual legislator than it was for Brady, who he said was supposed to represent the party's ideals.
"I think that it's the right of any legislator to vote as he or she sees fit on a bill whether or not it agrees with the party platform," Oberweis said. "I think there is a huge difference between the leader of an organization, the CEO, the chairman of the party, taking a public position on an issue versus a legislator."
Brady stepped down from the position last month.
Oberweis wasn't the only suburban Republican to vote for medical marijuana.
State Sen. Pam Althoff said the few constituents who reached out to her were not aware of the controls in the proposal.
"It was amazing how much of the bill they did not know," Althoff, of McHenry, said.
Under the bill, patients would have to have one of more than 30 serious diseases to legally get marijuana in Illinois. A patient could have up to 2.5 ounces per week, and the drug would have to be prescribed by a doctor who has had an ongoing relationship with the patient.
Althoff voted twice against medical marijuana in the past because she felt the restrictions weren't strong enough, but she said this proposal addressed her concerns. Althoff said she hopes the proposal becomes the template for the rest of the country.
She said she did not feel her vote went against the party's platform, either.
"I don't look at this as a drug vote, I look at this as a vote for compassionate caring and allowing people who are extraordinarily ill access to pain relief," Althoff said. "I don't think there is a single Republican who would deny that type of a compassionate position to an individual."The founder of the oldest psychiatric hospital in Latin America was an ex-soldier turned criminal who broke out of jail, escaped the law with the help of a prostitute, and eventually ended up destitute after spending his entire fortune caring for the mentally ill.
I’ve just discovered the amazing story of Bernardino Álvarez after reading up on the (surprisingly sparse) literature on the history of psychiatry in Latin American and particularly the Hospital de San Hipólito in Mexico City, the oldest institution on the continent.
The hospital, still in existence as the Fray Bernardino Hospital (although, apparently not in the original building), was founded in 1567 by Álvarez – a remarkable chap who became interested in caring for the mentally ill after attempting for to make amends for a life spent fighting, gambling, debauching, whoring and living off daring crime sprees.
This is from what seems to be the only English language article on his life, from a 1972 edition of the American Journal of Psychiatry. It reads like a movie script:
After arriving at what is now Mexico City he was sent to the countryside and fought in several actions in the war against the chichimecas in the north of New Spain. Apparently he was a soldier without too many scruples, for a biographer says that “hate, tears and curses‚” usually followed him. He wanted a shortcut to wealth, however; he disliked discipline and had no taste for the military life. After this campaign Álvarez returned to Mexico City, then a lively and tempting emporium. Soon he was in trouble, gambling and robbing the gambling houses, drinking heavily, rebelling against the law, joining the delinquents of the city, and eventually being chosen the leader of a small gang. “A handsome and perfidious demon”: this is the way he was described at that time. Finally he and his band were apprehended, imprisoned, and sentenced to forced labor in China. They escaped from prison, though, killing three guards in the process. Some of the band were eventually caught again and hanged but Álvarez, through the aid of a close friend, a prostitute, got arms, money, and horses. He fled to Acapulco and then by sea to Peru.
He later became a wealthy and legitimate business man and, shocked by the way the mentally ill were treated, used his money to build the first mental hospital in the New World.
He was so dedicated that he apparently ended up spending his entire fortune on his new found mission and ended up living in a meagre cell in his own hospital by the time he died.
UPDATE: Thanks to Avicenna who points out that there’s a full version of the article online here. Thanks!
Link to PubMed entry for article on Bernardino Álvarez.CD Projekt Red has just announced the release date of its upcoming next-gen exclusive open-world action role-playing video game called The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Being third installment in the game’s series, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt features almost all the characters that were present in the previous games in the series. Here is a screenshot/GIF comparison showing how the characters of The Witcher 3 look like in next-gen visuals compared to the characters in the previous games.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Characters Compared to Previous Games in The Series – Characters Rendered in Next-Gen Visuals Look Stunning
Scheduled to release on Microsoft Windows, OS X, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt concludes the story of the witcher: Geralt of Rivia, who is the protagonist of the game’s series and the previous games cover the start and median of his story. The game is said to feature absolutely stunning next-gen visuals and dynamic in-game environments. It was not developed for the previous gen consoles because, according to the developer, the game needs much more hardware potential.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt features the same main characters that were shown in previous games Thanks to NeoGAF, we have a screenshot/GIF comparison that compares the characters of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt rendered in next-gen visuals with the characters of The Witcher and The Witcher: Assassins of Kings rendered in last-gen visuals. This comparison shows how a generation gap can change the entire looks of the in-game characters. Of course, older characters are no match for the upcoming one’s that will be rendered with whole new technology and hardware.
The comparison goes like this: In each pair, the screenshot shows one character from The Witcher and The Witcher 2: Assassins of the Kings and the GIF, taken from the recently release The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt E3 trailer, shows the same character in next-gen visuals. In each screenshot, character at the left is from The Witcher and character at the right is from The Witcher 2.
Geralt of Rivia (Screenshot: The Witcher 1/2 – GIF: The Witcher 3)
Triss Merigold (Screenshot: The Witcher 1/2 – GIF: The Witcher 3)
Dandelion (Screenshot: The Witcher 1/2 – GIF: The Witcher 3)
Eskel (Screenshot: The Witcher 1 – GIF: The Witcher 3)
Vesemir (Screenshot: The Witcher 1 – GIF: The Witcher 3)
Lambert (Screenshot: The Witcher 1 – GIF: The Witcher 3)
King of the Wild Hunt (Screenshot: The Witcher – GIF: The Witcher 3)Iraqi government forces flash the "V" for victory sign in Fallujah after retaking the embattled city from the Islamic State militant group. (Haidar Mohammed Ali/AFP/Getty Images)
Iraqi commanders said Sunday that they had completely retaken the city of Fallujah after a month-long battle, depriving Islamic State militants of a symbolic stronghold just an hour’s drive from the capital.
There was a celebratory mood in the city as pickup trucks ferried around cheering members of the security forces, who unloaded volleys of bullets into the air in jubilation. While the city appeared to be under their control, commanders conceded that militants could be hiding out.
The Sunni city 45 miles west of Baghdad was the first in Iraq or Syria to be captured by the Islamic State, about 21 / 2 years ago. Fallujah was a quagmire for U.S. service members during the Iraq War, so there were expectations that it could be a bloody and drawn-out fight this time, too. But the Iraqi military made quick progress after breaking through defense lines outside the city earlier this month.
The loss of Fallujah deals a significant blow to the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate, which has been steadily shrinking as Iraqi forces have advanced with the help of airstrikes from a U.S.-led coalition. Even before the Fallujah operation, the militant group had lost an estimated 40 percent of the territory it once controlled in Iraq.
But parts of the Sunni city, once home to 300,000 people, are still laced with roadside bombs. In the narrow streets of the old-city area, secured earlier Sunday, an officer urged caution as he pointed out a booby trap, its yellow wires leading out of the ground and over the gate into a nearby house.
“Danger explosives,” someone had written on the wall. Thamer Ismail, a commander with the Iraqi police’s rapid reaction force, also known as S.W.A.T., said his forces had detonated two booby-trapped houses and 13 roadside bombs on Sunday alone.
While S.W.A.T. and federal police forces focused on the older area of the city, Iraq’s special forces stormed the Jolan neighborhood Sunday morning.
Standing on a street corner, Capt. Mudher Moussawi from the federal police said the operation for the old-city area had faced little resistance. Only about 30 militants were defending it, he said.
“But there may be fighters in the houses,” he said, pointing down a road toward a mosque. “Lots of streets are not yet cleared.” Many were blocked with dirt and the shells of burned cars, makeshift defenses against Islamic State car bombs.
While some neighborhoods, particularly on the outskirts of the city, have suffered extensive damage, others are largely intact, raising hopes among residents who were forced to flee. Tens of thousands are now stuck in desert camps with little assistance.
“It’s still too early to speak of returns,” said Nasr Muflahi, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Iraq director. “We just do not know which areas are safe and which aren’t.”
[After more than $1.6 billion in U.S. aid, Iraq’s army still struggles]
The actions of the Shiite-led government’s security forces in this “City of Mosques” — the most important in Iraq for Sunni Muslims — have been highly scrutinized.
Given concerns about reprisal attacks, Iraq’s government initially announced that its popular mobilization units — armed groups largely made up of Shiite militias — would not be entering the battle inside the city. Many among Iraq’s Shiite militias view the local population as largely sympathetic to the militants.
However, forces from the Shiite Badr Organization had been fighting alongside police in recent days, commanders said.
“In the beginning, we decided to only support them,” Hadi al-Amiri, a member of the Badr group, said during a visit to the S.W.A.T. base. “But they found that they couldn’t do it alone. Therefore, we entered the city.”
He said the popular mobilization units had held back until civilians had left.
Plumes of black smoke billowed out of houses in an area under the control of police and militia forces.
Amiri denied that militia forces were setting properties ablaze. He said that the burning houses were the result of the fighting or Islamic State militants setting fire to their bases as they retreated.
“An electrical fire,” said one officer, when asked to explain a burning building that hadn’t been alight a few hours before, after Islamic State militants had left the area.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi visited the city Sunday afternoon, speaking outside its main hospital.
He said that some “sick souls” may have committed violations “here and there” but that they were isolated incidents and unacceptable. He said it was a day for all Iraqis to celebrate.
“We had promised that we would raise the Iraqi flag high in Fallujah, and we have fulfilled this promise, and we will raise it soon in Mosul,” Abadi said as he hoisted the national banner. Mosul, about 250 miles northwest of Baghdad, remains the last significant Iraqi city in the hands of the militants |
key points of Donald Trump's immigration plan
Scott Leader allegedly told police it was okay to beat the man because he was Hispanic and homeless, according to reports.
"Donald Trump was right," he allegedly told police. "All these illegals need to be deported."
It is not clear if the homeless man is a American citizen.
Trump, a real estate tycoon who owns three New Jersey golf courses and once owned three Atlantic City casinos, has faced controversy for his views on immigration during his campaign.
When he announced his presidential bid in June, Trump said "rapists" and "criminals" were entering the U.S. illegally from Mexico.
"They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They are rapists," he said. "And some, I assume, are good people."
This past weekend, Trump unveiled a plan that calls for rescinding President Obama's executive orders on immigration, deporting millions of unauthorized immigrants, ending birthright citizenship, and building a wall across the U.S.-Mexico border.
"The influx of foreign workers holds down salaries, keeps unemployment high, and makes it difficult for poor and working class Americans -- including immigrants themselves and their children -- to earn a middle class wage," reads a policy paper Trump released Sunday about his immigration platform.
He added during an interview Sunday that "we have to make a whole new set of standards" for immigration and noted that he would work to bring back the "good" immigrants who are deported.
Donald Trump controversy 18 Gallery: Donald Trump controversy
Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @johnsb01. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.PVRIS are currently out on the road in the U.K. and lastnight the band performed two new songs live for the first time ever including a new single? The band performed their debut single “Heaven” from their forthcoming album, All We Know of Heaven, All We Need Of Hell as well as a new single yet to be released a previously unheard, “Half.” PVRIS’ new album All We Know Of Heaven, All We Need Of Hell is released August 4th via Rise Records.
PVRIS Tour Dates
May 5th – London – Shepherd’s Bush Empire
May 8th – Paris – Trabeno
May 10th – Amsterdam – Melkweg
May 11th – Berlin – Columbia Theatre
PVRIS on tour with MUSE & Thirty Seconds to Mars
May 20th | West Palm Beach, FL | Perfect Vodka Amphitheatre
May 21st | Tampa, FL | MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre
June 3rd | Nashville, TN | Ascend Amphitheater
June 6th | Atlanta, GA | Lakewood Amphitheatre
June 8th | New Orleans, LA | Bold Sphere at Champions Square
June 10th | Austin, TX | austin360 Amphitheater
June 12th | Kansas City, MO | Starlight Theater
June 13th | St. Louis, MO | Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre
June 15th | Charlotte, NC | PNC Music Pavilion
July 18th | Toronto, ON | Budweiser Stage
July 22nd | Wantagh, NY | Nikon at Jones Beach Theater
August 1st | Burgettstown, PA | KeyBank Pavilion
September 15th | San Francisco, CA | Shoreline Amphitheatre
September 18th | Morrison, CO | Red Rocks Amphitheatre
September 20th | Salt Lake City, UT | USANA AmphitheatreI don't usually do this, but I want to give some early buyers an opportunity to get a deal.
The sets are Vortex Black PBT (OEM Profile) with Black dye-sub legends. They are a bit difficult to capture in a picture because in some lighting they look completely black, and in other lighting you can see the legends. These would be great for typists that want to make the leap to blank keys, but need that safety net for things like entering passwords or the finding the less commonly used keys.
These sets will be for sale in the near future on TechKeys at a higher price, but I am accepting up to 5 pre-orders for $35 + PayPal and Shipping ($6 US, $13 Non-US). Orders ship next day.
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Ok slow pokes - Second chance 3 more @ $37 + PayPal and ShippingThis is more fun that updating my site...here comes 3 more sets at the "You Snooze You Loose" Price - $39 + PayPal and Shipping1.2.3.PM me if interested with a PayPal email and Shipping addressMy former house may have been the house in which above mentioned creepy unsolved murder occurred. Of course, I don't want it to be the actual house because learning that would make me uncomfortable. I don't want to live in a place where a homicide occurred and I wouldn't want to know about it if I did. Who would ever want to live in a house where someone was killed? Well, surprisingly, some people would and the number of them is actually increasing. There's a simple answer why this is, too: It's cheaper.
Whether you avoid such houses no matter the cost, or actually prefer the stigmatized house more than a normal one because of the price, today you and I are going to explore how to find out if a property in Japan comes with a dark history and we'll also try to uncover some tips to help you to either avoid or choose such a place.
What Is Stigmatized Property?
Stigmatized property is called Jiko bukken・Wake ari bukken jouhou center 事故物件 （ じこぶっけん ） ・ 訳 （ わけ ） あり 物件情報 （ ぶっけんじょうほう ） センター, or in legal terms Shinriteki kashi bukken 心理的瑕疵物件 （ しんりてきかしぶっけん ） in Japanese. kashi 瑕疵 （ かし ） means flaw; defeat; blemish and a property with "kashi" is a place that buyers or tenants may shun for reasons that are unrelated to its physical condition or features. Such reasons include murder, murder-suicide, family suicide, individual suicide, solitary death and arson. On top of that, it includes things like whether or not a gangster organization (yakuza) used the space, or if a religious cult exists nearby.
The Law And A Loophole
Although both the civil law of Japan, as well as the building lots and building transactions business law (what a mouthful) dictates that realtors to inform any prospective tenants of any "stigma" involving the previous tenant or property, the law doesn't actually state what specifically that stigma is. Therefore, the realtors themselves have to decide what exactly is worth informing prospective tenants about by referring to precedents. In fact, it seems to be pretty difficult for realtors to judge because there are various precedents which could change depending on the situation.
For example, one precedent indicates that the prospective tenant needs to be informed for at least two years following some form of stigma, whereas the other said that it has to be 20 years, though the average accepted duration is typically between 5 to 10 years. There was also a precedent stating that the tenant has to be informed of such incidents 10 years after it happened unless a different tenant has already lived there.
This precedent created a loophole: the requirement of informing tenants of a stigma applies only to the most recent tenant and once the place has been rented a second time, whatever occurred prior to that need no longer be reported. Because of this, many people just changed the registered tenant's name to their family member's, or even hired someone to temporarily live there. This rampant, immoral method has actually caused a lot of hassle in the courts. For this reason, there is now a consensus among real estate companies to inform the prospective tenant of the stigma if the incident happened within the past 10 years or if the prospective tenant is the third registered tenant after the incident, though, again, it is still left to the realtor's or owner's discretion.
First, Simply Ask the Realtor
So now let's suppose you're in the market for a new apartment, and you spot one that's pretty good. The location is favorable, the structure is very durable, and the unit has plenty of storage space and gets a lot of sunshine. It's also in close proximity to a train station and convenient shopping places, but the rent seems too good to be true. Tintintin~♪ Bingo♪
If that's the case, you are likely to find that the apartment may have experienced an "unfortunate incident." In general, rent for stigmatized properties is usually listed at over 20% less than normal. Even if it is listed at the normal rate, you're likely to be able to negotiate the price down by 20% or more, so long as you know that the stigma exists.
So, say you do find a place that is priced at the normal market value. How can you figure out about the stigma then? One thing that may set off some warning bells is if it was renovated. The place looks brand spankin' new and it's only this price? Or, even more suspicious, what if only part of the location is renovated. The flooring in this particular room is so beautiful but the walls are kind of old and shabby looking… or, why is the bathtub so new and high-tech when the toilet's oshiri button doesn't even move back and forth?
These are the kinds of things to look for, so if you notice any of these things or anything else that seems fishy, you can simply ask the realtor if this is a place with an undesirable history. As long as the realtor is a good person and follows the consensus, you will be informed, especially when you directly ask. You may also want to check if the neighboring units are occupied too, because it's common for people to move away if there was an event or issue at the unit you're looking at.
So, whether you're trying to avoid a stigmatized unit or if you're trying to find one so you can negotiate the price down, those are the things you need to do.
What To Ask?
Let's say you do ask and they say "Nope, not stigmatized." You know that look in their eyes. They seem uncomfortable and are making weird movements, just like a lier would! Something is wrong here…
One way to get past this is to ask for more details. Here are some questions that will help you to figure out if it is actually that type of place:
How long did the previous tenant live here and how long has the unit been vacant (exactly when did they move out)?
Did the tenant move out within two years of moving in?
Did they move when it wasn't normal moving season, such as March? Why? If the realtor hesitates to answer or tells you that he/she doesn't know the reason, you should keep being skeptical. With enough digging, you might make the person slip up and tell you something they didn't intend to, or you may just catch them in a lie.
Furthermore, if you are enthusiastically recommended a unit with phrases that sound as though the person is rushing to sell the place, such as "I've never seen such a good place", "I'd like to live here if I were you", or "It's so rare that such a place is available at this price", then you may want to think twice. Maybe it is too good to be true. Oh and by the way, if you are seeking a stigmatized property and don't mind being honest about that with the realtor, feel free to reveal that information right where you stand. In that case, no one would lie. They're probably having trouble selling the place and that might come at a relief to them. That being said, maybe you could say that out front and then catch them at their lie.
Second, Go To Well-Disclosures Real Estate Site
If the situation arises when you've asked the realtor your questions, but didn't get enough confidence boosting information and thus are still skeptical, the next thing you should do is to check out the real estate sites, such as SUUMO, which discloses stigmatized information.
As for SUUMO, not only are they unafraid to reveal stigmatized property but they've also even attempted a new and unique approach to offloading stigmatized property. In a very positive way, they try to convince the potential renter that it's actually a great thing to live in a place where someone violently died! The following is what they wrote for the unit.
事故物件♪ 人気の事故物件♪初期費用が少額♪TDL近い♪バストイレ付き♪ー初期費用の少ない事故物件でました！一人暮らしなのに一人暮らしではないような感覚にさせてくれる寂しがり屋さんにオススメのお部屋です♪
Stigmatized Property♪ Popular stigmatized property♪ Low initial cost♪ Near Tokyo Disneyland♪ Private bath and toilet♪ It's a stigmatized property, which means low initial cost! You'll be living alone, but you'll never really feel like it. This room is perfect for lonely singles♪
It came with pictures of not just the apartment and surrounding area, but also of a cute, friendly ghost character Obake-no-Q-taro お 化 （ ば ） けのQ 太郎 （ たろう ）, which means 'Ghost Q-taro' and was made by the creators of Doraemon ドラえもん （ ）, Fujiko Fujio 藤子不二雄 （ ）.
The price was 23,000yen(US$230) per month with no deposits for the 107 square-foot unit with a kitchen, balcony, bathroom, and toilet. It seems that this unique idea succeeded in its purpose and the ad was taken off shortly after.
事故物件・訳あり物件情報センター, or The Stigmatized Property Information Center, is another website on which you can find these properties, as well. Although they only cover the Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, and Chiba areas, they actually focus solely on stigmatized property for their business, whereas SUUMO only partly deals with such properties. So if you are looking for such a place, you can search for an 'only stigmatized property' realtor.
Third, Check Out Oshima Teru
Oshima Teru CAVEAT EMPTOR is an up and coming website operated by Manabu Oshima since September 2005. The site's main purpose is to map out every property where unnatural deaths occurred and to show you the'stigmatized properties' with burn marks from fires. Originally, it focused on the greater Tokyo area, but now they have extended into a near worldwide coverage including North America and Europe. They glean data from police reports and the media, visit the actual places or the courts to learn the correct addresses, and use Google maps to indicate where all the "stigmatized properties" around the world are. This site is also for free so to all of you are thinking of moving I'd recommend searching for a stigmatized property on Oshima Teru to make a stigmatized property your own.
However, despite the worldwide coverage of Oshima Teru, most places are limited to major cities. So, what can you do now? Unfortunately, your last resort may be to walk around and ask the neighbors by yourself: "This unit is very cheap compared to the average price in this area, so is it only this unit or is everyone in this apartment building paying the same price?" Although it may be a difficult, time-consuming way, you may be able to gain fruitful information not only regarding stigmatized properties, but also about your potential landlord's or neighbors' personalities.
Finally Make Your Own Decision
Though I listed the ways to figure out if the unit is stigmatized, most likely you will just be informed by the realtor because they will be afraid of being sued for hiding it from you (should you move in and find out later). Some real estate companies actually went bankrupt because of having a bad reputation from hiding such things.
Interested in buying or renting a stigmatized home? Go ahead! Although, there are also some cases where tenants complained of "residual smells" being left behind by decomposing corpses, or tenants who developed insomnia due to the psychological pressure of knowing what occurred in their unit, so you should also consider those things before making a decision. But, if you value a good deal over trivial things like your psychological health, I won't hold you up any longer.
Me? As I told you earlier, there is no way that I could move into one of those places or learn that I used to live in one. However, my curiosity was far too great and I actually felt compelled to find out whether or not I unknowingly lived in stigmatized house. Unfortunately, or perhaps luckily, I couldn't find any verifiable proof that the incident I wrote about in a previous article actually occurred there, perhaps because it was such a old case. Personally, I'm glad that I didn't find anything out. I guess it will just have to remain an eerie possibility for my mind to nibble on.
So what about you? Think you could live in a stigmatized property? Where would you draw the line? Is suicide okay but not murder? Or perhaps the line is between murder suicide and regular murder? Let me know your opinion and where you stand. Oh, and if you've lived in a stigmatized property, tell me all about it, I want to know!Now that the dust has settled from Sunday’s Canadian heartbreak, here are three thoughts on Republic’s 1-2 loss to Vancouver Whitecaps FC 2:
1. Buckle’s tactical experiment/gamble backfired.
If you were watching the game on Sunday, your ears may have perked up upon hearing Republic’s starting lineup. Rather than the 4-4-1-1 formation we have grown accustomed to seeing, Head Coach Paul Buckle switched things up and opted to start the match with a defensive 5-3-2 formation.
That, in and of itself, was not too strange, especially given the recent run of bad results—Republic’s games have lately been a tale of two incongruent halves, often struggling to find a balance between starting strong and closing out games. However, what was so striking about Buckle’s starting eleven was the lack of balance in the lineup.
In addition to a backline of five defenders (Kiffe, Christian, Foran, da Fonte, Colvey), Buckle started two defensive-minded players in midfield: JJ Koval and the on-loan Jeremy Hall, a natural full-back playing out of his usual role in his first game with Republic FC (more on him later).
Despite seeming like a natural fit for this formation, one of Republic’s most versatile players, Octavio Guzman, was conspicuously left off the match day roster. This placed most of the attacking burden in the midfield onto Danny Barrera, and as such, it looked like Buckle’s game plan was to absorb pressure and play on the counter. When Barrera sent Cameron Iwasa through on goal for Republic’s goal in the 14th minute, it all seemed to be going according to plan.
However, when Sacramento conceded an equalizer from a penalty kick in the 21st minute, the game plan came undone. Republic was unable to find depth in their attacks, unsurprisingly, given the defensive posture of the team.
The 5-3-2 formation heavily relies on the fullbacks (in this case, Kiffe and Colvey) to act as wingbacks (wingers + fullbacks), working the full length of the pitch to support both the defense and offense. Yet, when Republic would gain possession, they would often opt to circulate the ball in the back first, inviting Vancouver to come in and pressure. By the time the ball made it to midfield, the stifling pressure from Vancouver would force Republic’s midfielders to play long balls and lose possession. Guzman’s ability to hold the ball well under pressure and find passing lanes was sorely missed.
Buckle tried to remedy the issue in the second half by bringing on Adam Jahn (52nd minute), Matt LaGrassa (60th minute), and Max Alvarez (78th minute), but instead of finding the winning goal, Republic conceded it in stoppage time.
2. Republic newcomer Jeremy Hall showed promise.
We knew Hall was a fan of Justin Bieber and the San Francisco 49ers, but we didn’t know how he’d perform in his first match wearing Old Glory Red. Despite playing out of his natural fullback position, Hall showed a lot of composure with the ball throughout the game, often finding ways to alleviate the pressure from Vancouver in midfield. His MLS experience was clearly visible and it’ll be interesting to see whether Buckle continues to play him in central midfield or brings him back into the defense as the temporary Klimenta-replacement we assumed he’d be.
3. Republic fans shouldn’t hit the panic button yet.
Yes, it’s true that Republic has been on a bad run, claiming just a single point from the last four games. And yes, some of these losses were extra painful because they happened in the dying moments of the game. However, the team has been in this situation before and turned it around. The last time we were talking about a similar run of bad results, Republic embarked on a nine-game unbeaten streak. For better or for worse, Republic is its own worst enemy, and as frustrating as that may be, it also means the team has the immediate power to react and overcome this bad stretch. Despite the recent losses, the Indomitable Club is still in playoff position and good results in the upcoming games against Rio Grande Valley FC and OKC Energy FC (the two teams on either side of Republic in the standings), will help ensure it remains that way.
What are your thoughts on last weekend’s match? Sound off in the comments below.An Egg McMuffin meal is pictured at a McDonald's restaurant in Encinitas, California, in this file photo taken August 13, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Blake/Files
By Lisa Baertlein and Sruthi Ramakrishnan
(Reuters) - McDonald's Corp's 16,000 U.S. and Canadian restaurants will serve only eggs laid by cage-free chickens within 10 years, the company said on Wednesday.
McDonald's USA has been buying more than 13 million cage-free eggs annually since 2011. The long-awaited switch is happening as North American egg suppliers are slowly starting to rebuild flocks after the worst bird flu outbreak in U.S. history.
The move comes as McDonald's, the world's biggest restaurant chain, is preparing to serve breakfast all day at U.S. outlets in October. McDonald's USA, which is fighting sagging sales, made waves in March by announcing a two-year plan to phase out meat from chickens raised with antibiotics used to fight human infections.
McDonald's buys about 2 billion eggs annually for its U.S. restaurants and 120 million for Canada to serve breakfast items such as Egg McMuffin and Egg White Delight.
Fast-food rival Burger King already has committed to using only cage-free eggs by 2017. Other large companies such as Starbucks Corp, General Mills Inc, Nestle, Sodexo Inc and Aramark [ARMRKA.UL] also are in the process of switching.
Groups such as the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), Mercy for Animals and World Animal Protection have successfully lobbied many companies to adopt animal welfare practices. Such groups also have won commitments from nearly 100 major companies to phase out so-called gestation crates, which are small cages for breeding sows.
Celebrities such as film star Ryan Gosling have teamed up with HSUS to pressure Costco Wholesale Corp to eliminate cage-confined chickens from the company's egg supply chain. HSUS said Costco has committed to going cage free, but has not set a timeline for its full transition. HSUS said Costco rival Wal-Mart Stores Inc also has not set a timeline.
U.S. companies, led by burrito seller Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc and other popular brands, increasingly are sourcing their ingredients from suppliers who vow to use humane and environmentally sustainable agricultural practices.
California voters in 2008 passed a law mandating that all eggs sold in the state come from chickens given more spacious living quarters. That law went into effect on Jan. 1 and other states and countries since have followed Calfornia's lead.
So far this year, the price of a dozen eggs has averaged 67 cents more in California than in the Midwest, said Brian Moscogiuri, market reporter for shell eggs and egg products at Urner Barry.
(Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bengaluru and Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; Editing by Richard Chang)Oxley's map of the interior of NSW, 1822
John Joseph William Molesworth Oxley (1784 – 25 May 1828)[1] [2] was an explorer and surveyor of Australia in the early period of British colonisation.[3] He served as Surveyor General of New South Wales and is perhaps best known for his two expeditions into the interior of New South Wales and his discoveries of the Tweed River and the Brisbane River in what is now the state of Queensland.
Early life [ edit ]
John Oxley was born at Kirkham Abbey near Westow in Yorkshire, Great Britain. He was baptised at Bulmer on 6 July 1784, his parents recorded as John and Arabella Oxley.[3][4]
Naval career [ edit ]
In 1799 (aged 15), he entered the Royal Navy as a midshipman on the Venerable (1784).[5] He travelled to Australia in October 1802 as master's mate of the naval vessel Buffalo, which carried out coastal surveying (including the survey of Western Port), and this first stay in the Colonies would last for five years. In 1805 Governor King appointed him acting lieutenant in charge of the Buffalo. In 1806 (aged 22) he commanded the Estramina on a trip to Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania).
He returned to England in 1807 and from there he was appointed first lieutenant of HMS Porpoise, a British sloop of war that was stationed at NSW. To take up this appointment he sailed out again to NSW, travelling as agent for the Transport Board in the convict ship Speke, arriving in November 1808 and in which he shipped goods worth £800 as an investment. In 1809 Porpoise visited Van Diemen's Land, carrying as a passenger Governor William Bligh, who had been deposed in the Rum Rebellion.[6]
During the period in which he'd returned to England, Oxley had obtained an order from the Colonial Office for a land grant of 600 acres (240 ha) near the Nepean River, but Lieutenant-Governor Paterson granted him more - 1,000 acres (400 ha). Oxley had to surrender this land in 1810, (everyone given land grants since Bligh's deposing was required to surrender their land) but Governor Macquarie then granted him 600 acres (240 ha) near Camden which he increased in 1815 to 1,000 acres (400 ha) again. This he called 'Kirkham'. In 1810 he wrote a lengthy report on the settlements in Van Diemen's Land before returning again to England, in Porpoise, in May.
Back in London he applied for the post of Naval Officer in Sydney, and then, after paying Charles Grimes to resign, according to John Macarthur, he twice sought the post of Surveyor-General. When Bligh was deposed, Oxley had denied that he had been a partisan of Macarthur, (Macarthur being ordered to England for court-martial) but his letters show that he was on very intimate terms with Macarthur, the leader of the anti-Bligh faction. In 1812 he became engaged to Elizabeth Macarthur, daughter of John Macarthur; this was broken off when her father discovered the extent of Oxley's debts.
Surveyor General [ edit ]
By that time, through the influence of Macarthur's friend Walter Davidson, Oxley's second application for the NSW surveyor-generalship had been successful. In 1811 he retired from the navy, and in May 1812 sailed for Sydney, for the third time, in the Minstrel to take up his new duties as Surveyor-General, even though he had no land mapping experience at all.
Oxley's appointment was at the time of Lachlan Macquarie's Governorship. Macquarie encouraged exploration – he had sent George Evans to confirm the exploratory work of Wentworth, Blaxland and Lawson over the Blue Mountains, instigated the building of the road over the Blue Mountains in 1814-1815, and had travelled to Bathurst immediately William Cox had completed it. From there he had sent George Evans on an expedition of exploration up the Lachlan River in May 1815.
Now Macquarie wanted the Lachlan and Macquarie River explored thoroughly. Opening up of the new lands over the mountains had created enthusiasm for further discoveries about them and the Macquarie River. Mysteriously, the Macquarie, and the Lachlan, discovered by Evans in 1815, flowed westwards to the interior of the country and not easterly towards the coastline. Successively, in 1817 and 1818 Governor Macquarie appointed John Oxley in charge of two expeditions to investigate these rivers.
On the 1817 Lachlan expedition, Oxley was to come across marshy country and conclude this inland area was uninhabitable. If he had pressed on for two more days he would have reached the Murrumbidgee River. Oxley reported that, in his opinion, the Lachlan flowed into an extensive series of swamps, "which were, perhaps, the margin of a great inland sea." Similarly, the Macquarie expedition the following year in 1818 came to a halt on that river at the Macquarie Marshes in a good season for the marshes as the Macquarie was in flood replenishing these vital wetlands. Oxley tried hard to proceed through them but couldn't do so. He returned to the encampment of the rest of his party now convinced that these westward flowing rivers terminated in an inland sea, and he had been on the swampy edge of it.
Through Oxley, the theory of the Australian inland sea was fed and perpetuated,
Lachlan River expedition, 1817 [ edit ]
1817 and 1818 Expeditions of Oxley
In March 1817 John Oxley was instructed to take charge of an expedition to explore and survey the course of the Lachlan River. He left Sydney on 6 April 1817 with George Evans as second-in-command, and Allan Cunningham as botanist. The previous year, Evans had accompanied Macquarie over the Blue Mountains to Bathurst on the celebratory completion of Cox's road, where Macquarie had directed him on an exploratory journey which resulted in Evans reaching and naming the Lachlan River west of Bathurst in May 1815.
Oxley's party reached Bathurst after a week, where they were briefly detained by bad weather. On 25 April 1817, they reached the Lachlan River Depot which had been prepared for them (with provisions and supplies) in advance by a separate party under the direction of William Cox. From here, they commenced to follow its course, with part of the stores being conveyed in boats. As the exploring party travelled westward the country surrounding the rising river was found to be increasingly inundated. On 12 May, west of the present township of Forbes, they found their progress impeded by an extensive marsh. They travelled down a northern branch of the river to Mt Mulguthery where they were forced to return up the river.
After retracing their route for a short distance they then proceeded in a south-westerly direction through Ungarie and past Weethalle, intending to travel overland to the southern Australian coastline. By the end of May the party found themselves in a dry scrubby country north east of Yenda where they ascended several peaks in the Cocoparra National Park. Shortage of water and the death of two horses forced Oxley's return, passing near Rankins Springs to the Lachlan River.
On 23 June the Lachlan River near Merrigal Bridge was reached: "we suddenly came upon the banks of the river… which we had quitted nearly five weeks before". They followed the course of the Lachlan River through Hillston and Booligal for a fortnight. The party encountered much flooded country, and reached a point 5 km south west of Booligal which was their last camp site.On 7 July Oxley proceeded another 16 km along the flooded river and recorded that "it was with infinite regret and pain that I was forced to come to the conclusion, that the interior of this vast country is a marsh and uninhabitable". Oxley resolved to turn back and after resting for two days the exploring party began to retrace their steps along the Lachlan River.
They left the Lachlan at Kiacatoo up-stream of the present site of Lake Cargelligo and crossed to the Bogan River and then across to the Wellington Valley on the upper waters of the Macquarie River, which they followed back to Bathurst (arriving on 29 August 1817).[7] The Wellington Valley would later be made the site of a convict settlement mostly for convict'specials'.
Macquarie River expedition, 1818 [ edit ]
Although disappointed by his Lachlan expedition, in not following the river all the way to its end, John Oxley took up Macquarie's next directive to explore the Macquarie River. He departed from Bathurst on 28 May 1818 with an exploration party that comprised Deputy Surveyor General George Evans, Oxley's friend Dr John Harris, a botanist named Charles Frazer, and twelve convict men.[8] The names of the twelve convict men were later recorded by Governor Macquarie in his diary, upon the party's eventual return to Sydney. "The following are their Names: William Warner, Patrick Byrne, James Blake, George Simpson, James Williams, John Williams, Francis Lloyd, Barnard Butler, Thomas Ellis, John Dwyer, Richard Watts, Henry Shippey."[9] He also noted that the first five men listed had also been with Oxley on the previous year's 1817 exploratory journey to the Lachlan.
They also took boats with them and nearly two dozen horses. The party would get upriver to the Macquarie Marshes, turn north-east to the Warrumbungle mountains crossing the Castlereagh River in the process, view the rich Liverpool Plains, come across the Peel River and the Hastings River to reach the NSW coast and the site of present day Port Macquarie. These European discoveries delivered a real boost to the NSW colony.
On 12 June 1818 Oxley was near the site that would become Dubbo. He wrote that he had passed that day 'over a very beautiful country, thinly wooded and apparently safe from the highest floods...'. they continued to follow the Macquarie River through land that became increasingly flat. On 27 June they spotted a small hill and named it Mt Harris in honour of John Harris accompanying him. On the same day the mountains in the distance to the east (now known by their Aboriginal name, the Warrumbungles) were named Arbuthnot's Ranges for the Rt Hon C. Arbuthnot of H.M. Treasury. [10] Mt Harris is 54 km N-NW of present-day Warren.
They continued by boat and horses until they reached the Macquarie Marshes where it spread out through the reeds and Oxley was unable to locate the course of the river any further downstream. He wrote:
"But if an opinion may be permitted to be hazarded from actual appearances, mine is decidedly in favour of our being in the immediate vicinity of an inland sea, or lake, most probably a shoal one, and gradually filling up by numerous depositions from the high lands, left by waters which flow into it."
From here he retraced steps to Mt Harris, NW of present day Warren, and camped from early July while he sent George Evans forward with a few men to scout a route to the north-east. On Evans' return, the expedition crossed the river that Oxley would name the Castlereagh, went towards the Warrumbungle Mountains, which he named at the time 'Arbuthnot's Range' and easterly through the Gooriananwa Gap[11] From here they moved forward to come upon the rich soil of the Liverpool Plains.
On 26 August 1818 they climbed a hill and saw before them rich, fertile land (Peel River), near the present site of Tamworth. Continuing further east they crossed the Great Dividing Range passing by the Apsley Falls on 13 September 1818 which Oxley named the Bathurst Falls. He described it as "one of the most magnificent waterfalls we have seen".
Upon reaching the Hastings River the exploring party followed it to its mouth, discovering that it flowed into the sea at a spot which Oxley named Port Macquarie.
In his diary of 27 November 1818, Governor Macquarie listed the twelve men who accompanied Oxley and Evans on this expedition (see above). He wrote: "I inspected and spoke to the 12 Men who Accompanied Mr. Oxley on his last Expedition – and in his own presence returned them my thanks for their steady good and obedient Conduct on the Expedition; and being all Convicts I have promised to give them Conditional Pardons as a reward for their good behaviour."[12]
Oxley's 1823 expedition to Brisbane River [ edit ]
John Oxley Monument, North Quay, Brisbane
In 1823, Governor Brisbane sent Oxley north by boat in search of a site for an alternative penal settlement for the most difficult convicts. On this journey, he discovered the Tweed River and valley and was deeply impressed, recording his impressions as follows: "A deep rich valley clothed with magnificent trees, the beautiful uniformity of which was only interrupted by the turns and windings of the river, which here and there appeared like small lakes. The background was Mt. Warning. The view was altogether beautiful beyond description. The scenery here exceeded anything I have previously seen in Australia." As Surveyor General, Oxley made a close examination of the Tweed River and |
. As illustrated by this decision, the Brazilian courts weigh the rights of the public to access such information when they balance those rights against individual celebrities’ rights to privacy.
The Appellate Court found in favor of Wikimedia based on the importance of the public’s right to access information about public figures. On the additional claim of sharing false information, the Court pointed to footnotes in the original article which acknowledged that some of the information was contested, and the Court went as far as to say that Wikimedia would not be liable and only be responsible for taking down content if the content was found to be false and defamatory.
The Brazilian courts thus have upheld the Wikimedia Foundation’s mission by protecting access to information and the free sharing of knowledge. Wikimedia will continue to assert the rights of its community as cases such as this one arise.
Jacob Rogers, Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
We would like to extend our sincerest gratitude to Tania Liberman, Eloy Rizzo, Daniel Shingai and André Muriel from KLA – Koury Lopes Advogados for their excellent representation in this matter. We would also like to extend special thanks to legal fellow Alex Shahrestani for his assistance in preparing this blog post.NVIDIA today announced that Facebook will power its next-generation computing system with the NVIDIA® Tesla® Accelerated Computing Platform, enabling it to drive a broad range of machine learning applications.
While training complex deep neural networks to conduct machine learning can take days or weeks on even the fastest computers, the Tesla platform can slash this by 10-20x. As a result, developers can innovate more quickly and train networks that are more sophisticated, delivering improved capabilities to consumers.
Facebook is the first company to adopt NVIDIA Tesla M40 GPU accelerators, introduced last month, to train deep neural networks. They will play a key role in the new "Big Sur" computing platform, Facebook AI Research's (FAIR) purpose-built system designed specifically for neural network training.
"Deep learning has started a new era in computing," said Ian Buck, vice president of accelerated computing at NVIDIA. "Enabled by big data and powerful GPUs, deep learning algorithms can solve problems never possible before. Huge industries from web services and retail to healthcare and cars will be revolutionized. We are thrilled that NVIDIA GPUs have been adopted as the engine of deep learning. Our goal is to provide researchers and companies with the most productive platform to advance this exciting work."
In addition to reducing neural network training time, GPUs offer a number of other advantages. Their architectural compatibility from generation to generation provides seamless speed-ups for future GPU upgrades. And the Tesla platform's growing global adoption facilitates open collaboration with researchers around the world, fueling new waves of discovery and innovation in the machine learning field.
Big Sur Optimized for Machine Learning
NVIDIA worked with Facebook engineers on the design of Big Sur, optimizing it to deliver maximum performance for machine learning workloads, including the training of large neural networks across multiple Tesla GPUs. Two times faster than Facebook's existing system, Big Sur will enable the company to train twice as many neural networks -- and to create neural networks that are twice as large -- which will help develop more accurate models and new classes of advanced applications.
"The key to unlocking the knowledge necessary to develop more intelligent machines lies in the capability of our computing systems," said Serkan Piantino, engineering director for FAIR. "Most of the major advances in machine learning and AI in the past few years have been contingent on tapping into powerful GPUs and huge data sets to build and train advanced models."
The addition of Tesla M40 GPUs will help Facebook make new advancements in machine learning research and enable teams across its organization to use deep neural networks in a variety of products and services.
First Open Sourced AI Computing Architecture
Big Sur represents the first time a computing system specifically designed for machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) research will be released as an open source solution.
Committed to doing its AI work in the open and sharing its findings with the community, Facebook intends to work with its partners to open source Big Sur specifications via the Open Compute Project. This unique approach will make it easier for AI researchers worldwide to share and improve techniques, enabling future innovation in machine learning by harnessing the power of GPU accelerated computing.
Keep Current on NVIDIA
Subscribe to the NVIDIA blog, follow us on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn andInstagram, and view NVIDIA videos on YouTube and images on Flickr.While a majority of Democrats and independent voters support same-sex marriage, a majority of Republicans do not — but among young Republicans, 56 percent join Democrats and independents in supporting the issue.
Image Richard Tisei, far left, is one of three gay Republicans running for Congress this year who are featuring their significant others in campaign ads. Mr. Tisei’s ad features his husband, Bernie Starr, at their wedding reception this year. Credit Richard Tisei for Congress
There are currently six gay members of Congress — five in the House and one in the Senate — and one bisexual, Representative Krysten Sinema of Arizona; all are Democrats. The last openly gay Republican to serve in Congress was Representative Jim Kolbe of Arizona, who retired in 2006; no Republican has been openly gay when first elected to Congress. (Mr. Kolbe revealed his sexuality after joining the House in 1985.)
On Thursday, the National Organization for Marriage, which supports traditional marriage between a man and a woman, held its second annual “March for Marriage” at the Capitol in Washington. “It is a losing issue at the ballot box,” said Brian S. Brown, the group’s president, “and you’re going to see that if any Republican presidential candidate were to endorse same-sex marriage, I can guarantee you they’re not going to win the Republican primary.”
Mr. DeMaio, Mr. Innis and Mr. Tisei have not broadcast any television commercials with their partners or husbands yet, although Mr. DeMaio plans to show a shorter version of his online ad on television, and the other two campaigns said they would not rule out a television buy.
“The airwaves are loaded with candidate wives and kids,” said Elizabeth Wilner, the senior vice president for politics of Kantar Media Ad Intelligence, which monitors political advertising. “These tentative off-air steps, while landmark, show just how loaded the most ‘101’ ad of a campaign, the bio ad, can be for a gay candidate.”
Nonetheless, the candidates say they need to be part of the future of the Republican Party if it wants to survive, as public opinion and Supreme Court decisions seem to be becoming more open to gay rights. “My brand of Republicanism is that the government should get off your back, out of your wallet and away from the bedroom,” Mr. Tisei said. “For the Republican Party, that philosophy is really key for us to expand our base and become more inclusive about bringing people in.”
Mr. DeMaio said the party needed “to enter the 21st century,” adding, “The party needs to reach out to all communities with a principled message — gays, straight, women, men, Latinos all want the same thing.”'Success is a lousy teacher'
Seeing all the analysis that had been done after Monaco come together so well in Canada gave us great satisfaction. Now, it’s about maintaining that momentum.
That’s the nice bit and also the difficult bit in Formula One. The last race doesn’t count any more. You’re being benchmarked constantly on the current performance. Public companies issue reports four times per year. We do it 20 times, on a very public platform – the race track.
When you have a bad day, you can either be downbeat about it or pull yourself up and start to act on it. This is what we have done. We moved on – and these are the days that make you progress much more than the good days. Like the old saying goes, success is a lousy teacher. Every time we’ve had a difficult weekend we have come back stronger. And that speaks volumes for the people in this team.An Edmonton bar operator says he doesn’t expect the same kind of drunken destruction during the upcoming Oilers playoff run that marred post-season celebrations on Whyte Avenue 11 years ago.
“That had nothing to do with hockey. It had to do with people that were taking advantage of the energy and the crowds. I call them anarchists,” Chris DeCock, president of Hudsons Canada’s Pub, said Wednesday.
“They took a situation that was lots of fun and turned it negative.”
Police said they lost control of Whyte Avenue three or four times during the Oilers march to the seventh game of the 2006 Stanley Cup final. Police arrested 860 people and laid about 50 criminal charges.
More than 30,000 people packed the area on the night the team clinched a spot in the final. As the night wore on, people broke shop windows, pushed over phone booths, kicked in windows and set bonfires in the street.
On another night, hollering fans pelted officers with bottles, pitched a billiard ball through the windshield of a police truck and smashed a bus shelter.
Police officers responded by cracking down on disorderly conduct such as public drinking and overcrowded bars, leading to complaints about their tactics.
DeCock is confident the situation will be handled better this time.
“I think the key is to manage the people who aren’t there for hockey and get them out of there.”
Deputy police chief Brian Simpson said his department has been talking for more than a month with emergency medical services, fire, city staff and other organizations to plan how they’ll handle the playoffs.
The new arena is likely to shift much of the action downtown, but Simpson wouldn’t indicate where police will focus their attention or give details of their strategy, although he said they don’t intend to close any streets.
It costs $50,000 to $60,000 a day for overtime and other expenses to staff a major event, he said.
“We realized (in 2006) that we do need a lot of resources to deal with these types of crowd situations. We need partnerships with other agencies in the city, and also we just have to have clear messages to the public … that the rules do apply,” he said.
“We will be fair, but we will be stern … We’re making sure we have the right number of officers, the right number of support staff to help us deal with any potential issues.”
Trainers from the United Kingdom have worked on crowd control with Edmonton police over the last five years, outlining such “non-traditional” ideas as using street vendors to direct the flow of people — something that won’t occur in Edmonton, Simpson said.
Coun. Scott McKeen, a police commission member, said conditions forced officers into being a bit heavy-handed in 2006, so he hopes the planning is better this time.
“We want everyone to have a good time without hijinks-causing yobs making the news … It’s a challenge for police, and yet I know they’re up for it.”
Murray Davison, executive director of the Old Strathcona Business Association, said the organization is asking members to clean up material that could be burned or hurled through a window to reduce the potential for trouble and keep the district neat.
The area’s entertainment mix has changed in the past decade, with fewer bars and a greater emphasis on restaurants and gastro-pubs, so the situation is unlikely to get out of hand, he said.
Hudsons will have a clock counting down the time when special shooters go on sale whenever the Oilers score and is arranging big-screen TVs for the 150-capacity patio at its new 109 Street location downtown, said DeCock, who expects patrons might line up for hours to get in as the excitement builds.
“I think it’s going to be absolutely just off the charts … The economy, where everybody’s at, this is just a real bonus for the city, and for Calgary, too, because it looks like Calgary will be in.”
Related
gkent@postmedia.com
twitter.com/GKentEJNEW YORK (Reuters) - Connecticut’s attorney general said he had “significant doubts” that $165 million of bonuses recently awarded by American International Group Inc are required under state law.
“AIG is shamelessly shielding itself behind the Connecticut Wage Act, a joke of a justification for squandering scarce taxpayer resources,” Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said in a statement on Tuesday. “We should use any and every well-founded legal weapon to recapture these baseless bonuses.”
Blumenthal said his office will “carefully investigate” the merits of AIG’s claims, but added: “Corporate collapse demands accountability — not windfall payments.”
AIG awarded the bonuses even after getting a series of taxpayer bailouts totaling roughly $180 billion, and incurring a $61.7 billion fourth-quarter loss.
A slew of federal and state politicians, including President Barack Obama, and regulators, have demanded steps to ensure the repayment of the bonuses. Some of the bonuses went to employees of the AIG unit responsible for much of the insurer’s troubles.Greenland is an island with limited natural resources and a harsh climate. The local artisanal techniques take the surrounding geographical constraints into account and the Inuit culture is deeply connected to its land. The craftsmen find their inspiration in nature and work with materials such as stone, wood, soil, wool, skin, and bones of hunted animals.
Altered during the last century by the various exchanges with the Western regions, Inuit traditions are being transformed with globalisation. If they were essential for survival, fishing and hunting practices are less and less used. This gradual disappearance endangers the related craft techniques, such as animal skin transformation or traditional kayak making. In the meantime, new techniques are being introduced and absorbed, such as embroidery, beadwork, or ceramic.
With its third residency “Nuuk 2017”, Hors Pistes aims to initiate encounters with Greenlandic culture, replace human exchanges at the heart of the creative processes, and propose new applications to traditional craft techniques.
While the experimentations, prototypes and objects – all resulting from the researches conducted during the residency – embody the spirit of each encounters, the editorial team shares stories that emerged from the rich creative contexts in which the participants evolved.
The exhibition unveiling the results of the third residency at Lokalmuseum started on Sunday 13th August, and the projects are to be seen soon on our website!
For any information, please contact us contact@horspistesproject.comTHE future of duck hunting is the subject of bitter debate after a protester was shot in the face by a teenage hunter.
Witnesses claim they saw the 14-year-old boy taunting the victim, St Kilda woman Julia Symons, minutes before she was peppered with shotgun pellets at Lake Buloke in the state's northwest.
But police described the shooting as an accident after taking the teenage hunter and his uncle to nearby Donald police station for questioning and seizing the firearm involved.
Have your say now. Should duck hunting be banned?
When the Sunday Herald Sun arrived on the scene less than two minutes later, Ms Symons was bleeding heavily from several wounds in her face and hands, and apparently in shock.
"I've been shot. I've been shot... I've lost a tooth. Will I be all right?" she screamed.
Steel pellets had entered her temples, left cheek, chin, nose, hand and lip.
Andrea Maxted, who was wading next to Ms Symons when the incident happened, said she feared the worst when she heard her friend screaming.
The bloody start to this year's controversial extended duck hunting season continued as a 58-year-old hunter was flown to hospital from Cohuna after his gun exploded in his hand.
The man was hunting at Hird Swamp Wildlife Reserve, on Kerang-Leitchville Rd, when a cartridge exploded, causing a serious thumb injury.
He was operated on at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.
Ms Symons, 43, is recovering at Wimmera Base Hospital in Horsham after at least seven pellets lodged in her face and right hand.
The incidents have sparked rows over the future of duck shooting in Victoria and the availability of gun licences for children 12 and over, in the wake of the Lake Buloke wounding.
Of the hundreds of comments on the Sunday Herald Sun website, many blamed the victim for putting herself in harm's way, while others declared her a hero in the fight against animal cruelty.
Premier Ted Baillieu declined to comment on whether the legal age for holding firearms should be increased as a result of the incident.
A spokeswoman for Mr Baillieu, Emily Broadbent, also declined to say if the State Government would consider introducing tougher penalties for protesters in legal duck shooting areas.
"Premier Ted Baillieu said he would not speculate on the details of this unfortunate incident and would await the outcome of the police investigation," Ms Broadbent said.
The shooting happened at 9.10am yesterday as Ms Symons and about 150 other members of the Coalition Against Duck Shooting tried to disrupt the 1500-plus hunters on the lake for the opening of duck season.
"She had blood streaming down her face, so my first thought was to get her out of the water," Ms Maxted said.
While Ms Maxted said she did not see the incident, she did see the 14-year-old and an older man at the scene.
"I turned to the shooters and demanded their names. I said, 'She has been shot. What are your names?' And they just walked off," Ms Maxted said.
For more on the shooting go to www.weeklytimesnow.com.au
- with Jon KailaHalo 5: Forge, the level creation tool that lets players build their own worlds and create new game experiences for Halo 5: Guardians, has come to Windows 10 PCs. The free download puts gamers in the developer’s seat, and adds support for mouse and keyboard, and up to 4K resolution, likely beating out the Xbox One add-on in terms of giving you finer control over world building. Xbox One owners get another treat, though – Anvil’s Legacy, a free add-on for Halo 5: Guardians that adds a content browser to Forge mode on the Xbox.
The updates also bring more parity between both platforms overall, which allows for cross-platform play of content made using Forge. The updates also add new weapons, new pas and new customization features to the Xbox One game.
[gallery ids="1374326,1374327,1374329"]
Forge for Windows 10 was first announced in May, and debuted on the Xbox One in December of last year. Its level building tools are somewhat reminiscent of Microsoft’s other big headline gaming property, Minecraft, but with more emphasis on helping players build new missions focused on multiplayer combat, with support for up to 16-player simultaneous missions on Windows.Overview
This two-way system allows for high quality, high fidelity playback at a considerably low price. With a frequency response that remains within +/- 3 dB, it meets industry standards for applications such as mixing and mastering. The vented enclosure allows extended bass response. With a passive 3rd order crossover at 1.8 kHz, the summation between the 6 1/2″ woofer and 1″ tweeter maintain a flat frequency response.
System Designer:
Spencer Karlovits
Features
Two-way System
Vented Enclosure
Passive Crossover
Under $500
Drivers
Woofer: Seas Prestige 6 1/2″ CA18RLY
Tweeter: Seas Prestige 1″ 27TDFC
Enclosure
Interior: 3/4″ 11-ply Birch
Exterior: 3/4″ MDF
Documents
Testing
System Frequency Response with Crossover Summation
System Response w/ Tweeter Reverse Polarity
System Horizontal Off-Axis Response
Purple 0, Red 15, Green 30, Blue 45, Yellow, 60
System Vertical Off-Axis Response
Purple 0, Red 15, Green, 30, Blue 45, Yellow 60
Woofer Horizontal Off-Axis Response
Blue 0, Yellow 15, Purple 30, Red 45, Green 60,
Woofer Vertical Off-Axis Response
Blue 15, Yellow 30, Purple 45, Red 60
Tweeter Horizontal Off-Axis Response
Yellow 0, Purple 15, Red 30, Green 45, Blue 60
Tweeter Vertical Off-Axis Response
Yellow 15, Purple 30, Red 45, Green 60
Impulse Response
Step Response
System Harmonic Distortion
Woofer Harmonic Distortion
Tweeter Harmonic Distortion
System Phase Response
Woofer Phase Response
Tweeter Phase Response
System Crossover Response
System Impedance Against 8 Ohm Resistor
Left/ Right Speaker Difference
Anechoic Chamber Test Results
System Frequency Response
System Impulse Response
System Step Response
System Waterfall Plot
AdvertisementsBy Todd Starnes
The Obama Administration engaged in eight years of political payback and heavy-handed bullying that specifically targeted their “political enemies.”
Franklin Graham says every American needs to read Todd’s new book: “The Deplorables’ Guide to Making America Great Again.” Click here to get your copy!
They used the Internal Revenue Service to wage an ugly campaign of bullying and intimidation to silence Tea Party groups and Christian ministries.
In 2013 President Obama’s minions sent IRS agents to bully the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
“I believe that someone in the administration was targeting and attempting to intimidate us,” Franklin Graham wrote in a letter to the White House. “This is morally wrong and unethical – indeed some would call it ‘un-American.'”
The BGEA’s only crime against Obama was to urge voters to back candidates who base their decisions on biblical principles. They also supported an effort to support traditional marriage in the state of North Carolina.
I believe the government used the power of the IRS to silence dissent and punish those who refused to comply.
They targeted Billy Graham, America’s pastor. Just let that sink in, folks.
So if the Obama Administration went after Billy Graham, it’s not out of the realm of possibility they wiretapped Donald Trump.
The Mainstream Media believes such a charge is absurd, but is it really?
My Fox News colleague James Rosen was secretly designated by the administration as a criminal co-conspirator. A federal judge gave the government permission to rifle through his private emails.
That kind of behavior is beyond nefarious; it’s a clear abuse of power.
Is it possible that the Obama Administration wiretapped Trump Tower? Is it possible that government workers loyal to the previous president have been leaking sensitive information to the media? Is it possible there is an active plot to take down the Trump presidency?
For the record, we do not know for certain if anyone was wiretapped. And it’s for that reason we need a thorough congressional investigation.
If President Trump made false claims against the previous administration, he should apologize. But if the Obama Administration did in fact order wiretaps — they must be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.
Click here for a free subscription to Todd’s American Dispatch: a must-read for Conservatives.Last week news broke that the Cincinnati Reds had agreed to sign Nevada outfielder TJ Friedl after he went unselected in the 2016 draft and that he would be getting a significant signing bonus as a result. It’s been six days since that news came out and today we seemingly get the full story on how everything went down.
The Pleasanton Weekly, a local paper in his hometown got the scoop from the Friedl family on how everything played out.
The general manager of the (Los Angeles) Angels pulled TJ aside and asked him why he wasn’t in the draft,” said Terry Friedl, TJ’s father. “He told him that he needed to play three years of baseball. The Angels guy looked at TJ and said it was three years of academics. Initially it was the Boston Red Sox and the Toronto Blue Jays that came through with the best offers. Finally, the Reds entered the fray late, coming from “out of the blue,” according to Terry.
Contrary to earlier reports, it seems that there were more than a few teams that got in on the TJ Friedl sweepstakes and that the Reds were one of the later ones to the table. Fortunately for the Reds, they had more money than anyone else to offer because the bonus he gets counts toward the 2016 Draft bonus pools and with the second highest pool to work with, they can go over their pool more than most before facing the penalty of losing their 1st round pick next season.
The article states that he will be in town for the Reds game tomorrow and will then join up with the Billings Mustangs for the season before going to Arizona for fall instructional league.
After the initial article on Friedl, a friend of mine who’s worked as a scout contacted me and had this to say:
Friedl is really fast and can put the barrel on the ball. Nice sign.
Nothing in depth, but always better to see encouraging things on signings than some of the things I hear at times on others.
Worth noting that as of this publishing, the transaction wire still has not listed him as having his contract approved. There’s no reason to believe that it won’t be, but it’s technically not official until that paperwork comes back from the commissioners office. (The transactions for today have not yet come through – I will update this if he’s listed when they do)Indie filmmaker James Cullen Bressack met Green in an alleyway — and a few months later was on set directing him.
Like the best horror films, Bethany's story starts with a classic creepy location: a back alley.
Director James Cullen Bressack, then 22, was taking a break from postproduction on Animal Planet's Blood Lake, a B-horror film he was directing for Sharknado producers The Asylum.
In the alley behind The Asylum's Burbank offices, Bressack spotted Tom Green, whose office was in a building nearby. Bressack stopped to say hello, and they quickly built a rapport over the coming days, with the young director eventually pitching him the idea of collaborating.
"I was really inspired by his enthusiasm," Green recalled on the Van Nuys set of Bethany earlier this month.
Shot over two weeks on a microbudget, the film centers on a woman named Claire (Stefanie Estes) who moves back into her childhood home with her husband, Aaron (Zack Ward). She begins reliving traumatic childhood memories — including flashbacks to tragic events involving her late mother (Shannen Doherty). Green plays a psychiatrist who becomes involved with the couple's lives.
"I've obviously done a lot of outrageous characters and ridiculous things in my TV show, and this is a more serious role," said Green.
Despite his youth, Bressack has the hard-earned air of a movie veteran, which helped him bring Green on board. Bethany marks the ninth feature he's directed, and he grew up in an industry family. His father, Gordon Bressack, is an animation writer with three Emmys for work on '90s staples Pinky and the Brain and Animaniacs. His mother is voice actress Ellen Gerstell, best known for working on Jem and the Holograms.
For the director, now 23, getting every shot he needs is a matter of doing the work before he sets foot on set.
"I did a ridiculous amount of prep," Bressack said in between scenes. "If you look at my script, I have notes on every single page, so much so that the notes almost cover up the actual page."
Bressack co-wrote the script with producing partner Ward via their newly created production company Grit Film Works. Ward has more than 100 credits to his name, but he remains best known for the 1983 holiday staple A Christmas Story, in which he played the red-haired bully Scut Farkus.
Bressack's relationship with Ward also began with a random crossing of paths when the director recognized the actor at a sushi restaurant in 2013 and struck up a conversation. The pair became fast friends, despite the age difference. (Ward noted that he will be double his producing partner's age when he turns 46 in August.)
"He immediately gave me equal respect. He never treated me like I was a kid trying to make movies. He treated me like a professional who is making movies," said Bressack.
The pair shot Bethany and another horror flick, Restoration, back to back with the same crew, funding it with help from private investors and calling in as many favors as they could.
"We're accomplishing a lot for the budget. If people didn't know the budget, people would watch and think it was closer to $1 million," said Ward. "We're going to owe a lot of people a lot of favors. Eating may or may not be an option afterward."
Bethany is currently in postproduction, and Bressack is prepping another two directorial efforts — Deadly Reunion and LimeLight. Here's the director and Green together:Windows 8 share of the desktop OS market grew slowly last month relative to a surge in new users in June.
Windows 8 gained 0.3 percent market share in July, bringing its share to 5.4 percent overall, according to figures from web analytics company Net Applications. Following the launch of the OS in October last year, Windows 8 market share has been edging up by less than one percent each month, but last month's growth rate is down from June, when its share increased 0.83 percent.
While Windows 8 has only been installed on just over one in 20 PCs and tablets according to the figures, some analysts believe adoption of the OS will grow following the release of Windows 8.1 this year.
The 8.1 release will address criticisms about the usability of Windows 8 new tile-based interface, which some users of older Windows systems found confusing. The update will bring back the Start Button and make other UI tweaks, as well as introducing the ability to boot to the desktop and Internet Explorer 11.
Microsoft's Surface tablet, its flagship Windows 8 device, generated $853m between its launch and the end of June, less than the $900m writedown Microsoft took due to a Surface RT "inventory adjustment".
Windows 8 predecessor, Windows 7, shows little movement in desktop market share, continuing to hover around 45 percent, where it has been since the beginning of the year.
Share for the venerable but still popular Windows XP is also broadly static, at 37.19 percent, up 0.02 on last month. Vista's share continues to drop, down 0.38 points to 4.24 percent.
Windows is still found on 91.56 percent of desktops, according to the figures, while Linux OS had 1.25 percent share and Mac OS X 7.19 percent. The share for each OS is largely unchanged from June.
The Net Applications figures are based on data collected from 160 million unique website visitors.Greetings productive capsuleers!
Today we’re glad to share with you another update on what the EVE Online team is working on in the run up to EVE Online: Ascension.
We have a huge number of features coming your way in Ascension including clone states, command bursts, mining foreman gameplay, updated NPE, new procedurally generated NPCs and much more. It’s now time to focus on some of the larger (we’re talking hundreds of kilometers in diameter) features that will be arriving in New Eden this November.
:This blog has been updated with the most recent numbers after changes to the plan thanks to the feedback of the EVE community. The most recent update was on November 8th.:
This November the Upwell Consortium will be introducing a new set of Standup-brand service modules that will expand comprehensive research and manufacturing support to the entire line of Upwell structures. These service modules will be fully compatible with existing Citadel structures, and Upwell will simultaneously be releasing a new set of Engineering Complex structures which are bonused for optimal performance with these service modules.
Initially codenamed Industrial Arrays, Upwell’s new line of Engineering Complexes are the second stage in the overhaul of the structures system in EVE Online. Arriving in the same size classes as Citadels (medium, large and extra-large), these new platforms are similar in function to the already familiar (and widely used) citadels. While Citadels focus on peak defensive capability, Engineering Complexes are more specialized towards research and manufacturing.
At Your Service: Engineering Service Modules and Rigs
With the arrival of Ascension, a selection of new Standup service modules will be made available to expand the functionality of Upwell structure and allow player organizations to tailor their structure to their needs more closely. These new Engineering Service Modules will be available for any type of Upwell structure (currently Citadels and Engineering Complexes) unless specifically noted:
Standup Manufacturing Plant I – allows manufacturing of items and ships. This does not include capital and supercapital class ships which have their own dedicated service modules
Standup Capital Shipyard I – allows manufacturing of capital ships and can only be installed in large and XL citadels and Engineering Complexes in lowsec, nullsec and wormhole space
Standup Supercapital Shipyard I - allows manufacturing supercapital ships and is exclusive for the Sotiyo XL Engineering Complex. This service module also requires capsuleer alliance sovereignty and the “Supercapital Construction Facilities” Infrastructure Hub upgrade
Standup Research Lab I – allows research and copying of blueprints
Standup Invention Lab I – allows invention of Tech 2 and Tech 3 blueprints
We have full details of current draft of fittings and fuel usage for these service modules at the end of the blog.
These new Engineering Service Modules are fully functional out of the box, but to get the best performance from them you will want to combine them with Engineering Rigs for your structures. These new rigs are available for all Upwell structures and provide significant bonuses to specific forms of industrial activity, allowing corporations to customize their structures to meet their specific needs.
Engineering Rig Size Scaling
Like existing Upwell structure rigs, Engineering Rigs provide the same strength of bonuses at each size category. The primary benefit of upgrading to larger rigs (on larger structures) is that larger rigs are more generalized in their bonuses and smaller rigs are more specialized. This allows larger structures to gain bonuses to more types of industrial activity than their smaller brethren.
For example, a corporation can potentially rig their Medium Raitaru Engineering Complex to receive the maximum possible Material Efficiency (ME) bonuses for constructing small and medium T1 ships, and significant cost reduction to invention jobs by filling its three available rig slots with:
Standup M-Set Basic Small Ship Manufacturing Material Efficiency II
Standup M-Set Basic Medium Ship Manufacturing Material Efficiency II
Standup M-Set Invention Cost Optimization I
If that corporation upgraded to a X-Large Sotiyo Engineering Complex they would be able to get the exact same ME bonuses to production of small and medium T1 ships, while also receiving rig bonuses to a larger variety of industry jobs by installing:
Standup XL-Set Ship Manufacturing Efficiency II
Standup XL-Set Laboratory Optimization I
Standup XL-Set Reprocessing Monitor II
This rig setup provides the maximum ME and Time Efficiency (TE) bonuses to all ship manufacturing, as well as improving cost and duration for all research, copying and invention jobs and enabling maximum reprocessing yield all in the same giant structure.
Thanks to the greater generalization of larger rigs, there will be a total of 64 available M-Set Engineering Rigs, 34 L-Set Engineering rigs, and 8 XL-Set rigs to choose from (including both T1 and T2 variations).
If you’re itching to see all the granular details, we have a chart with the current draft of stats for all of these Engineering Rigs at the end of the blog.
Engineering Rig Security Status Scaling
Another area of similarity between the new Engineering Rigs and the existing Citadel Rigs is that the bonuses provided by these rigs changes depending on what type of space their structure is anchored within.
Each Engineering Rig has three sets of bonuses:
One base value for highsec space
One for lowsec space that has a 90% higher bonus than the base value
One for nullsec and wormhole space that has a 110% higher bonus than the base value
Tech 1 rigs that provide manufacturing material input benefits have the following bonuses: Highsec: 2%
Lowsec: 3.8%
Nullsec: 4.2% Tech 2 rigs that provide manufacturing material input have the following bonuses: Highsec: 2.4%
Lowsec: 4.56%
Nullsec: 5.04% Tech 1 rigs that provide manufacturing or science job speed benefits have the following bonuses: Highsec: 20%
Lowsec: 38%
Nullsec: 42% Tech 2 rigs that provide manufacturing or science job speed benefits have the following bonuses: Highsec: 24%
Lowsec: 45.6%
Nullsec: 50.4% Tech 1 rigs that provide science cost reduction benefits have the following bonuses: Highsec: 10%
Lowsec: 19%
Nullsec: 21% Tech 2 rigs that provide science cost reduction benefits have the following bonuses: Highsec: 12%
Lowsec: 22.8%
Nullsec: 25.2%
With the 1% bonus to job material requirements on Engineering Complexes and a T2 rig in nullsec space, the maximum material input bonus available from an Upwell structure after the Ascension expansion will be 5.99%.
With the 30% job speed bonus on the Sotiyo Engineering Complex and a T2 rig in nullsec space, the maximum job speed bonus available from Upwell structures in Ascension will be 65.28%.
And finally the maximum science job cost reduction bonus available from these structures will be 28.94%.
We have a chart with the current draft of stats and material compositions for all 106 Engineering Rigs at the end of the blog for all the granular details.
New Structures on the Block: Meet the Engineering Complexes
Although these Engineering Service Modules and rigs are perfectly functional when fit to existing Citadel structures, they will really shine when used on the newest line of Upwell structures: The Engineering Complexes.
Engineering Complexes have a lot in common with Citadels, and share much of the same core functionality. In a lot of ways, the relationship between Citadels and Engineering Complexes is much like the relationship between different classes of spaceships in New Eden. They share many of the same mechanics but differ in certain aspects like cost, module slots and bonuses.
Some of the key similarities between Engineering Complexes and Citadels are:
Both Engineering Complexes and Citadels are built and deployed in the same way, with the same deployment location restrictions (not allowed in certain newbie or trade hub systems, must be placed at least 1000 km from other Upwell structures). Both use the same 24-hour anchoring process
Both Engineering Complexes and Citadels use the same vulnerability, reinforcement and damage cap system for defense. The damage caps for each size of structure remain the same whether that structure is a Citadel or Engineering Complex
Both Engineering Complexes and Citadels use the same asset safety system |
another group of people that wields considerable influence is investors.
For the past eight years, the Tri-State Coalition for Responsible Investment (TRICRI) has been working on behalf of one of Tyson’s shareholders, the American Baptist Home Mission Society, engaging with Tyson to reduce the environmental footprint of its operations.
“Tyson shows strong concern for reduced water consumption,” Mary Beth Gallagher, TRICRI’s associate director, tells the Monitor in a phone interview, “but we believe risk needs to be reduced with relation to water pollution.”
Other companies in the firing line include Cargill and Perdue. A spokesman for the former, Mike Martin, tells the Monitor in an email exchange that Cargill is “continuously exploring technologies that may help us further reduce our environmental impact.” Julie DeYoung of Perdue says, also in an email, that any “discharges from our processing facilities are within their permitted and regulated limits and fully comply with all state and federal laws.”
One of Rumpler’s primary concerns is the vast quantity of manure produced by large-scale agriculture, which threatens to overload the local environment. But he concedes that Perdue is addressing the issue by making pellets from manure and shipping them elsewhere, potentially serving a need in areas that, rather than being overburdened by the nitrogen and phosphorous contained in the manure, are actually in need of extra fertilizer to boost productivity.
Leaving aside the numbers, the accusations, and the rebuttals, what opportunities are there to improve the health of waterways and coastal regions? Environment America highlights two kinds of entities that can have a significant impact: agribusiness, by modifying their methods, and regulators, both at the state and federal level.
For the former, proposals include limiting operations in areas already under environmental stress, moving away from factory farms toward free-range models, and removing excess manure from its area of production, as Perdue is already doing.
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As for governmental organizations, they could ban the “worst practices,” such as leaking waste piles and lagoons, better enforce environmental laws, and give local communities more power to approve or reject proposed industrial-scale agriculture facilities.
“It’s a tough road to hoe because corporate agribusiness has incredible political power,” says Rumpler. “The most important thing is to educate the public because that’s how we build political will.”BURLINGTON TWP. -- A young man jailed when he couldn't afford a fine for flicking a cigarette out his car window is suing the court, claiming it operates like a "modern-day debtor's prison."
According to his suit, Anthony Kneisser, 20 at the time, went to Burlington Township Municipal Court in 2014 to ask for a payment plan or community service because he couldn't pay the $239 fine.
But Judge Dennis P. McInerney, after giving him a chance to call family or friends for money, sentenced him to five days in jail.
Kneisser, of Jackson Township in Ocean County, originally filed suit against the judge, the court and the township in September 2015. The American Civil Liberties Union assigned lawyers to his case Wednesday.
"It was humiliating to be treated like a criminal just for being broke," Kneisser said in the press release from the ACLU "I couldn't believe I was being sentenced to jail for not being able to pay a ticket for littering."
The ACLU said that what happened to Kneisser is illegal because the practice of jailing someone for not being able to pay court fines or fees was deemed unconstitutional in 1983.
Kneisser's suit seeks unspecified damages for a civil rights violation, anguish and distress, and humiliation.
But what happened isn't unusual in Burlington Township Municipal Court, the suit alleges. Kneisser's attorney wrote that it is the court's policy to jail defendants if they can't pay their fine on the day of their first hearing.
Model sues stylist who nicked her neck
The court administrator, Rosa Henry, said Thursday afternoon that she could not comment on the case and Judge McInerney was unavailable.
In court documents, an attorney for the judge and township denied that it is the court's policy and said the judge was acting appropriately because Kneisser had refused to pay.
The $200 ticket Kneisser got for throwing the cigarette butt on the New Jersey Turnpike May 14, 2014 was equivalent to the amount of money he earned in a week, he said in the statement.
He was a student at the time, working part-time as a line cook for $9 an hour. Since he couldn't get the money together and his father refused to pay the fine, he went to his scheduled court hearing May 27, 2014 to ask for a payment plan or community service instead, according to the lawsuit.
The suit states that McInerney's opening remarks when the court session began show that it is the court's policy to jail people immediately if they cannot pay:
"If a fine is imposed in your case the fine is due today. If you're not prepared to pay the fine, you need to make a phone call, make whatever arrangements are necessary so you'll be in a position to pay your fine today. If you refuse to pay your fine, I will sentence you to the county jail."
Kneisser told the judge he was pleading guilty but was hoping for community service as he couldn't pay the $200 ticket or the $39 in court fees.
McInerney told him there was no way to avoid the fine. "Either you use an ashtray or quit smoking. Check out at the window," he said, according to the transcript included in the lawsuit.
He told the clerk at the window he couldn't pay, filled out an indigence questionnaire, and then went back before the judge.
He told McInerney he could pay starting in June. The judge told him to "go make a phone call" and Kneisser responded that there was no one who could lend him money.
"All right. I'll sentence you to five days in jail. Go with the officer," McInerney told him.
Court halts Burlington Island dredge plan
Kneisser's father paid the fine when he found out his son had been incarcerated, according to the ACLU statement.
The suit says that 1983 Supreme Court case made a distinction between those who are unable to pay and those who refuse to pay. The attorneys allege that McInerney did not try to determine why Kneisser couldn't pay or whether he would be able to pay in installments over a few weeks, and instead stated that Kneisser refused to pay.
"From the outset, Judge McInerney's motive was clear; the only thing the court was interested in that day was generating revenue," the suit alleges. "...it remains the policy of Judge Mcinerney and the Burlington Township Municipal Court to incarcerate municipal defendants who are willing but unable to pay mandatory fines."
Attorney David Serlin on behalf of the defendants denied that it was the court's policy. He argued in court filings that Kneisser was jailed rightfully because he "refused to follow court procedure."
Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccajeverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook.Regular readers remember I blogged that Megyn Kelly got her new haircut because of Trump’s influence. This article seems to confirm it.
You also know I predicted that Megyn Kelly would do an interview with Trump that would mark Trump’s third-act solution. That interview is scheduled for May 17.
It is worth noting that while you were watching Trump do his thing, Megyn Kelly came out of it stronger, with a higher profile, a better job, and a sure-fire ratings bonanza with the upcoming Trump interview. Kelly turned me into a fan along the way. Nicely done.
If you support Trump, this would be a good time to let go of any animosity you have toward Kelly. She is winning because she went full-Trump and turned publicity into something bigger. On May 17th Kelly will be a key player in deciding the fate of the country, if not the world.
Apparently Kelly can handle herself. And she can handle Trump too. If you thought Trump was being too hard on her, you might be a sexist.
—
Now let’s talk about Trump’s sky-high unfavorability rating that hovers around 70%. Trump haters use that figure as their last hope. No one can get elected with such high negatives, they say.
That is cognitive dissonance. And it is one of the cleanest examples you will ever see. I’ll tell you why.
Literally everything about Trump’s campaign has violated form. He has no government experience, he isn’t polite, he hasn’t mastered the policy details, he isn’t taking money from big donors, and on and on. Yet he is poised to take the Republican nomination.
So none of the old rules apply to Trump. He has approached the election as a persuader, not a traditional politician.
No traditional politician could overcome a 70% unfavorability rating at this stage of the election cycle. But Trump isn’t a traditional politician. He’s a persuader.
Keep in mind that Clinton’s unfavorability is also high, at around 56%. That’s a 14 point difference from Trump. Can a Master Persuader close a 14-point gap before November?
I would rate that task as “easy.”
No one else in politics could close that kind of gap. But Trump has special tools and a willingness to use them. This challenge is almost exactly what Trump does well – change minds.
Let me list a few ways Trump could win despite high unfavorables.
1. Trump could make Clinton’s unfavorable ratings worse, which will be easy once Trump concentrates on her in the general election.
2. Trump could improve his own favorability by being more “presidential” for a few months so he doesn’t look so crazy.
3. Trump can sell the “two Trumps” story (while simultaneously denying it) until you start recognizing his campaign behavior as strategy, not insanity. That sale is underway now.
4. Clinton’s health could be such an issue by November that she no longer looks like a viable option. That’s at least a 50% likelihood in my opinion. (Part of a hypnotist’s skill set involves detecting “tells” for health issues. Clinton looks deeply unhealthy to me.)
5. Trump could name a VP that makes Trump seem less scary. That seems like a near certainty.
6. Clinton’s server scandal could turn into an indictment. Or worse, it could appear as if the indictment is being delayed for political reasons. That plays into Trump’s “rigged system” narrative. He wins either way (in typical Trump fashion.)
7. Trump could win Sanders supporters (young people) by coming out in favor of legal weed and inexpensive or free college. Add some support for universal healthcare (better than Obamacare), some job promises, and you’re almost there.
8. Trump has already improved his haircut. The color is no longer orange and the cut is much better. Humans are visual creatures, and that old haircut probably accounted for about 10 points of his 70% unfavorable rating. The new look is probably already having a small effect.
9. Trump can move to the middle on his most aggressive policies. Expect to hear more about how the deported illegal immigrants can easily get back into the country via legal means. And remember my prediction that we will temporarily call U.S. Post Offices Mexican Embassies so the illegals can “deport” themselves just by going to the Post Office and filling out some forms. That is technical deportation (because an Embassy is foreign territory) but no one is worse off for it.
10. The Syrian refugee crisis could spawn more terror attacks in Europe, or more rape stories. That seems likely. A few days ago, Germany’s chancellor, Merkel, came out in favor of refugee “safe zones” in Syria. That was Trump’s idea months ago. Everyone scoffed. Watch as Trump’s “crazy talk” from months ago turns into policy before your eyes.
11. Trump can prove he’s not a racist. That’s easy. All he needs to do is hug a bunch of non-white folks on camera. Real racists don’t hug the ones they dislike. They just don’t.
12. Trump can push “love” over hate. As I predicted some time ago, he is already saying love, love, love. This persuasion will take lots of time and repetition to have an impact, but Trump has time, and he controls the rate of repetition.
13. As long as Cruz and Kasich are in the race, our minds allow us to imagine an alternative to Trump that is some sort of magical unicorn of goodness. Our brains are conflating all the non-Trump Republicans (including Romney and Ryan) into some sort of imaginary “other” that has qualities we like. Likewise, on the Democrat side, your brain is combining Clinton and Sanders as one conflated Democrat option. And Bernie brings some good qualities to that imaginary creature (such as the appearance of honesty).
Your brain has not yet compared Trump (alone) to Clinton (alone). You have only compared conflated concepts of a Clinton/Sanders creature to a Trump/Cruz/Kasich/Romney/Ryan creature. You think that isn’t happening in YOUR head, but it is. That’s how all of us are wired. We don’t compartmentalize as well as we think.
When the race gets down to a clean Trump versus Clinton contest, and people realize there are no other options, the comparison changes. Trump wins the matchup against “crooked Hillary” with ease, based on skill, not policies. You haven’t even imagined that contest yet. Your brain won’t let you.
Trump does NOT win against your imaginary unicorn candidate that is a conflation of good qualities from other people. But that unicorn won’t be running against him.
You’re already hearing the word “landslide” applied to the upcoming Republican primaries. By October you will hear that Trump is “running unopposed” for all practical purposes.
—
If you think my haircut predictions are spooky, you should see my book.SA group slams Nato attacks on Libya
Johannesburg - A group of "concerned Africans" has written an open letter criticising the Nato-led military attacks on Libya, saying Africa ran the risk of being re-colonised.
"Nato has violated international law... they had a regime change agenda," said one of the signatories, University of Johannesburg head of politics, Chris Landsberg.
"The re-colonisation of Africa is becoming a real threat," he told reporters in Johannesburg.
The letter was signed by more than 200 prominent Africans, including ANC national executive member Jesse Duarte, political analyst Willie Esterhuyse of the University of Stellenbosch, former intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils, lawyer Christine Qunta, former deputy foreign affairs minister Aziz Pahad, former minister in the presidency Essop Pahad, Sam Moyo of the African Institute for Agrarian Studies, former president Thabo Mbeki's spokesperson Mukoni Ratshitanga, and poet Wally Serote.
Peace in Libya
"It is very difficult for us to see any peace in Libya," said Serote, who also addressed the media.
"The problem has now been exacerbated... eventually the African Union [AU] will still have to come into play."
He said even if criticism were true that the AU was a weak organisation, then Africans needed to find a way to support the body.
Landsberg said it was up to the Libyan people - and not the United Nations Security Council - to decide if their leader, Muammar Gaddafi, who had been in power for 42 years, had overstayed his welcome.
The letter reads: "Contrary to the provisions of the UN Charter, the UN Security Council authorised and has permitted the destruction and anarchy which has descended on the Libyan people. At the end of it all, many Libyans will have died and have been maimed [and] much infrastructure will have been destroyed."
The Security Council had not produced evidence to prove that its authorisation of the use of force was an appropriate response to the situation in Libya.
"Thus they [Security Council] have empowered themselves openly to pursue the objective of'regime change' and therefore the use of force and all other means to overthrow the government of Libya, which objectives are completely at variance with the decisions of the UN Security Council," reads the letter, which was also supported by the Congress of SA Trade Unions, the SA Communist Party and the Media Review Network.
The Security Council also "repudiated the rule of international law" by ignoring the role of legitimate regional institutions in solving conflict.
Rogue states
Landsberg said Britain, France and United States "continue to act as a rogue states".
"A rogue is an errant state that does not live by rules... the tragedy is that they are not likely to be charged in the International Criminal Court."
Gaddafi's rule has been teetering on the brink of collapse after months of Nato airstrikes causing most of his forces to flee as rebel forces took control of the capital this weekend.
President Jacob Zuma said earlier this week that powerful nations had abused the UN resolution "to further interests other than to protect civilians and assist the Libyan people".
The future of Libya had to be determined by its people, Zuma said.
"Don't expect the AU to take up arms and fight," the president said on Tuesday.A townhouse project near downtown Campbell could soon hit a growth spurt if the city approves the developer’s request.
On March 28 the planning commission recommended the city council give Robson Homes’ Madison Townhomes the go-ahead to add six units to a project along Dillon Avenue and Sam Cava Lane.
In October 2014 the council granted approval to a 100-unit project at the site. In July 2015 the council voted to have the project done in two phases, and later that year, it approved an additional 18 units.
The project is on 5.14 acres right outside the downtown core near a light rail station. The additional six townhouses would be built on less than a quarter of an acre near where Sam Cava Lane turns into Gilman Avenue.
If the council approves the additional townhouses, the project would have a total of 96 townhouses and 28 apartments.
An unoccupied duplex now sits on the site, which is being used for construction staging.
“We welcome the opportunity to clean up the neighborhood by transforming this small blighted property to become part of our high-quality Madison community,” project manager Richard Yee told the commission. “We can complete our neighborhood presence on Sam Cava Lane, and we will increase the amount of landscaping and improve the neighborhood aesthetic.”
To accommodate the additional units, some parallel parking spaces will need to be turned perpendicular to allow for new driveways to connect with the rear of the proposed townhouses, according to the city staff report.
Adding the half-dozen units would result in a gain of 2,900 square feet of open space, according to the staff report.
The additional six units would match the rest of the units’ use of stucco, wood siding and brick on the exterior.
“I thought that this was a good project in terms of completing the site. There were a couple of little gaps in it,” said Commissioner Donald Young.
The city council is set to review this project on April 18.Facebook has permanently deleted a major pro-Donald Trump group as the social media platform faces political pressure to crack down on so-called “fake news” in its moderation practices.
The group “Donald J. Trump president of the United States” had 132,000 members when it was recently deleted. The group’s high-profile administrators have tried to find out the reasoning for the deletion, to no avail. The group was a constant source of excitement in the pro-Trump community, with people sharing articles, memes and videos supporting their president.
Tea party leader Lori Saxon, an administrator of the group, logged on to Facebook to find this crytpic message waiting for her:
Trending: REVEALED: Kamala Harris’ Father Admitted She Is Descended From Slave Owners
Saxon said the deletion is similar to other incidents in which she or her pages have been censored by Mark Zuckerberg’s platform.
“Gerry Emery had made me Admin of ‘Wake Up America’ too. I was blocked December 23-26 for calling the guys that harassed Ivanka on the plane S–m (Cu in the middle.) Joe Newby wrote articles about the flag incident. I’ve been blocked for 4 hours quite a few times since the big Deplorables & Libnorants & Deplorables” became active as groups, Saxon told Big League Politics.
“Facebook is not free speech unless you are a lib or killer,” Saxon added.
“They’ve been after that group,” fellow Admin Bob Lindamood told Big League Politics. “It was temporarily disabled 2 months ago, and then it’s already on the radar.”
Lindamood said that nothing on the group violated Community Standards, but the deletion could have been blamed on “silly videos,” and joke and hip hop-themed videos, posted to the pro-Trump page. Lindamood said that another group, “The Deplorables,” that has over 500,000 members, has been subjected to Facebook scrutiny.
“Anything with Tump, that’s game for them to look at with so-called fake news. I haven’t seen anything fake,” Lindamood said.
The group’s creator, Jesse Delcourt, who just returned from so-called “Facebook jail” with his own personal account, told BLP that “Facebook said it wasn’t following the rules…there was nothing foul,” though he noted some “spammers” on the page. “I support Trump. I like our president. It just sucks that Facebook deleted the whole group because it took me a long time to make it to 132,000 members. I really loved the group and my supporters.”
Delcourt said that he plans to form a new group “in the hope that Facebook doesn’t delete it, they keep on deleting my stuff.”
Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton recently urged social media platforms to “hurry up” and moderate the kind of content that she thinks helped Trump defeat her in the election.
“The other side was using content that was just flat-out false and delivering it in a very personalized way,” Clinton said at the California-based Code Conference. “If I put myself in the position of running a platform like Facebook, first of all, they’ve got to get back to trying to curate it more effectively,” she said. “Put me out of the equation, they’ve got to help prevent fake news from creating a new reality that does influence how people think of themselves, see the world, the decisions that they make.”
Facebook shareholders recently pressured Zuckeberg to cut down against “Fake News” while taking a jab at President Trump.
Arjuna Capital executive Natasha Lamb defined fake news as “content posed and disseminated with the intent to mislead, not the mainstream media which the [US] President refers to as fake news”. The supposed epidemic “needs to be managed systemically,” Lamb argued, saying that, “A lack of self regulation could incite government regulation.”
Zuckerberg vowed that Facebook has a “special focus on trying to reduce the prevalence of false news in the system.”
Zuckerberg is generating murmurs as a possible presidential candidate against Trump in 2020. Zuckerberg downplayed presidential speculation after his recent very public road trip across America, saying he was merely “doing it to get a broader perspective to make sure we’re best serving our community of almost 2 billion people at Facebook and doing the best work to promote equal opportunity at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.”
The Facebook founder’s Chan Zuckerberg Initiative recently hired Obama campaign veteran David Plouffe and George W. Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman.Heads up, folks!
Today, Visit Philadelphia debuted a brand-new television commercial — an over-the-top spot that honors a couple of the city’s best-known icons while showing off other reasons why Philadelphia is a popular place to visit and stay overnight.
Watch Philazillas
About The Spot
Philazillas are the larger-than-life legends that appear in the spot: Benjamin Franklin and a cheesesteak. In the new commercial, which you’ll see all over the web and T.V., a larger-than-life Benjamin Franklin and a just-as-big cheesesteak vie for the spotlight during an outrageous battle.
The tongue-in-cheek spot ends with the tagline: There’s more to a legendary city than its legends, which is a way of saying that while Philadelphia’s rich history and the iconic cheesesteak are deserving of their legendary status, they are just two awesome aspects of the city’s appeal as a tourist destination.
To help you learn more about all the great things Philadelphia has to offer, explore the city beyond its legends right here on uwishunu.com and on visitphilly.com.
MORE INFORed Bull's Christian Horner hits out at request to ask fans to fund Caterham return
Christian Horner claims he doesn't believe crowdfunding is the way forward for struggling Formula One teams after it was announced Caterham are looking for Christian Horner claims he doesn't believe crowdfunding is the way forward for struggling Formula One teams after it was announced Caterham are looking for
Red Bull chief Christian Horner has criticised the attempts of Caterham’s administrator to ask for fans to fund a return to the grid for the team at the Abu Dhabi GP.
Sky F1 revealed on Friday that Caterham, which entered administration two weeks ago, has established a crowdfunding scheme asking for fans and sponsors to pledge money in order for them to compete in the season finale in a fortnight’s time.
A target of £2.35 million has been set by the deadline of November 14, with fans able to get involved using the hashtag #RefuelCaterhamF1 and a website, which offers'rewards' ranging in value from baseball caps (£40) through a front wing (£2,500) to a three-day trip to the season's last race (£45,000). The minimum pledge is £10.
Caterham’s crowdfunding scheme was announced on the same day that their perennial rivals Marussia, who had also entered administration ahead of the U.S. GP, lost their own fight for survival with the Banbury outfit to be wound up amid a mountain of debt.
While administrator Finbarr O’Connell has hailed the ‘entrepreneurial’ merits of the scheme, Red Bull Team Principal Horner has argued that it's wrong for fans to have to foot the bill for an F1 team’s racing activities.
“I don’t agree with the fans having to fund a team,” he told Sky Sports News HQ. “The fans pay to be entertained by the teams, they shouldn’t be having to pay for a team.
“The concept of that is wrong and shouldn’t be allowed.”
While the launch of the ‘Refuel Caterham F1’ fund-raising scheme was met with widespread cynicism inside the Brazilian GP paddock on Friday, the idea has gained early traction with nearly £300,000 pledged – 12 per cent of the total target – within twelve hours of launch.
Caterham: In administration
The problems of F1’s revenue-sharing model have been sharply put into focus by the travails of Marussia and Caterham, but Horner says F1’s stakeholders should be having constructive talks behind closed doors.
“It is important that Formula 1 doesn’t do its dirty washing in public; it is important that the teams along with the commercial rights holder and the governing body sit down and go through what are the issues and what do we need to do to create a better environment going forward,” he added.Yuki Matsui is going to make his debut for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles during the team’s first home series of the season this week, and he’d pretty much have to toss a shutout to match the hype.
No one knows how he’ll do, and other than the novelty of it being his debut, it really doesn’t matter, but expectations for the 18-year-old lefty are already through the roof.
The Eagles would be wise to try and keep things in perspective and not give Matsui too much to deal with too soon.
That’s not always easy in Japan, where the ballad of the hotshot teenage rookie pitcher — especially one for whom a strong showing at the National High School Baseball Championship is still fresh in the minds of many — is highly romanticized.
Performing feats of greatness in the middle of a hot Kansai summer on Koshien Stadium’s venerated all-dirt infield has been the fast-track to stardom for decades, especially for pitchers.
In just the last several years or so, Masahiro Tanaka, Yuki Saito and Shintaro Fujinami went through the meat grinder and came out the other side earmarked for fame and fortune.
Some have been able to handle the pressure of living up to that standard, and some haven’t.
While Matsui never tasted ultimate victory in the tournament, he made his name on the back of a whirlwind performance during the 2012 edition.
He struck out 22 in Toko Gakuen’s opening game and followed that with 19 punch-outs in the second round. He eventually led his team into the quarterfinals and went down swinging, striking out 15 more in a losing effort.
This season, with Fujinami and two-way phenom Shohei Otani having come out the previous year, Matsui was the darling of the 2013 draft.
Five teams selected him with their first pick, and Eagles president Yozo Tachibana pulled the lucky ticket during the draft lottery.
Rakuten manager Senichi Hoshino got the hype train going that night, comparing Matsui’s mentality on the mound to that of Tanaka and Takahiro Norimoto, who was great for Rakuten last season and was named the 2013 Pacific League Rookie of the Year.
That Matsui’s arrival coincides with Tanaka’s departure to the major leagues only amplifies the pressure on him.
Even though Norimoto, who notched a complete-game victory on Opening Night, is the obvious candidate to try to fill Tanaka’s shoes, Matsui dominated the spring headlines.
Though not all of the hype around Matsui has been wishful thinking. The lefty had a great showing during the spring, allowing two runs and striking out 16 in 16 innings, but the games count from here on out.
He isn’t Tanaka, and the Eagles would do well to not treat him like Tanaka.
The Eagles had a bad habit of sending Tanaka to the mound for photo-op outings a handful of times last season.
With Matsui, they should watch his pitch counts and game situations and try and alleviate as much of the pressure on him as possible.
Rakuten could actually take a page out of the New York Yankees’ playbook.
The Yankees gave Tanaka a seven-year, $155 million contract and almost from the time the deal became official, New York GM Brian Cashman launched a quasi-public relations campaign aimed at playing down expectations, even telling the New York Daily News’ Anthony McCarron the team looked at Tanaka as a “solid, potential No. 3 starter in the big leagues.”
No one gives that type of money to a guy with a No. 3 ceiling. Cashman just wanted to lessen some of the pressure Tanaka would feel in his first year in the majors.
Similarly, the Eagles probably expect Matsui to be great one day, and taking it with him while keeping expectations tempered can help that become a reality.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force’s acquisition chief said on Friday he expects the Air Force to announce the winner of a hard-fought competition to build a new long-range strike bomber in one to two months.
Northrop Grumman Corp, maker of the B-2 bomber, is competing against a team of Boeing Co and Lockheed Martin Corp to build 80 to 100 new LRS-B aircraft for the Air Force at a fixed price of no more than $550 million each.
William LaPlante, speaking to reporters after a speech hosted by the Air Force Association, gave no details but said the source selection for the new bomber was going well.
He said his focus was ensuring the decision was carefully thought through and justified, rather than meeting a deadline to announce the decision.
“It’s only done when it’s really done,” LaPlante said. “What I care about and everybody cares about, is that it’s done right.”
LaPlante said the Air Force planned a modular approach to the new bomber that would allow future competitions for open upgrades and operations and maintenance of the new planes.
He said the Air Force had sought to be transparent with industry about its requirements for the plane, although the overall competition is classified.
Asked about concerns that the contract award could have a negative effect on the losing team, LaPlante said the Air Force always consider broad industrial base issues in making contract awards. It factors in foreign military sales prospects, existing work on classified and unclassified programs and which anticipated contract awards were on the horizon.
“It’s a much bigger issue than any one program,” LaPlante said. “All we can do is make sure that we don’t inadvertently, by something we control, all of a sudden push someone completely out of the market.”
LaPlante said he was not overly concerned about congressional moves to dock $460 million in funding for the new bomber program in fiscal 2016 due to a delay in the contract announcement from earlier this spring, when it was initially expected.More Mercs Means More Money in Your New Look at
DEADPOOL AND THE MERCS FOR MONEY #1!
New York, NY—June 24th, 2016 — The fans have spoken and the Mercs for Money are back in business. This July, Wade Wilson and his lovable band are back in an all-new DEADPOOL AND THE MERCS FOR MONEY #1 – now an ongoing series! Coming in July, returning writer Cullen Bunn joins incoming artist Iban Coello for an all-out brawl-out as Deadpool, Solo, Slapstick, Foolkiller, Stingray, Terror and Masacre (and even a few surprises members!) hit the Marvel Universe in search of cold, hard cash! Deadpool may be one of the best mercenaries on the planet. He may even be a passable Avenger. Know what he isn’t? A good leader. Don’t believe us? Ask the Mercs for Money! But they’ll have to work as a team when a big job with an even bigger payday falls into their laps. The job? Rid the Marvel Universe of its radioactive super villains. Easier said than done – especially when only one of them has a healing factor. Sorry, everyone but Deadpool. If you’ve got a pile of cash you’re not overly fond of, and you can find them – maybe you can hire these miscreant mercenaries. Or you catch the exciting first issue of this ongoing series when DEADPOOL AND THE MERCS FOR MONEY #1 embarks on a new adventure this July!Lawrence Police are asking for the public’s help in finding Phillip Owen Morgan, 38, who was reported missing on June 11.
Morgan, a white man with short brown hair and brown eyes, was last seen on June 5 at his home in the Tamarind Apartment Complex, 1517 W. Ninth St., Lawrence Police said in a news release Thursday. He was described as having burn scars on both forearms and he often wears bandanas, baseball caps or stocking hats and sunglasses.
Morgan’s neighbor, Kyle Van Vliet, on Thursday said she would see him on his balcony nearly every day as she walked her dog.
“He was a real nice guy,” she said. “He had just moved in and I know he was looking forward to his parents visiting.”
Van Vliet said Morgan was friendly but largely kept to himself. Many apartment residents are aware of his disappearance, she said.
“He was always by himself,” she said. “I’m afraid he fell into bad hands.”
James Dunn, landlord for Tamarind Apartments, said Morgan only lived in the building for a few months before he went missing.
“Some of the tenants contacted me and said Mr. Morgan’s patio door is open and that it wasn’t like him,” he said.
Dunn said he contacted Morgan’s family and worked with police to check inside the apartment, but Morgan was nowhere to be found.
“I’ve had this happen enough times, but this is the first time there was family close enough to file a missing person’s report,” he said. “I don’t know what happened, but I wish we knew.”
Morgan is known to frequent city parks and regularly walk or ride buses, police said. He does not own a vehicle or bicycle.
Foul play is not suspected in Morgan’s disappearance, but there are serious concerns for his welfare, police said.
If anyone sees Morgan, police ask that they immediately call 911 and ask for an officer to respond.St. Louis Cardinals' starter Jake Westbrook tried to bust Kurt Suzuki inside, but the Washington Nationals' catcher crushed the 89 mph 0-1 fastball, sending it out to left and just over the Exxon sign on the wall to give the Nats a 1-0 lead in the fourth inning of Sunday afternoon's game. It was the second home run in 19 games as a National for Suzuki and the 3rd of 2012 for the 28-year-old former Oakland A's catcher.
When Suzuki arrived at the dugout and celebrated the home run Davey Johnson was the first to greet him. "Wack-O!" Johnson yelled. Go ahead, watch the video... Don't hear it clearly? Try the Adam LaRoche home run from Monday's game. Cubs' catcher Wellington Castillo set up inside, but right-hander Jeff Samardzija threw the Nats' first baseman a waist-high heater that never quite made it in. LaRoche crushed it, sending a towering home run to right and into the second deck to give Washington a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the second.
"Wack-O!" you hear a voice yell out again as LaRoche comes into the Nats' dugout. Davey Johnson talked about the changes Suzuki has made since the trade to D.C. in Sunday's post game, explaining that the catcher was in the process of getting back to hitting like the player Johnson had coached with the US Olympic qualifying team back in 2006. "I thought when [Suzuki] first got here," Johnson said, "he actually had a little bigger swing, he was kind of swinging up on the ball, and a little longer swing."
"[Suzuki] had a nice short, quick stroke," Johnson said, back when he had coached him the first time, "But when he came over he was a little long, but he's getting back to it."
Davey Johnson must have shown him "The Move" as the 69-year-old skipper refers to it.
"The Move" as Washington Post writer Thomas Boswell explained recently, is, "... at the core of a hitting theory that Johnson has gradually infused throughout the Washington Nationals organization."
Davey Johnson talked to reporters at length last week about the previous "regime's" fondness for having hitters concentrate "going the |
the law, was the portion that says communities receiving money from HUD must "affirmatively further" fair housing.
George Romney, Richard Nixon's housing secretary, used this law liberally. He withheld federal funds from predominantly white communities that perpetuated discriminatory housing practices. Nixon, however, quickly nixed this effort.
And thus began half a century of the federal government doing little in terms of actually "affirmatively furthering" fair housing.
In that period, HUD would ask communities to submit an "Analysis of Impediments" to fair housing, which is basically a form that explains why residents couldn’t find affordable housing and saying that they’re working on it. It was just moving around papers.
But this did little to actually affirmatively further fair housing. A ProPublica investigation found that since Romney’s time as housing chief, HUD has only withheld money two times from communities that violated the Fair Housing Act. That's a minuscule number, considering HUD has given money to 1,200 communities totaling $137 billion since 1974.
Why rolling back data is devastating for communities trying to plan for demographic shifts
The Obama administration solicited a large amount of feedback from communities receiving HUD funding, and eventually issued a new rule to give more teeth to the Fair Housing Act.
The rule asks localities to help them set their own fair housing goals — and then to help them reach these goals, HUD created data tools so they can better see these invisible factors that might discriminate against protected communities.
So in one sense, this tool takes away the feds’ ability to control local zoning. But it also takes the tool away from communities, which are trying to plan for an increasingly diverse population.
In fact, in the several years of conversations with communities receiving HUD money (summarized here), the feds found that local communities had a hard time seeing segregation patterns from a bird’s-eye view, so these data tools worked to makes these trends more visible.
These are the kinds of tools outside organizations would build to try to help housing advocates see various trends, including efforts to map “opportunity,” which shows which areas are in proximity to various resources. These data sets are often difficult for local communities to build themselves — and because of the economy of scale, it is much more efficient for HUD to build such a tool.
One could argue that you could build data-driven tools and avoid racial disparity data. But anyone who has dug into these data sets will find that the discriminatory history of this country is baked into our geography.Punjab elections 2017: AAP says 2500 NRIs have returned to help the party take charge of their home state
Highlights 2,500 NRIs, mostly from Canada, campaigning for AAP NRIs donate money, but also time, going door-to-door Those who can't be in Punjab are doing phonathons
The Aam Aadmi Party gets 20% of its funding from NRIs
Cashing in the four weeks of vacation - and two years of savings - Rajveer Singh Mann caught a flight from California to his hometown of Ludhiana and got straight to work. Normally, the 32-year-old's day job is working with a bio-tech firm. But his sabbatical finds him going door-to-door with NRIs like himself to build support for the Aam Aadmi Party or AAP in Punjab, which votes in less than a month."We see the fruits of good governance abroad and fail to believe that we can't have the same here in India," said Mr Mann to NDTV.In 2014, AAP surprised itself by winning four parliamentary seats, a windfall for the political rookie. It followed up by steadfastly deploying party boss and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to campaign across the state, asking that the traditional contenders, the Congress and the Akali-BJP combine (currently in power), be retired to give AAP a shot at forming the government.The party claims that 2,500 NRIs from Punjab have returned to pound the pavement for votes, determined to help AAP take charge of their home state. Like Harry Dhaliwal, who has surrendered a family vacation to Cuba to hold public meetings in Ludhiana. "37 years ago, I had to leave my country because the values I learned here and applied... the system never gave me returns... but when I applied the same values in Canada, from a farm labourer I ended up being a judge," he said."1 in every 5 Punjabis is overseas. A lack of opportunities, jobs and quality life drives people away. We do whatever little we can for our village, but that's not enough," says Karam Singh Sidhu, 45, who works in Calgary in Canada.AAP gets over 20 per cent of its funding from NRIs, and developed a "Chalo Punjab" campaign urging NRIs to contribute not just money but their time. Those who can't be on the ground are helping by making phone calls, cold-calling a list of voters furnished to them by the party. Last week, Mr Kejriwal said that his party was short of resources to fight the election. In response, on Wednesday, a plane full of NRIs from Canada will land in Chandigarh to give him the support he sought.Microsoft and CHOICE deployed Accent in underprivileged regions of Guatemala to teach local women Spanish, with fluent teachers to guide the inaugural 18-person class. This is the first step in launching programs using the tool in other communities around the world. According to Microsoft's post announcing Accent, new courses can be customized to teach different languages and skills without needing programming expertise.
Using technology to improve literacy isn't a goal limited to the developing world. Last June, XPRIZE launched a competition with a $7 million reward to find the best literacy tool that could run on mobile devices. It's not just handing low-literacy users smart devices loaded up with programs and calling it a day: XPRIZE's Adult Literacy challenge needed the winning solution to encourage persistence so users stick out the tougher parts of courses. Accent's kinaesthetic mechanics might be the approach that enables radically different groups to reach literacy...so long as they're able to get a hold of enough Microsoft Edge-equipped devices.Over the last two blogs I have provided a simple overview of the Parallella board and the software development environment. The next logical step is to create a simple application which is run on each core of the epiphany device in turn and performs a simple hello world type application.
Achieving this will ensure we understand how to:
Use of the epiphany hardware abstraction layer to initialize, reset, open and load the target Epiphany device Use of basic commands within the epiphany hardware utility library Develop a build script to create the host & target ELF executables Develop a run script to execute the application on the host and target.
Assuming you have the eSDK correctly installed the first step it to create two directories within your chosen development directory mine I created under “/home/linaro/adams_parallella/chronicles_3” these directories should are called Debug and Src. Within the Src directory we will store the application source code for the host and target (epiphany). The Debug folder is where the build process will store the resultant ELF.
The application will use the shared DRAM memory to communicate between the host and target application. At a predefined memory location known to both applications the target application will write a string using the sprint function while the host application will look for, retrieve and print out that message.
The main file for this demonstration is going to be the host application this application will
Initialize the system – using the e_init() function Reset the system – using the e_reset_system() function Obtain the platform information – using the e_get_platform_info() this defines the core configuration, number of devices within the system and number of external memories. Allocate the location of the shared memory used for communication Address each core in turn and retrieve its printed string. To do this the host must: Define a single core work group using e_open() Reset the workgroup using e_reset_group() Load the s record into the working group using e_load(), when doing this it will also check for the success of the operation Wait for the target to finish execute its application Read the shared memory location using e_read() to obtain the message from the target Output the message Having finally completed addressing each core the host application will then close and tidy up the epiphany and allocated memory before exiting
By comparison the epiphany target application is much simpler, it just gets the core ID for the core it is currently running upon, formats this into a string and writes it into the shared memory location.
I have created a git hub repository which contains all of the code and scripts used to create the above example.
https://github.com/ATaylorCEngFIET/Parallella-Chronicles
Previous Installments
http://www.parallella.org/parallella-chronicles-part-two-2/
http://www.parallella.org/parallella-chronicles-part-one-2/You might not have realised it but when you woke up this morning you were more powerful than you were last Thursday – and you have a huge organisation of bureaucrats and metaphorical pen-pushers to thank for it.
Last Friday the European Union’s Consumer Rights Directive came into force in the Republic. While it might sound dull, it has given us the ability to put in their place dodgy retailers who have been employing all sorts of dirty tricks for years in order to part us from our cash.
The new directive gives us longer to change our minds after buying products online and it forces retailers to refund us money faster. Hidden charges have also had their day and those pre-ticked boxes which saw us inadvertently sign up to all manner of useless or overpriced things have also been outlawed.
Rules governing long-distance selling matter now more than ever. A report published earlier this month shows why. Research from UPC ranked Ireland among “the world’s most digitally advanced economies”. It said e-commerce in all its forms would be worth €21.1 billion by 2020, up from a projected €8.4 billion this year and five times higher than just two years ago.
We will spend €12.7 billion online by 2020, up from €5.9 billion this year. So we need protection and the European Union has stepped up to the plate – as it so frequently does.
Here are just some ways we are better off because of the European project.
1 Less than 10 years ago, making a four-minute call home while on a Paris trip would have cost you as much as €5, while someone in Malta was expected to shell out an astonishing €9.76 for a call of the same length. Receiving a four-minute call in France cost up to €3.97 and in Malta it would have set you back €7.96.
Mobile operators across the EU claimed they weren’t fleecing us. They insisted all the charges were fair and that there were much higher costs associated with providing roaming calls. The EU wasn’t buying it and revealed that consumers were paying up to five times more than the actual cost the operators charged each other to provide roaming services.
In 2005, roaming generated €8.5 billion in turnover for mobile operators, of which up to €5.7 billion was profit. In the summer of 2006, the European Commission published regulations aimed at ending such profiteering.
It has been chipping away at the charges ever since. Last April the European Parliament voted to end roaming fees entirely by 2016.
“This vote is the EU delivering for citizens,” said Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner for digital affairs. “This is what the EU is all about – getting rid of barriers to make life easier and less expensive. We should know what we are buying, we should not be ripped off, and we should have the opportunity to change our mind.”
2 Pricewatch has written in the past about an unfortunate German woman who downloaded an episode of Lost while on holidays in France and came home to a bill of €46,000 in roaming data charges. She could probably have made the programme for less.
But that was then. Now, thanks to the EU, such charges have been slashed. There has been a 1,500 per cent increase in data roaming across the EU since 2008. This is in part due to the introduction of price caps in 2008, which led to a 91 per cent drop in costs. In 2010, a €50 cap came into force, following which users would have to request to be allowed to spend more.
3 We have Europe to thank for clearer food labelling and it has been to the fore in mandating that food producers display the energy content and amount of fat, carbohydrates, sugars, protein and salt on packaging. It has also done much on food traceability and, while some lax laws still allow unscrupulous producers and retailers to imply that food comes from a local source when it actually comes from the other side of the world, the commission is working on it.
4How confident are you that any Irish politician or Government department would compel Michael O’Leary to do anything he didn’t want to do? Not very?
Well the EU brought him – and all airlines – to heel, after an Icelandic volcano grounded planes all over Europe in 2010. At the time, O’Leary insisted he’d not be covering the food and accommodation of stranded passengers. “Oh yes you will,” boomed the EU, waving regulation 261 under his nose. Under this, airlines must provide food, drinks and hotel accommodation, if appropriate, when passengers are stranded. And there are no time or monetary limits on the commitment. Within 48 hours airline passengers got their money.
5 It is not just in the air that travellers have been protected. Passengers on boats carrying more than 12 also enjoy more rights thanks to the EU. Recent rules on compensation for delays and cancellations, as well as assistance for disabled passengers, will cover all long-distance scheduled services (250km or more), whether national or cross-border.
The EU has also passed laws to make our beaches and rivers cleaner and our roads safer. Its legislation has seen the cost of air travel plummet, growth hormones and other harmful food additives banned from our food, and countries – such as this one – forced to remove bans on homosexuality. Equal pay legislation has been pushed at the highest level in the EU and employees have the right not to work more than a 48-hour week. And that’s just for starters.
Not bad for a bunch of bureaucrats in Brussels, all things considered.
THE NEW DIRECTIVE: WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU
The “cooling-off” period has been extended: you now have 14 days from the date you receive an item to withdraw from a contract and cancel an online order without having to give a reason.
Pre-ticked boxes are banned. You will have to explicitly opt in for additional services (such as insurance) where these are offered by a service provider.
Hidden charges are gone too: the total cost of any product or service must be disclosed before the order is placed.
Refunds will be faster: under the new rules traders are obliged to refund consumers within 14 days of them withdrawing from a contract – a big improvement on the previous 30-day limit.
You will have to be clearly advised as to the compatibility of digital purchases with hardware and software, and notified of any technical protection measures, such as limits on making copies. The cooling-off period will also apply to digital purchases, up until the moment the actual downloading process begins.
Traders will have to provide clear information on the cost of returning unwanted goods.
There will be a ban on surcharges on card fees.Sunlight Live team to cover GOP national security debate
The Republican Presidential candidates will meet this Tuesday in the nation’s capital to debate national security, just as they did in South Carolina just two weeks ago. Tuesday's debate will be hosted by CNN and sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute and the Sunlight Live team will cover it.
Over the course of October and November, Herman Cain, the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, saw a peak in his poll numbers. During the week of Oct. 21, Cain polled at 26 percent, but has since been slipping. The one-time poll leader is now at 19 percent. Meanwhile, though Cain’s campaign has raised nearly $5 million, which ranks in the middle of the pack, it pales in comparison to the resources of Perry and Romney.
In the most recent polls, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich replaced Cain as Romney’s most immediate challenger. Gingrich is polling at 20 percent, statistically even with Romney. However, Gingrich's war chest is much smaller than Romney's and the other leading candidates. Gingrich’s campaign has raised about $3 million, whereas Romney has raised more than $30 million.
Texas Governor Rick Perry enjoyed a quick surge in the polls after he first entered the race, but after repeated debate gaffes, his polling numbers have since dropped to 8 percent. However, he is still the second highest fundraiser to Romney; Perry’s campaign has raised almost $18 million.
Perry’s stance on immigration is a topic that could potentially be explored in CNN’s national security debate. Perry has bucked mainstream Republican thinking to pass a form of the DREAM Act in Texas. The legislation provides a legal path to citizenship for undocumented workers and in-state tuition for undocumented minors.
Meanwhile, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney continues to lead in both the polls and fundraising. He is currently polling at 21 percent and has raised more than $30 million.
In his third run for the presidency, Texas Rep. Ron Paul is polling at nearly 8 percent and has raised almost $13 million. Paul’s foreign policy is very much within Libertarian ideology, which contrasts in comparison to the other candidates. Paul initially supported military action in Afghanistan but now supports a quick American troop withdraw not only from Afghanistan but also around the world. Paul also promotes limiting aid to Israel, citing that their dependence on U.S. aid is weakening the country. Paul’s outspoken foreign policy has garnered him some dissent from the audience in previous debates.
Several candidates, who sharply criticized President Obama for intervening in Libya, are now criticizing Obama for their perceived lack of urgency in dealing with President Bashar al-Assad in Syra. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, for example, stated that Iran was plotting with Syria to launch a rocket attack on Israel. She has since pushed for Assad’s ouster. However, Bachmann’s poll numbers remain low at 5 percent, with her campaign having rasied about $8 million.
The candidate with the most significant foreign policy experience, former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, who served as Ambassador to China under the Obama Administration, is still only polling at 2 percent and has raised only $4.5 million.
Joining Huntsman at the bottom of the pack is former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Santorum is polling at a little over one percent, the least of any candidate. Also lagging is Santorum’s fundraising arm, which has raised $1 million, the least amount of any candidate debating.
Join us at
www.sunlightfoundation.com/live
Tuesday night at 8:00 p.m. as we provide real-time fact checking, context and attempt to detangle the bindings between money and politics.A man has officially pleaded guilty after luring a gay man to woods for sex and then kicking him with steel-toed boots until he died.
Kelly Schneider, a 23-year-old from Boise, Idaho, has agreed to admitted to the federal hate crime.
This means he is hoping to be sentenced to 28 years in prison rather than spend the rest of his life behind bars.
His sentencing is set for 26 April.
In an earlier court date, Schneider confessed to luring 49-year-old victim Steven Nelson on Backpage, offering sex in exchange for payment, along with a shirtless photo of himself. Nelson responded, and the two men met the same night. Schneider took Nelson’s money, but the two did not engage in sex.
What Nelson did not know was Schneider planned a robbery and had two friends lying in wait in case Nelson resisted.
But as soon as they arrived, Schneider started to beat Nelson.
The victim volunteered his ATM number and begged for his life, saying: ‘Please don’t kill me. Take whatever you want.’
He then stripped Nelson and left him in the woods in 30-degree weather, driving away in Nelson’s car, the Idaho Statesman reported.
Barefoot, nude and critically injured, Nelson managed to make it to a house about a half-mile away to get help. Transported to hospital with broken ribs, a bleeding ear and internal injuries, he died of a cardiac arrest hours later.
Schneider faces up to life in prison on the state murder charge. Three other men – Jayson Woods, 28; Kevin R Tracy, 21; and Daniel Henkel, 23, are being charged with murder in connection with the death. They are awaiting trial.
Nelson managed a call center at Boise State University and in 2014 appeared in same-sex marriage documentary Little Blue Dots.The catch: you'll need a new or new-ish Windows 10 PC with a seventh-gen Intel Kaby Lake processor and 4K display to take advantage. So, your options are basically limited to the Lenovo Yoga 910 and a handful of gaming laptops and desktop machines at the moment. Assuming your hardware is good to go, you'll also need to upgrade to the $12 monthly Premium subscription with Ultra HD streaming. Users with older Home Theater PCs are still out of luck, unfortunately.
On the bright side, the new partnership with Netflix -- which includes getting Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life in 4K a few days before everyone else -- gives Redmond the opportunity to tout battery life improvements they've made to their very own Edge browser. According to Microsoft, you'll be able to squeeze in one more episode before your battery dies if you're streaming on Edge instead of Chrome. Of course, a Chromecast Ultra would also do the trick.Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu met with designated U.S. National Security adviser Rt. Gen. Mike Flynn on Wednesday at Trump Hotel in Washington.
"Met with General Flynn, who will assume the position of National Security Advisor, and other officials at a working breakfast in Washington D.C.," Çavuşoğlu tweeted.
The meeting marks a first direct reachout between the President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan administration and the incoming Donald Trump administration, other than a phone call between two leaders last November.
House Intelligence Committee Congressman Devin Nunes, a Republican heavyweight, also attended the breakfast.
An aide of the foreign minister didn't provide additional details on the meeting, but said that Çavuşoğlu was the only foreign leader at the breakfast and the topics on the U.S.-Turkish agenda were discussed by the attendees.
A invitation letter for the breakfast, obtained by Daily Sabah, said the breakfast would be a small event for about 50-60 guests. It also said White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus might join the meeting. It was not immediately clear whether he attended.
An official at the Trump Organization, and two other fundraisers were presented as co-hosts, according to the letter.
Çavuşoğlu previously told Turkish media that he would attend the incoming Trump administration's inauguration ceremony, which is due to be held on the West Front of the United States Capitol Building in Washington D.C. on Friday.
The official announcement comes as questions over whether the Trump administration will be able to normalize relations between Turkey and the U.S. are increasing.
Turkish officials have previously stated that Turkey can cooperate with the new U.S. administration since many of Turkey's views overlap with the incoming president.It’s not exactly headline material that porn addiction continues be epidemic in our country and around the globe. The pornography industry earns about 100 billion dollars annually worldwide, with some 13 billion of that coming from the United States. Ask any Catholic priest and he will tell you that porn addiction is one of the most frequently confessed sins these days. But what is shocking, and a topic that should be breaking news, is that despite the obvious pain pornography causes, Hollywood and the cultural power brokers continue to glamorize and normalize that which is anything but glamorous, or even remotely close to normal.
That’s why instead of red roses and hearts, lots of red stop signs and huge red flags should go up for all of us when the latest film, based on the “Fifty Shades of Grey” book series opens in theaters this weekend. It’s a major move in media manipulation, and no coincidence at all that “Fifty Shades Darker” is being released just in time for Valentine’s Day. The “Fifty Shades of Grey” books and films take porn abuse to an entire different level of darkness. The author of the so-called “mommy-porn” volumes behind the latest trashy film, along with the porn industry in general, are trying to convince us, once again, that pornography is somehow synonymous with love. In fact, it is quite the opposite. That’s why the National Center for Sexual Exploitation is promoting a worldwide boycott of “Fifty Shades Darker.” In a recent interview on my radio program, Dawn Hawkins, the center’s Senior Vice President and Executive Director, pointed out the darkness of deception in this new film, and is asking for people to use the hashtag #FiftyShadesIsAbuse in order to bring more attention to this deception:
“Fifty Shades Darker also sends the dangerous message that women can ‘fix’ their abuser by loving them the right way, and that domestic violence can be excused because of the abuser’s troubled past. These are prevalent cultural myths that contribute to some women choosing to stay in dangerous and unhealthy relationships while also excusing pornography addictions and the polluted thinking that springs up around it. It’s time for public opinion makers and individuals alike to recognize that #FiftyShadesIsAbuse.” – Dawn Hawkins, National Center for Sexual Exploitation
In addition to Dawn Hawkins’ group, Catholic therapist Dr. Peter Kleponis is at the top of the list when it comes to not only fighting porn in the culture, but in defeating porn addiction. Dr. Kleponis recently released a new Catholic self-help recovery program workbook, Integrity Starts Here! A Catholic Approach to Restoring Sexual Integrity that people can order online confidentially if they want to get help. This program can be used by Catholic therapists for their patients, and is the only Catholic program of this kind in the world. If you or a loved one need help in fighting porn addiction, practicing Internet accountability, or learning more about the negative impact of pornography in general, contact Dr. Kleponis.
For parents, the question is not if, but when porn will be exposed to their children. Covenant Eyes is helping many parents and families proactively fight against porn through internet filters for their children’s phone and computer. They are stopping it even before it can reach their kids. Even parents are using this software on their own devices.
So don’t just curse the darkness, light a candle for true love and dignity by joining the boycott of the film, use #FiftyShadesIsAbuse hashtag, and share what could very well be life-saving resources.
Note: This post contains affiliate links for which I may earn a small commission to help support my blog and help with my evangelization efforts.
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SaveHELL TO THE YES!!! This is not in your imagination.
I got it mostly from the MOMs who shoved cookies, desserts and cakes in my face, when they knew I was stuffed. “Come on have one more piece. I made it special, just for you” – exactly like you said. It took me a while but after 3 or 4 of these Moms, I realized they all wanted to eliminate the daughter’s competition.
The girlfriend would be like “you don’t need to go to the gym today…”
“uh, yeah I do… and SO DO YOU”.
They pack them in your car…. send you home with a bag of them… it’s ridiculous.
I wish they would just come out and say it:
“You’re too hot. I want to limit your options. Have another piece of cake.”.
(waves her hand like Obi Wan Kenobi attempting a cheap Jedi mind trick.)
Bitch.
Women should just be honest instead of trying these backhanded approaches and manipulations. Don’t try and fatten me up. Hit the treadmill yourself.The Trump administration is bad at holocausts (and not in a good way). On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the White House released a statement that didn’t mention Jews. Its press secretary once argued that Adolf Hitler’s use of chemical weapons was less outrageous than Bashar al-Assad’s, because at least the former never used poison gas “on his own people” (Hitler only used that stuff at his “Holocaust centers,” Sean Spicer explained).
The administration has been no more eloquent when broaching America’s homegrown mass atrocities. During a visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the president (reportedly) offered the following reflection on the institution of chattel slavery: “Boy, that is just not good.” As for the genocide of Native Americans, Trump has made one of its perpetrators his official presidential role model.
So, it isn’t terribly surprising that Trump refused to allot more than 15 minutes for his trip to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Museum, on Tuesday. Nor was it unexpected that his inscription in the museum’s “book of remembrance” would be less than moving.
But it’s still a bit odd that he signed said document as though it were the guest book at a bar mitzvah.
@realDonaldTrump @PresidentRuvi This is @realDonaldTrump's message in Yad Vashem's Book of Remembrance. "So amazing + will NEVER FORGET!"
(He forgot: "See you next summer") pic.twitter.com/XcGbR88PXV — Raoul Wootliff (@RaoulWootliff) May 23, 2017
As Times of Israel reporter Raoul Wootliff notes, Barack Obama struck a slightly different note during his trip to Yad Vashem.What would you do if you ran an advertising platform with the power to reach 1.4 billion people?
Would you take a public policy defeat in your stride, and accept that a noisy group of activists in one market may have scuppered your plans? Or would you use your immense power to persuade, influence, and reiterate your rather shaky argument?
If you’re Mark Zuckerberg, you choose the latter option.
For the past few days, Indian Facebook users have been seeing the following prompt when they log into Facebook, whether through a browser or via the app:
The prompt asks users to “show your support for free basic internet services in India,” a sentiment that is difficult to disagree with. Indeed, that must be why Facebook does not provide the option to disagree. The only possible responses are “Not now” and “Yes, I’m In”.
Hit yes, and Facebook redirects users to a page asking them to support services like Facebook’s internet.org, which, as Quartz and several others have written before, provides a subpar internet experience that restricts the poorest and least educated users in the world to a walled garden of Facebook-approved content. (A recent fracas in India over the service led to Facebook accepting other services into its garden.)
Facebook is hardly alone in using the power of its platform to persuade its users. Uber recently included a message in its app, for customers in New York City, lobbying against mayor Bill de Blasio and a bill that would have capped Uber’s growth in the city. Google once blacked out its logo on its homepage to protest controversial internet regulations proposed in the US Congress.
It’s unclear, though, what Facebook is referring to when it says India soon “will decide on the future of services like internet.org.” While a recent report from India’s Department of Telecommunication suggested that content providers should not be gatekeepers, there doesn’t appear to be any pending legislation on net neutrality in India. A Facebook spokesperson said that the “campaign’s goal is to create awareness of the value of connectivity”, adding that ”our goal is to help give [India’s internet users] a voice with their government in sharing their support for programs like Internet.org that help overcome barriers to connectivity in their country.”
The message Facebook would like Indian internet users to display, as seen on a Dubai-based Facebook executive’s page.
According to Nikhil Pahwa, who runs a tech and policy website called medianama.com and was among the people who started savetheinternet.in to protest internet.org, this is not the first campaign Facebook is running to shore up support for its free service. “They ran an SMS campaign a couple of months ago with the same misleading message, asking [people] to either give a missed call or respond” to the message, he says. “All this is a reaction to savetheinternet.in; we got a million [letters of support] so they want more.”BALTIMORE (AP) — When Baltimore’s streets erupted in the worst rioting in 40 years, Republican Gov. Larry Hogan pledged to help heal the city. Instead, critics say, some of his administration’s policy decisions over the last 16 months actually undercut local efforts to address the deep-seated poverty and violence that triggered the unrest in the first place.
The conflict highlights the differences between Democratic lawmakers who want expanded services for their core supporters in Maryland’s largest city and a GOP governor committed to more fiscal restraint.
Baltimore’s rioting was triggered by the April 2015 death of Freddie Gray, a black man who died of injuries in police custody.
Hogan’s response last year was swift: He called in the National Guard to help restore order and sent a strong message of support to local leaders.
But this month Hogan refused to release an $80 million funding package authorized by state lawmakers, including $1 million for the Safe Streets program. The violence intervention initiative hires former felons and ex-gang members to mediate potentially violent conflicts. Without the $1 million, Safe Streets, which operates five sites in Baltimore’s most dangerous and crime-ridden neighborhoods, could be forced to close.
Lawmakers who supported the funding say Hogan’s actions deviate sharply from his message.
“The deeds have not backed up the words,” said Sen. Bill Ferguson, a Democrat who represents Baltimore City. “When we talk about Baltimore’s future, reducing crime is absolutely one of our most important priorities, and for an evidence-based program like Safe Streets to suffer the consequences of politics is devastating.”
The administration said lawmakers’ all-or-nothing approach — which required the governor to approve or reject all the programs as a package — “trapped the funds in a budgetary political gimmick.”
“The Hogan administration has provided more than $20 million to Baltimore City to support violence prevention initiatives and remains committed to implementing programs and strategies that create real change in our communities,” Hogan spokeswoman Shareese Churchill said in a statement.
Hogan’s response to the unrest included a plan to raze whole blocks of vacant houses in East and West Baltimore to revitalize the city’s poorest neighborhoods. The legislature this year approved more than $92 million in new funds over five years to get the initiative going.
Hogan’s administration also notes that Baltimore gets more direct local aid than any other jurisdiction, as well as the highest K-12 funding per pupil. Baltimore is also slated to receive 69 percent of the state’s transportation grants in 2017, the administration adds.
Hogan’s 2014 election stunned the state, which had chosen just one other Republican governor in more than 40 years, and set the stage for a divided government.
Critics say Hogan’s policies favor his base in suburban and rural communities. After Hogan canceled a $2.9 billion light rail line project that would have connected largely African-American swaths of East and West Baltimore and instead funded highway projects in other areas, the ACLU and NAACP filed a federal complaint arguing it “fits a long pattern of discriminatory decisions impacting African-Americans in Baltimore.”
The Hogan administration said the Red Line rail plan was fatally flawed because a $1 billion tunnel would have been needed, and the governor has sought to deal with transit problems in other ways. On Friday he announced a $10 million federal grant to revamp the city’s bus system.
Baltimore City Council President Jack Young said he appreciates Hogan’s efforts to help the city, but is “concerned when any funds are being withheld from Baltimore.”
“In the aftermath of Freddie Gray, the governor was great about putting money into our youth education programs. I think the governor is concerned about how we’re spending money in Baltimore, but I’m encouraged that he’s listening,” Young said.
Initially the administration said it didn’t plan to find alternative funding for Safe Streets, as it has promised to do with about half of the programs in the $80 million package. On Tuesday, Doug Mayer, a Hogan spokesman, said the governor is “exploring different options,” but didn’t elaborate.
Since the unrest last spring, Baltimore has seen a spike in homicides. In 2015 the city saw 344 killings, compared to 211 the previous year. So far this year the city has recorded 188 murders.
Safe Streets workers mediated roughly 800 conflicts last year that likely would have turned violent or deadly, Baltimore Health Commissioner Leana Wen said.
Shortly after the funding loss announcement, Wen gathered some Safe Streets employees in a park outside the program’s newest site in West Baltimore, just blocks from where the worst of the rioting took place.
“You prevented gun violence, shootings, people from dying.” Wen said. “Families from being torn apart. You can’t put a dollar amount on that, and you can’t put a human value on that.”
Safe Streets has roughly 50 paid employees, Wen said, many of them former offenders trying to give back to their communities. The program also uses volunteers to connect with young people in high-risk neighborhoods.
Tears streamed down Walter Outlaw’s face. He works as a violence interrupter for Safe Streets, and told the group he wished a similar program had been in effect while he was growing up.
“When I was a kid I was looking for an adult to take me to the store and buy me a frozen cup, and it never happened,” he said. “Bullets are being dodged for real. Tomorrow I don’t know if it’s going to be my last day, and we’re talking about whether or not we’ve got funding? Our lives are on the line, and we’re worried about funding?”
___
Associated Press writer Brian Witte contributed to this report in Annapolis, Maryland.Police are warning Northwest Side residents after multiple child luring and sexual exploitation of child incidents were reported in May in the Albany Park and Irving Park neighborhoods. Charlie Wojciechowski reports.
Police are warning Northwest Side residents after multiple child luring and sexual exploitation of child incidents were reported in May in the Albany Park and Irving Park neighborhoods.
The first incident happened about 4 p.m. May 8 in the Albany Park neighborhood’s 4800 block of North Sacramento, according to a community alert from Chicago Police. A 14-year-old girl was walking home from school when a man approached her in a dark-colored vehicle. He asked the girl to look at something he was holding, and when she approached the vehicle, he had no pants and was touching himself inappropriately.
A 13-year-old girl was targeted in another incident at 5:12 p.m. May 22 in the same neighborhood. She |
source, is well into the development cycle with a debut possible as early as late 2013.[RFC wayland 00/18] Wayland network transparency :)
I saw a presentation once where someone said that even the simplest implementation of wayland network transparency that just pushed the existing protocol over tcp/ip would still be better than X. Let's test that theory. Hint - application startup time is shockingly fast due to wayland's excellent protocol design, but my poor damage tracking and lack of compression hurts. Damage tracking is especially bad for anything that doesn't use wl_surface.damage_buffer() - so weston-terminal may be rough but terminology is much snappier. To try it out (and open a gaping security hole because I've punted on kind of authentication), just add: wl_display_add_remote_socket(display, "foo"); to weston right before load_modules in main. Use at your own risk. That's a literal "foo" because I haven't bothered defining how that name string changes the port. I've written up a short blog post over here: http://blogs.s-osg.org/wow-wayland-over-wire/ (It lists other decisions I haven't bothered to make for this trial run.) For those of you that want to view PDF files over the network, EFL's etui viewer comes highly recommended. ;) Derek Foreman (17): os-compatability: Allow creation of 0 byte anonymous files os: make set_cloexec_or_close private instead of static cursor: use wl_os_set_cloexec_or_close instead of local copy os-compatability: Remove cursor's private os compat stuff entirely client: Check remaining connection buffer status after each queue_event() protocol: Add fd_static type protocol: Use new fd_static type for keymaps os: Add wl_os_resize_file() scanner: Add the concept of "pre hooks" os: Add wl_os_read() and wl_os_write() os: Add a wl_os_socket_reuseaddr connections: Add remote sockets shm: properly resize remote buffers connection: support sending the contents of fds as bulk data connection: Use bulk transfers for fd_static on remote connections protocol: Add a wl_buffer.transmit protocol: Add hooks for network transparency Giulio Camuffo (1): shm: add getters for the fd and offset Makefile.am | 5 +- cursor/os-compatibility.c | 148 ------------------------- cursor/os-compatibility.h | 34 ------ cursor/wayland-cursor.c | 15 +-- protocol/wayland.dtd | 1 + protocol/wayland.xml | 40 ++++--- src/connection.c | 150 +++++++++++++++++++++++++- src/network-client.c | 269 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ src/scanner.c | 117 ++++++++++++++++++-- src/wayland-client-core.h | 10 ++ src/wayland-client.c | 120 +++++++++++++++++---- src/wayland-os.c | 162 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++-- src/wayland-os.h | 19 ++++ src/wayland-private.h | 13 +++ src/wayland-server-core.h | 13 +++ src/wayland-server.c | 146 +++++++++++++++++++------ src/wayland-shm.c | 63 ++++++++++- 17 files changed, 1045 insertions(+), 280 deletions(-) delete mode 100644 cursor/os-compatibility.c delete mode 100644 cursor/os-compatibility.h create mode 100644 src/network-client.c -- 2.7.0‘Contra’ Easter egg: Even Canada’s bank is funny Bank of Canada sneaks some 1980s nostalgia into bill announcement
Canada’s national bank cracked a funny Monday, sneaking history’s most famous videogame cheat into a run-of-the-mill bill announcement.
Celebrating a new $10 bill marking Canada’s 150th birthday, Bank of Canada snuck in an Easter egg. Visitors to the page who punch in the unlimited lives code from Konami’s “Contra” videogame – up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A – are rewarded with a shower of virtual funny money.
Speaking with The Canadian Press on Monday, Bank of Canada spokeswoman Josianne Menard explained how the Regan-era reference landed on the central bank’s page.
Photo: Screen Grab Celebrating a new $10 bill marking Canada’s 150th birthday, Bank...
"The Bank of Canada's web team thought the Konami code was a fun way to celebrate Canada's 150th anniversary of Confederation," Menard said.Toronto Centre MP, Chrystia Freeland: Support Private Members Bill (C-626) to Reinstate the Long Form Census
Derek P. started this petition to Toronto Centre MP, Chrystia Freeland started this petition to
This bill is scheduled to be considered by Parliament on November 6th, 2014. It is hoped that there will be enough support to have it referred to committee rather than voted down.
We urge you to support the referral to committee.
The voluntary National Household Survey has proven to be an unreliable replacement, resulting in undependable data. This is negatively affecting public and private sector decision-makers who rely on solid data to make policy decisions. In particular, decisions on matters regarding housing, transportation and social policy have been impacted due to the lack of reliable data.
The Canadian Institute of Planners is on record as requesting that the long form census be brought back. This is an important issue to Canadian planners, and to the professional as a whole.
Bring back complete, meaningful data about Canada so everyone can benefit from having a solid, scientific foundation that can be used to review our history, provide education, form policy and plan for our future as a nation.It is now time to dump a tired old assumption about India—that it has an economy closed to trade both within its territory as well as with the rest of the world. The reality is refreshingly different.
The new Economic Survey written by the team of finance ministry economists headed by Arvind Subramanian has used a unique data set of invoices from the goods and services tax network to estimate the level of trade between states (tangentially, we welcome the innovative use of Big Data in the Economic Survey. Railway passenger data has also been used to estimate internal migration patterns. The Indian government needs to embrace such use of Big Data).
The estimates in the Economic Survey show that interstate trade flows, which include the movement of goods between firms and within firms, are around 54% of gross domestic product (GDP). The usual assumption in economic geography, that large countries with substantial domestic markets have robust internal trade, can explain why interstate trade is so active in India, and is perhaps an antidote to the usual belief that the outdated barriers to trade across states reduce the movement of goods and services across borders.
What is unclear is how much of this internal trade is natural and how much a result of a perverse indirect tax system.
It is much the same story with international trade. The old shibboleths need to be discarded. India once suffered under a system of autarky. Much has changed since then. The ratio of trade to GDP has shot up after the economic reforms of 1991 but especially in the first decade of the current century.
Few seem to notice that India has since 2011 traded more with the rest of the world than China does. The trade intensity of both these economies has come down sharply since world trade started contracting a few years ago, but India continues to maintain its lead over China on this front.
What are the implications of these two facts? Trade enriches countries because it extends the scope for efficient division of labour. It thus raises productivity. And trade barriers are an invitation to poverty. So the new evidence that India actually has a robust trading culture should be welcomed.
The task of the Narendra Modi government is to push ahead with more openness on both fronts. The Prime Minister said in November that he wants India to become the most open economy in the world. The data in the Economic Survey shows that we are no laggards—but the challenge now is to keep dismantling barriers to internal and external trade.
The global task is an important one given the rise of protectionist sentiment in many developed countries. Free trade has helped hundreds of millions of Indians and Chinese emerge from the shackles of poverty. There is immense strategic value for India to combine with countries such as China and Japan to keep the flag of free trade flying in the age of Donald Trump. India should not see international trade as a zero-sum game.
The case for even more internal trade is also a solid one. The makers of our Constitution were perhaps still worried about the risks of separatism in the aftermath of Partition when they put in clauses such as Article 302 that gave Parliament the power to impose restrictions on trade between states, even though there could not be discriminatory policies that were specifically targeted at any one state.
Companies have been forced to build suboptimal supply chains because of a fragmented internal market. The agricultural produce market committee laws restrict the ability of farmers to sell across state borders. Such restrictions are past their due date, and the new goods and services tax will hopefully iron out some of these problems.
India is now a middle-income country that has seen the benefits of trade over the past 25 years. Internal economic integration as well as fewer barriers to international trade should be key policy concerns in the years ahead.
India needs to reclaim its place as one of the great trading cultures of the world. A lot has already been done since 1991. The task now needs to be completed.
What should the government do to open up the Indian economy to benefit more from trade? Tell us at views@livemint.comFrom a Bacon on a bus to a Hockney on your hackney, the world's largest art show has been launched – not at an esteemed gallery, but at a shopping centre.
The pop art master Sir Peter Blake unveiled a giant digital version of his work The Meeting or Have a Nice Day, Mr Hockney at west London's Westfield centre, the first of 22,000 advertising sites across the UK that, from Monday and for the next fortnight, will feature 57 popular works of art.
Alongside him, Cornelia Parker, whose Cold Dark Matter was voted the 10th most popular work by online voters on the Art Everywhere website, rejoiced in being not only the only living artist in the top 10, but the only woman to boot.
Since Toulouse Lautrec in 19th century Paris was commissioned by the Moulin Rouge to design posters promoting the bohemian nightclub, advertising has turned to great art to promote products.
Now advertisers are repaying – to the tune of more than £3m – by donating printed poster sites and digital screens across the UK to celebrate art for art's sake.
The Art Everywhere project – organised by Richard Reed, co-founder of Innocent drinks, but the brainchild of his wife, Melinda – will see artworks on billboards, bus stops, major roads, tube, train and metro stations, shopping malls and office buildings, among other sites. Some 2,000 London buses and 1,000 black cabs will transport the artworks around London.
Smartphone users can download an app via Blippar enabling them to point their phones at a digital display and access information about each piece.
Blake, best known for co-creating the sleeve design for the Beatles' Sgt Pepper Lonely Hearts Club album, and who features twice in the top 57, modestly attributed the honour of launching the art show to "I'm local and I'm living".
Leaning on his walking stick beneath the giant 12-by-4.5-metre version of The Meeting, painted about 30 years ago, in which he depicts himself with a stick, he said: "The stick was a prop then, but it's real now."
The project was "a terrific idea", he said later. "Almost 60 years ago with the stirrings of pop art, and what became my branch of pop art, was the idea art should be available to everybody. All these years later, maybe this is the fruition of what I attempted to do."
Parker, also one of the few chosen artists who is alive, said: "It is just lovely to be up there, along with Bacon, and Freud – who is only very recently dead, of course.
"I'm thrilled to be in the top 10, and to be the only woman."
The public curated the exhibition by selecting their shortlist from a long list drawn up in consultation with the Tate and the Art Fund, and donated online to help pay for costs in what Reed referred to as "the biggest ever crowdsourced funding for a charity in the UK".
It was, he said, "a joyful project with no agenda other than to flood our streets with art and celebrate the creative talents and legacy of the UK".
The most generous donors were rewarded with a limited edition artwork by Bob and Roberta Smith. The public's top choice was The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse, inspired by the Alfred Tennyson poem.
Stephen Deuchar, director of the Art Fund, said the works ranged from the 16th century to modern day. "I've been involved in a few exhibitions in my time, but I have never launched one at a shopping centre before," he said.
Those supporting the project include Damien Hirst, who said: "Art is for everyone, and everyone who has access to it will benefit from it. This project is amazing and gives the public a voice and an opportunity to choose what they want to see on their streets."
All the artists chosen for the longlist were British, or, as in the case of German-born Hans Holbein the Younger (voted 19th for The Ambassadors), adopted British. British art was defined as by any artist who made the work in the UK and on UK public display.
The Top Ten chosen by the public
1. The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse
2. Ophelia by John Everett Millais
3. Head VI by Francis Bacon
4. Gassed by John Singer Sargent
5. Man's Head (Self Portrait) by Lucian Freud
6. The Fighting Temeraire by JMW Turner
7. Five Ships – Mount's Bay by Alfred Wallis
8. Going to the Match by LS Lowry
9. Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Battersea Bridge by James Whistler
10. Cold Dark Matter by Cornelia Parker.
• The full list of the 57 selected works can be found at arteverywhere.org.uk. Prints of the chosen works can be bought through the sites via Easyart, with profits going to the artists and Art Everywhere. A 24-page guide to Art Everywhere is available free with the Guardian on Saturday.
• This article was amended on 8 August 2013. The headline was changed to make clear that the project is taking place across the UK, and not only in London.It began as a student project and became a successfully-funded Kickstarter, a GDC “Best in Play” exhibitor, and the “Sound of the Year” winner at the 2015 Norwegian Game Awards. After three years of hard work, Through the Woods was publicly released last month to let players traverse its immersive and fantastical landscape full of the usual Norwegian things: fjords, lush forests, trolls—wait, trolls? Dan Wakefield, Antagonist studio’s CEO, sound designer, composer, writer, director and all around creative workhorse was kind enough to share with us the creative ideas behind the game and how they melded the authentic Nordic soundscapes with ominous Kittelsen-inspired folklore.
Please introduce yourself:
Dan Wakefield: Hi, I’m Dan. I’m the sound guy and writer at Antagonist, a small indie game studio based in Oslo.
Recently, Antagonist released Through the Woods. Could you tell us a little about this game?
DW: Through the Woods is a third-person horror adventure set in Norway. You play as a woman whose son is taken from her and dragged through a forest in which creatures and characters from Norse mythology and Norwegian folktales are real. The game is often equal parts scary and melancholy as you find out more about the mother’s past.
When did production for Through the Woods begin? Could you tell us a little more about Antagonist and your role in the team?
DW: Through the Woods actually began as a student project in 2013. Full production began in Spring 2014 when the company got a small investment. I became involved with the project through the creative director, who I worked with at a bar in Oslo. We had two programmers, two artists, a game designer, a creative director and a producer, and I was initially the composer working freelance. I also did a little bit of marketing, blogging and community management. I very soon became the sound designer as well after working on the initial teaser trailer. By January 2016, some of the team had moved on and we hired a few new members so the entire makeup of the team was different. By that point I was the CEO, writer, sound designer and composer, and doing all the social media stuff.
You are a man of many hats! It’s especially rare for the sound designer to be the writer, too. How did you approach the writing?
DW: I took on the role of writer about halfway into production. I ended up only keeping the outline of the game concept and some of the story beats. I had to write the in-game dialogue, the tape dialogues, and all the journals you find around the game world. I found that the only way I could do it and make sure the pacing was good and that all the twists and turns were revealed at the appropriate times was to write the game as a screenplay. The screenplay reads almost like a book and I’m actually making a text-based adventure game of Through the Woods for mobile platforms as well, as a lot of the writing is already there.
Though you live in Oslo now, you are originally from England – but have you always been drawn to Scandinavia?
DW: I can’t really claim I have any prior history with Norway or Scandinavia. I moved here because my partner is Norwegian. We met when I was 17 and she was 16 and it was very a novel thing for me to have a foreign friend. So Norway was on my radar years before I moved here, but I still can’t say I knew much about Norway before she and I moved in together many years later.
Now that I am here, however, it’s just really interesting. It’s so different from the UK in so many ways and I have been trying to soak up the culture here as much as I can. I went cross-country skiing for the first time in my life, aged 25 or something, which I think the Norwegians found very amusing. It’s not often you see someone of my age as clumsy as I am out there skiing. We go on trips to my girlfriend’s parents’ cabin in the mountains for hiking and skiing, and we go sailing and walking in the forest. Norwegians have a very deep connection to nature, which I have been trying hard to nurture in myself. Norwegians are so honest in many ways, too. I’ve seen people leave their cameras, iPads and computers in a crowded bar to go to the bathroom. No one expects their things to get taken. Norwegians seem to have a lack of cynicism I find very charming. It’s just different from England.
In Through the Woods, authenticity seems to have been a goal. In other interviews, you mentioned all the model textures were created from photographs of Sognsvann, Norway, and besides a few laborious bird calls, the sounds were original, too. How did you approach this massive amount of field recording and create such rich natural soundscapes?
DW: The soundscape was really fun and interesting to create. It’s become a bit of an obsession of mine over the past few months, zipping around in the game engine thinking about what could make this or that area feel more real. When I walk between two tall rocks or when I go near the edge of a cliff or around the side of a house, I want the sound to change, for the wind to die down slightly or to sound like it’s blowing against a rock face, and that’s what I’ve done.
It’s taken me almost three years to collect the sounds for Through the Woods. I started off with just two ambiences when we made our prototype, both recorded in my garden. They were plonked in the game in stereo, and there weren’t any 3D sounds like individual trees blowing, wind whistling, etc., just footsteps and these two layers of outdoor ambience. Now we have an ambient sounds manager that our programmer created for me so I can set a default ambience for a whole stage, which I make by blending three or four different ambiences together very quietly. Then I run around the stages sticking ambience zones on houses, caves, and such to create the ‘inside sounds’, so when you go into a hut, the sound will change and the wind will die down. Then there are maybe 1,000 sound sources in each stage that loop around endlessly: every tree has a sound, the huts creak, outcropping rocks have wind blowing past them, patches of grass blow around. There are 16 long tree loops, and about the same amount of wind loops, culled over the months from a much bigger collection of maybe 60 loops. They’re long and varied and the start points of the loops are randomized, which means even if there were three trees together that somehow all had the same loop, it would still sound like three different trees.
You spend almost the entire game outside, so I wanted as much audio as I could manage to be recorded outdoors. I don’t really know if this was a good decision on a technical or even on a common sense level, but I’m happy with the results on a personal level. The footsteps, for example, would normally be recorded in a studio. I recorded mine in a forest in the middle of the night over several days. I think I have 25 steps per foot for each surface and footstep type – the terrain types being forest ground, rocks, moss, grass, wood, snow, puddles and ankle-deep water through walking, running, sneaking, jumping and landing. So there are a lot of footsteps! I added jacket swish between every step and the tiny jangling of her coat zippers to about 40% of the steps to give the footsteps even more variation. It took a lot of editing and treatment to get them clean enough to use and still sound full and natural, a problem I would not have had if I had recorded them at my studio, but I’m glad I did it this way. At least I can say that as you walk along in the game that it was recorded deep in a Norwegian forest.
In managing such a huge amount of assets, what was your workflow like? Did you use any middleware?
DW: My workflow is completely erratic. Sometimes I float around in the game engine and spot, for example, a flag that doesn’t have a sound, and I will run around trying to find a flag to flap. Sometimes I will go outside, capture some audio, edit it and stick it in the game and then I’ll notice some other sound I want and will put my shoes back on and go outside to find it. Luckily I am an in-house sound designer so I’ve had the luxury of recording, scrapping and re-recording so many elements of the sound design. I’m never happy with my own work for long, so it’s nice I have had the time and freedom to redo things I’m not satisfied with.
My setup is pretty basic. I have a pair of Sennheiser MKH 8040’s which I use for almost everything outdoors. I love them because I think they’re very honest and have a pretty high frequency response (50kHz-ish), which has been useful for pitching stuff when I need to. I used the 8040 on almost all the monster vocalisatons as they are almost all pitched down. I did the vocals for a lot of the creatures myself using a pitch shifter, EQ and a granular filter. That was some of the sound design I found most fun to create.
I often use my Neumann U87 indoors. I have lots of creaky doors and such in my building, and I almost never fail to get something lovely with the U87. Same with things like bloody squelching and juicy eating sounds for the death scenes.
I use a little Zoom H6 for field recording. I have wanted to buy a Sound Devices field recorder for several years but the prices of these units in Norway make my eyes water. The H6 has many, many flaws and juggling it around with the easily moved volume knobs, has caused me to want to throw it into the woods a few times, but I’m very happy with the end results. I usually do a lot of surgical editing with RX to remove noise I don’t like and I’ve used the Waves restoration tools a lot. Alone the tracks can sometimes sound not quite right, but when they are all mixed and blended in layers in-game, I’m very happy with the sounds.
When it comes to the atmosphere, the game is described as “attempting to capture the forest as we saw it as children, with all the frightening and mysterious feelings of roaming the woods alone,” and you mention that in Norway you “can totally understand how you can peer into the darkness under a tree and create stories about little creatures looking back at you.” How did you capture and design these feelings of nostalgic mystery and folklore in the sound?
DW: I think a lot of the feeling of mystery and evoking the Norse feeling is actually helped by the music. I bought a handmade Finnish jouhikko, like a lyre with a horsehair bow, which produces a beautifully scratchy old Norse sound. I used it in the sound design as well because it sounds unique, but when you hear this thing, it just yells, ‘Norse!’ I have an old goatskin drum that I pitched down to make it sound large which certainly gives a very Nordic texture when played with the right rhythm. So these things help with communicating to the player they are in a place that is essentially an amazingly preserved Viking island.
But as far as trying to design the sound of Norwegian folklore, that’s much more difficult to answer. I did do a lot of research on Nordic and specifically Norwegian folk music, but it was extremely difficult for me to actually get to grips with what made the Norwegian folk music sound Norwegian. I haven’t been steeped in the music and culture long enough, I guess.
There are several times where creepy visuals are understated by the audio and even silence. The game doesn’t depend on jump scares and contains a lot of navigating through darkness, so the sound design encourages close listening, which makes the natural sounds even creepier. How did you achieve this effect and how did you approach horror sound design? What were some of your influences?
DW: My aim in this game has always been to get the environment to sound great first. I spent a lot of time making sure wherever you walk in the game you should hear what you would hear in real life. For me, once the environment sounded just right, the player would be immersed and that would give me some space to create tension. In an early stage, I had lots of scary sound design and weird noises: I scraped guitars with violin bows and pitched them way down, I made lots of scary musical elements and triggered them through the stages to keep players on their toes. But I started to feel like it was all fluff somehow. When you hear a big musical scrape or some creepy breathing that is not connected to some kind of creature or event, it all started to feel fake to me. Or, maybe cheap is a better word. I liked the atmosphere it created, but I knew it was just scary sounds for the sake of scary sounds. I decided that the random sounds in the game should be monsters in the distance, the felling of a tree splashing in the water nearby, a twig snapping, etc. This limited me a lot actually, and I regret the decision on and off. Having a bunch of random sounds is a very good way to keep tension up and make people nervous. I just wondered if I could actually create a similar feeling with the exact opposite of a lot of creepy sounds: just the sound of a scared person walking through the forest.
That design concept is quite challenging, though I think what you said in the past came through in the game – there is anxiety in feeling safe and knowing you’ll have to leave that safety. What were some other challenges you faced in designing the sound?
DW: The whole process has been a challenge for me, actually. I’m not a sound designer by education; I’m a musician. I fell into the role by chance and, even after three years, I still don’t think like a sound designer. I don’t carry my recorder or microphones with me anywhere if I’m not out looking for something to capture. Every sound I need, I think, ‘Where would I find something like that?’ and I go out and find it. I also used almost no imagination or even much creativity for most of the sound design in the game. When I needed the sound of a body falling on the ground, I set up two mics in the garden and threw myself on the ground hard a couple of times. When I needed creaking gates or latches, I’d walk down the road at night and find a gate that looked like the one in the game and record it. I think I thought doing it this way would create a form of authenticity, but I probably could have been much more creative with my sound sources.
After having worked on this game full-time since 2014, what is next for you?
DW: Ah! That question is a little tough to answer! A lot depends on how the game sells. Right now we’re focusing on making sure the game sells and supporting the game with bug fixing and patches. We’re even releasing physical copies in some countries in the upcoming weeks. As I mentioned before, I’m working on a Through the Woods text adventure, which is kind of like a choose-your-own-adventure that follows the same story as the game, with different routes through various areas and choices to make. We’d really like to get the game out on consoles as well, which is something we’re feeling out at the moment.
Thank you very much for speaking to us! If people want to learn more about Through the Woods or follow your personal work, where can they go?
DW: Thank you very much for having me! It’s been really fun! Here are a couple of ways to find out more about Through the Woods: You can visit our website, you can like us on Facebook, you can follow us on Twitter, and if you want to buy Through the Woods, you can buy it on Steam. You can follow me personally on Twitter @dantagonism.The sign outside the Wells Fargo & Co. bank in downtown Denver April 13, 2016. REUTERS/Rick Wilking
(Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Labor on Friday ordered Wells Fargo & Co to pay $575,000 and to rehire a whistleblower the bank had dismissed in September 2011 after the former employee raised concerns over the opening of customer accounts without their knowledge, the agency said in a statement.
The name of the whistleblower was not disclosed.
“We take seriously the concerns of current and former team members,” wrote Wells Fargo spokeswoman Richele Messick in an emailed statement to Reuters. “This decision is a preliminary order and to date there has been no hearing on the merits of this case. We disagree with the findings and will be requesting a full hearing of the matter.”
Wells Fargo was fined last year for opening up to 2.1 million customer accounts without their knowledge over several years to meet aggressive sales targets.
The revelation damaged the bank’s reputation, spurred investors to sell its shares for several weeks and led to the resignation of its chief executive last year.
Despite news reports and lawsuits claiming the bank had retaliated against whistleblowers, an investigative report by the bank’s board of directors released on April 10 said “based on a limited review completed to date,” outside law firm Shearman & Sterling had “not identified a pattern of retaliation” against employees in Wells Fargo’s branch banking unit who complained about sales pressure or practices.
In a different case, the Department of Labor in April ordered Wells Fargo to reinstate a whistleblower, though that former staffer’s concerns related to bank, mail and wire fraud -things that were not at issue in the sales practices scandal.
Wells Fargo still faces probes from federal, state and local government agencies including the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as a number of private lawsuits, according to its quarterly securities filing in May.Recently, I’ve felt my current podcast, Build and Analyze, getting stale and repetitive. We’ve had a great run, and I’ve greatly enjoyed doing it, but it has run its course. I’d rather end it now than slide into mediocrity — imagine if The Wire ended after season 4, Six Feet Under ended after season 3, or Arrested Development ended right before Michael met Rita.
Anyway, Dan Benjamin and I have agreed that the last episode of Build and Analyze will be December 17. Thank you to everyone who has listened, written, asked questions, and rated the show.
We’re in a golden age of geeky podcasting right now, especially thanks to 5by5 and the road that Dan paved with it, and there’s no shortage of other great developer-related podcasts. Some of my recent favorites, if you’re looking to satisfy your developer-podcast needs:
Core Intuition: Solid Mac and iOS developer coverage.
Developing Perspective: iOS developer topics, never longer than 15 minutes.
Debug: Great new developer-interview show, including low-level technical discussion.
Identical Cousins: Apple discussion and developer topics.
CMD+SPACE: High-level interviews, often with developers and other geeks.
In Beta: Android and open-source development.
Unprofessional: For when you need a break from tech podcasts, but you still like tech people.
After Build and Analyze ends, I’d like to take a few weeks off for the holidays, be a guest on other shows, and then experiment with new shows, topics, and formats to try to figure out what I want to do next in the world of podcasting.
Build and Analyze has been a blast and a pleasure. Thank you.Late this summer, Jacob Kubel, a conservation scientist with the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife’s Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program, was slogging through a Sudbury wetland, searching for a new species of leopard frog, when something unusual caught his eye.
“The frogs were quick and blended in with their surroundings,” Kubel said in an e-mail, “so we were basically chasing blurs and moving vegetation.”
Leopard frogs, which are named for their dark spots, are usually green, beige, or some combination of those colors, but one of the blurs Kubel saw through the stems of sedge and grass appeared to be bright blue.
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“I couldn’t be sure of the exact color,” said Kubel, “so I just thought to myself, ‘Oh, I have a brightly colored one here — he should be easier to chase down.’ ”
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Kubel said he didn’t think much of it at first: Individual animals in many wildlife species, after all, vary greatly from one another. But when he captured the 2-inch frog and looked at it up close, he realized it was something he — in fact, most everyone — had never seen before: a blue-colored leopard frog.
“It was truly blue, without even a hint of green,” said Kubel.
Kubel said green and bull frogs, two other species found in Massachusetts, sometimes tend to be blue or partly blue, but blue leopard frogs are extremely rare.
As in: one in 300,000 specimens. That’s Kubel’s best estimate, based on a 1960s study across the United States and Canada of the genus that includes leopard frogs. Conceding there may be cases he’s unaware of, Kubel knows of only three such recent discoveries: a blue leopard frog found in New Jersey in 2003, one in Delaware in 2007, and one in New York earlier this year.
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When he made his remarkable discovery, Kubel was looking for something exciting in and of itself: a new species not yet found in Massachusetts. It was just two years ago that a new type of leopard frog was found on New York City’s Staten Island. Now, scientists like Kubel are catching leopard frogs across nine states, extracting genetic material to determine whether they are members of the still unnamed species.
That extraction is a lot less painful to the frog than you might think: To obtain a tissue sample, said Kubel, researchers clip a small piece of a single toe. Because of the limb-regeneration capabilities of frogs and other amphibians, the toe clip is considered to cause minimal, if any, harm, he said. The frog is then released at the point of capture, after a few photos are taken.
It’s those photos of Kubel’s frog that capture what’s most striking about it: its beauty. Its blueness represents no scientific breakthrough, merely a gorgeous aberration.
When people think of “malformations” in wildlife, said Kubel, they tend to think of second heads, third eyes, or other “negativities.”
“This colorful little frog, which looked like it belonged in the tropics,’’ he said, “was a welcome deviation from that norm, especially in a place like New England.”
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The normal greenish or beige colors of leopardfrogs, he explained, have much to do with the yellow pigment ususally found in its skin cells.
‘This colorful little frog... looked like it belonged in the tropics.’
Those cells are generated in a structure called the neural crest during embryonic development. Kubel said that a blue frog is a natural phenomenon that occurs when the yellow pigment cells are absent, either because they fail to develop or they migrate from the neural crest to other parts of the frog’s body.
“Obviously, my work does not include an objective to find aberrantly colored frogs,” said Kubel, “but incidental discoveries like this — seeing things I’ve never observed before — help to keep my work interesting.”
Such eureka moments are few and far between as he navigates through mucky swamps, dense vegetation, and swarms of biting insects. But Kubel said his love of nature — and helping to counter the threats that native wildlife face — provide plenty of motivation for him in his work as a conservation scientist. He derives much personal satisfaction, he said, from advancing knowledge about wildlife populations and playing some role in their long-term protection.
With a master’s degree in wildlife and fisheries science from Penn State, Kubel has worked with a wide variety of animal species during his career, including mammals and birds, but most recently his focus has been on amphibians, he said.
“In the big picture,’’ said Kubel, “amphibian populations are important to research, monitor, and understand because they are critical components of the |
stories, etc. John Egbert, by definition, has less of that. Not none of course, but less. So it’s easy to forget about him in the stuff fandom mostly focuses on because who he is as a character is very heavily dependent on the role he plays in the story. Outside of his role as the Unstuck, he’s just a lovable goofball of a friendleader. And we love him for that, but he can easily be lost when surrounded by much ~heavier~ characters like Terezi, Vriska, Dave, Rose, etc.
So let’s take a moment to appreciate John Egbert as a strange, disconnected, surrealist entity that breaks the conventional laws of storytelling. And also because he’s adorable.The J.League is saddened to announce the death of former Japan assistant coach Dettmar Cramer in Germany on Thursday at the age of 90.
Cramer is revered in Japan for his contributions to the growth of the country’s footballing programme in the 1960s and 1970s.
The German coach had been one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the Japan Soccer League, the predecessor to the modern J.League.
He was accorded legendary status after leading Japan to a surprise win over Argentina at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
A moment of silence will be held at all MEIJI YASUDA J.League matches this weekend in honour of his passing.
“We are shocked at the sudden news of Mr. Cramer’s passing, J.League chairman Mitsuru Murai said.
“In June, shortly before the 50th anniversary party of the Japan Soccer League’s founding, I spoke with him over the phone.
“Even though he was recovering from medical treatment, he continued to talk about Japan until our conversation ended.
“Mr. Cramer expressed his delight at the J.League’s expansion throughout the country and the progress of football culture within Japan.
“It was he who proposed a national league, and the JSL formed the cornerstone of the J.League today.
“From the bottom of my heart, I am grateful to Mr. Cramer for sharing his love of the beautiful game with all of us. We humbly pray for his happiness in the next world.”
An European Cup-winning coach in 1975 and 1976, Cramer was also the first to be honoured with a lifetime-achievement award from the German Football Association.I’d bought this over a year ago and never really got it working and put it aside as I had got a nanoKEY and a nanoPAD (Black) and just used the nanoKEY.
Recently I found this again in the cupboard and thought that I really had to get to the bottom of why it did not go (I was using Ubuntu so blamed that to start with without following it up).
I plugged it into my Ubuntu machine (10.10) and used the MIDI monitor in Qmidiroute and only saw the X-Y events – this does pitch modulation, plus the system events for the scene button but not a single event from the 12 PADs.
I also plugged it into Windows and used a MIDI monitor and also had no MIDI events for the PADs. This really did seem to be a hardware problem and nothing to do with Ubuntu. I really should have done this test before the warranty expired but this meant I could open it up without any guilt.
Under the bottom of the case under the tiny rubber feet are 6 screws. Remove these. You will see a metal plate which is the support for the 12 PADs plus a copper shield, 1 large flexible ribbon cable for the PADs and underneath that 1 small flexible ribbon cable for the X-Y control. These plug into a PCB.
With it plugged into the USB and with the MIDI monitor program going I checked I had X-Y events and no PAD events. I then popped off the clip to the large cable that goes to the PADs and as I removed it then I got events. This suggested some alignment issue or short i.e. the chip is OK.
I unscrewed the PADs metal plate – I removed the copper shield cable (it is glued at the PAD plate end) and had a look. Nothing really to see. It has the 12 square sections that are the sensor elements on plastic film and a big rubber molding for the PAD buttons. No obvious damage.
I then did something weird but I wanted to see how the pads sensor elements were constructed as it looked just like the internals of a some kinds of PC keyboards (they have a similar looking plastic film and flexible PCB though the nanoPAD uses Force Sensing Resistors); I peeled back the top layer of plastic that was over the first two buttons – JUST the first two buttons and peeled it back so that I didn’t crease the plastic. It has a lot of glue holding it down at the start and I wondered if this could be some issue but it peeled back OK (bit of force needed) and exposed the first two PAD elements (i.e. the ones closest to the X-Y controller).
I then smoothed the plastic film back into place and plugged the PAD cable back into the PCB.
I tried it and it worked!
It is velocity sensitive and I correctly got events on all PADs with a very light touch yielding say a velocity value of 25 and a bash yielding a velocity of the maximum of 127. I hit them very hard with fingers and very light and they all seemed to be the same sensitivity.
I re-assembled; PAD metal frame screwed back, pushed back copper shield onto PAD metal frame, screwed case back on and added rubber feet into place.
Still worked. I was very pleased.
I could not see what the heck was actually really wrong in the end though I had cleared the fault. Maybe that glue was holding in moisture from manufacture? Who knows as the problem is now gone and it doesn’t seem to be coming back for my unit yet.
I’d looked around for fixes to the Korg nanoPAD and I saw a number of people with the PADs failing even after light (or in my case practically no) use. So I suspect a manufacturing defect and as far as I can see Korg seem happy to replace the units if you report this in warranty period so there are no real tears here except loss of your time.
It could be that the fix I described above i.e. peeling back that top layer of the plastic film on the start of the PAD sensor assembly works for you too and there is no harm in trying this if you have a broken unit out of warranty.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Oct. 10, 2014, 9:06 AM GMT / Updated Oct. 10, 2014, 4:22 PM GMT
Pakistani teen Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban for advocating girls' education, and Indian children's rights advocate Kailash Satyarthi were jointly awarded the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. Yousafzai, 17, is the youngest winner of the award. She was honored for "her heroic struggle," said Thorbjørn Jagland, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. "Despite her youth, Malala... has shown by example that children and young people can contribute to improving their own situation."
Satyarthi, 60, has been a lifelong campaigner against the exploitation of children for financial gain. The announcement of a joint Indian and Pakistani winner came as the two countries were involved in deadly clashes along a stretch of disputed border. "The Nobel Committee regards it as an important point for a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani, to join in a common struggle for education and against extremism," Jagland added.
Yousafazi, who received a standing ovation when she made a powerful address to the United Nations on her 16th birthday, express hope that the leaders of Pakistan and India would come together on education and asked for them to jointly attend the award presentation in December.
"I’m proud that I am the first Pakistani and I am honored that I am the first young woman or the first young person to be receive this award,” she said in a press conference from Britain, where she is still receiving treatment for her injuries. “I’m thankful to my father for not clipping my wings and for letting me to fly.”
She said she was in chemistry class when she learned of the award.
"I was totally sure that I hadn’t won it," she explained, saying that she was accepting the award on behalf of children everywhere. "When I found that I got the Nobel peace prize.. I decided that I would not leave my school I would continue to learn.”
In her hometown of Mingora, Ahmad Shah, principal of the Sarosh Academy, expressed deep pride over the win.
"I was across the street when she was shot. And I now I see this day. What a day," Shah said.
Still, some view the teen with suspicion in her conservative homeland, and Malala is unable to return there because of Taliban death threats. Mehar Bokhari, 30, one of Pakistan's leading female news anchors, said: "It's ironic, really. She is such an inspiration for the rest of the world, yet we fail to gain any inspiration from her as a people and a nation."
Before the announcement, the secretive Norwegian Nobel Committee revealed that it had received a record 278 nominations. Committee member Geir Lundestad had suggested the choice was more difficult this year, telling The Associated Press they had "seven meetings rather than five or six." The $1.1 million prize will be presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death in 1896.Memory leaks are an elusive category of bugs that often take quite a while to manifest. These bugs occur when we allocate memory for something and then lose track of it without ever freeing up the memory it’s using. Memory leaks contribute to overall instability, causing an application to get bogged down and eventually crash as it slowly consumes all of the available RAM.
While it’s hard to patch up every leaky allocation, there are a few techniques we can use to find the largest offenders and make sure they stop hogging memory that they don’t need. Recently, the Paragon team did just that in response to some memory leaks that would crash the game after a few hours. While Paragon matches rarely last long enough to eat up all of the system's memory, it’s difficult to predict how the match may play out. After all, nothing would be more frustrating than having your client crash right as your team engages in that pivotal team fight!
Following along with their experiences, here are some tips and tricks on how to track down the source of your memory leaks.
Finding Evidence of Leaks with MemReport
The first step to tracking down memory leaks is determining whether or not a leak is occurring. A simple way to do this is to take a snapshot of the current memory allocations at two different points in time, and comparing them to see what has changed. If no actions are taken in the game, we can expect similar memory usage regardless of the amount of time passed. However, if there is a steady rise in the amount of memory used as time passes, it may be time to start looking for a leak.
As an example, I created an Actor that allocated 1,000 integers per Tick, throwing away the reference immediately. I dropped my Actor in an empty scene and allowed it to run for ten minutes, and took a MemReport at the beginning and end of my session. A comparison of the two reports shows a noticeable increase in memory usage, despite the fact that the object count hasn’t changed at all.
More information about MemReport can be found in a previous blog post, Debugging and Optimizing Memory.
MemReport can help distinguish memory leaks from other types of leaks, such as object leaks. An object leak may be occurring if the number of objects present in the scene is consistently increasing. This typically indicates that spawned objects aren’t being cleaned up properly. For example, what if we create a projectile class that is destroyed when colliding with another object? Projectiles fired into the air will just travel skyward forever, holding on to valuable memory. The MemReport will show how many instances of each object exist in the world at that time, giving a clue as to which object is leaking so that we can investigate the spawning and despawning logic to see if there’s a problem.
Open allocations
Once we suspect some of our memory allocations are never being freed, we need to track down who is responsible for those allocations. To accomplish this, the Paragon team built a tool that can monitor any open memory allocations that haven’t yet been freed. The tool is still experimental and disabled by default, so you’ll need to make a quick change to MallocLeakDetection.h and recompile:
#define MALLOC_LEAKDETECTION 1
Once you’ve done that, make sure you have Visual Studio running and attached to your game instance. You can begin logging by typing “MallocLeak Start” in the console and stop by typing “MallocLeak Stop”. The tool will then dump all open allocations that were made during the logging period into Visual Studio’s output window. Optionally, you can type “MallocLeak Dump N” while the logger is running, where N is a size in bytes. This will immediately dump open allocations filtered to allocations of at least N bytes. It’s helpful to begin logging after the game has initialized, as many allocations may be made at initialization and not freed until the game is closed.
I modified my leaky Actor to make a large allocation 10 seconds after the game starts. I then ensured MallocLeak was running during the allocation, and used “MallocLeak Dump 1000000” to dump all open allocations larger than 1 megabyte. As expected, I found something suspicious in the results. Quite a bit of memory has been allocated by an Actor’s Tick function!
AllocSize: 12345678, Num: 1, FirstFrameEverAllocated: 1522 UE4Editor-Core.dll!FWindowsPlatformStackWalk::CaptureStackBackTrace() [d:\release-4.11\engine\source\runtime\core\private\windows\windowsplatformstackwalk.cpp:233] UE4Editor-Core.dll!FMallocLeakDetection::Malloc() [d:\release-4.11\engine\source\runtime\core\private\hal\mallocleakdetection.cpp:180] UE4Editor-Core.dll!FMallocLeakDetectionProxy::Malloc() [d:\release-4.11\engine\source\runtime\core\private\hal\mallocleakdetection.h:116] UE4Editor-MemoryLeak.dll UE4Editor-Engine.dll!AActor::TickActor() [d:\release-4.11\engine\source\runtime\engine\private\actor.cpp:807] UE4Editor-Engine.dll!FActorTickFunction::ExecuteTick() [d:\release-4.11\engine\source\runtime\engine\private\actor.cpp:111] UE4Editor-Engine.dll!FTickFunctionTask::DoTask() [d:\release-4.11\engine\source\runtime\engine\private\ticktaskmanager.cpp:262] UE4Editor-Engine.dll!TGraphTask<FTickFunctionTask>::ExecuteTask() [d:\release-4.11\engine\source\runtime\core\public\async\taskgraphinterfaces.h:999] UE4Editor-Core.dll!FNamedTaskThread::ProcessTasksNamedThread() [d:\release-4.11\engine\source\runtime\core\private\async\taskgraph.cpp:932] UE4Editor-Core.dll!FNamedTaskThread::ProcessTasksUntilQuit() [d:\release-4.11\engine\source\runtime\core\private\async\taskgraph.cpp:679] UE4Editor-Core.dll!FTaskGraphImplementation::WaitUntilTasksComplete() [d:\release-4.11\engine\source\runtime\core\private\async\taskgraph.cpp:1776] UE4Editor-Engine.dll!FTickTaskSequencer::ReleaseTickGroup() [d:\release-4.11\engine\source\runtime\engine\private\ticktaskmanager.cpp:530] UE4Editor-Engine.dll!FTickTaskManager::RunTickGroup() [d:\release-4.11\engine\source\runtime\engine\private\ticktaskmanager.cpp:1435] UE4Editor-Engine.dll!UWorld::RunTickGroup() [d:\release-4.11\engine\source\runtime\engine\private\leveltick.cpp:704] UE4Editor-Engine.dll!UWorld::Tick() [d:\release-4.11\engine\source\runtime\engine\private\leveltick.cpp:1197] UE4Editor-UnrealEd.dll!UEditorEngine::Tick() [d:\release-4.11\engine\source\editor\unrealed\private\editorengine.cpp:1346] UE4Editor-UnrealEd.dll!UUnrealEdEngine::Tick() [d:\release-4.11\engine\source\editor\unrealed\private\unrealedengine.cpp:368] UE4Editor.exe!FEngineLoop::Tick() [d:\release-4.11\engine\source\runtime\launch\private\launchengineloop.cpp:2772] UE4Editor.exe!GuardedMain() [d:\release-4.11\engine\source\runtime\launch\private\launch.cpp:148] UE4Editor.exe!WinMain() [d:\release-4.11\engine\source\runtime\launch\private\windows\launchwindows.cpp:189] UE4Editor.exe!__scrt_common_main_seh() [f:\dd\vctools\crt\vcstartup\src\startup\exe_common.inl:264] kernel32.dll ntdll.dll
As with most profiling techniques, it’s important to look at the results critically. Keep in mind that allocations made before you begin logging won’t show up in the result. Similarly, allocations freed after you stop logging will show up, even if they aren’t indicative of a leak. However, the MallocLeak tool is great for investigating where your memory is going and give some hints as to where to look for the offending code. Happy Hunting!303
So...I went a little rogue on this recipe. I did the peppers as instructed, but then I sautéed the beans, onions, cumin, actual garlic (3 cloves), a serrano pepper and got those flavors marrie...
The flavor was good but the stuffing came out a little dry. Next time I'll be adding a can of tomato soup and maybe some corn.
Christen52 39 9
So...I went a little rogue on this recipe. I did the peppers as instructed, but then I sautéed the beans, onions, cumin, actual garlic (3 cloves), a serrano pepper and got those flavors marrie... Read more
Amy4235 60 15
SOOO good!!! I did as another reviewer suggested and baked the green bell peppers (I used 8 peppers) for 10 minutes at 250 instead of boiling, as I didn't want them to lose their flavor. They we... Read more
Tara Stevenson 263 11
This was great! I added quorn grounds that I sauteed with the onion and some South African smoke seasoning blend because I have to pacify my husband with faux meat on vegetarian nights but other... Read more
Sriyani 181 19
Tasty and Easy! I made a few of substitutions, but stuck with the same basic recipe. 1) Instead of boiling, after cutting the peppers, I put them in the toaster oven on 'bake' at 250ish degree... Read more
Trixie T. 63 44
I made it as written the first time I made it. It was good, but as the other reviewers said, the peppers were a little bland and the rice mixture was too dry. So next time, instead of boiling th... Read more
leapinlambchop 389 37
My husband and I recently started eating almost exclusively vegetarian meals, and this was first on our list. It was very good. We love spicy, but the kids wouldn't eat it, because the Mexican c... Read more
AEMAZA 168 139
Excellent base recipe. Have made it as is, and great, but have also used it without the beans (try to reduce the protein due to kidney problems), and have also added corn, used homemade salsa i... Read more
Allison 24 2
I went way off script, but it came out absolutely amazing. Started by cutting the tops off 6 fresh red bell peppers. Cut out the guts and diced the red part of the tops. Set the bottoms aside. S... Read moreChildren are obsessed with technology, and Nature Valley wants us to be afraid. Very afraid.
That seems to be the message of this new ad for the granola bar company, which asks three generations of families: "When you were a kid, what did you do for fun?"
The elder two generations share memories of blueberry picking, sledding, fishing trips, and playing baseball as airy music plays in the background.
But then it's the younger generation's turn, and ominous music suggests these kids aren't exactly frolicking in the grass and soaking in the sunshine. The kids detail that they spend five hours a day texting, emailing, tweeting, browsing the computer, or playing video games as the parents cry or lament the death of the good old days.
"I forget I'm in a house, that I have parents, that I have a sister, that I have a dog. I just think I'm in the video game," one boy says. "I would die if I didn't have my tablet," a younger girl featured in the video says.
Scary stuff.
"Nature has always been a part of childhood," the ad reads. "Let's make sure it doesn't stop with us." Apparently all you need is granola to stop the impending death of childhood innocence and the rise of the child robots.On May 23, 1933, Congressman, Louis T. McFadden, brought formal charges against the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank system, The Comptroller of the Currency and the Secretary of United States Treasury for numerous criminal acts, including but not limited to, CONSPIRACY, FRAUD, UNLAWFUL CONVERSION, AND TREASON.
The petition for Articles of Impeachment was thereafter referred to the Judiciary Committee and has YET TO BE ACTED ON.
So, this ELECTRONIC BOOKLET should be reprinted, reposted, set up on web pages and circulated far and wide.
Congressman McFadden on the Federal Reserve Corporation Remarks in Congress, 1934 AN ASTOUNDING EXPOSURE
Congressman McFadden’s Speech On the Federal Reserve Corporation
Quotations from several speeches made on the Floor of the House of Representatives by the Honorable Louis T. McFadden of Pennsylvania. Mr. McFadden, due to his having served as Chairman of the Banking and Currency Committee for more than 10 years, was the best posted man on these matters in America and was in a position to speak with authority of the vast ramifications of this gigantic private credit monopoly. As Representative of a State which was among the first to declare its freedom from foreign money tyrants it is fitting that Pennsylvania, the cradle of liberty, be again given the credit for producing a son that was not afraid to hurl defiance in the face of the money-bund. Whereas Mr. McFadden was elected to the high office on both the Democratic and Republican tickets, there can be no accusation of partisanship lodged against him. Because these speeches are set out in full in the Congressional Record, they carry weight that no amount of condemnation on the part of private individuals could hope to carry.
The Federal Reserve-A Corrupt Institution
"Mr. Chairman, we have in this Country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks, hereinafter called the Fed. The Fed has cheated the Government of these United States and the people of the United States out of enough money to pay the Nation’s debt. The depredations and iniquities of the Fed has cost enough money to pay the National debt several times over.
"This evil institution has impoverished and ruined the people of these United States, has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted our Government. It has done this through the defects of the law under which it operates, through the maladministration of that law by the Fed and through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it.
"Some people who think that the Federal Reserve Banks United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lender. In that dark crew of financial pirates there are those who would cut a man’s throat to get a dollar out of his pocket; there are those who send money into states to buy votes to control our legislatures; there are those who maintain International propaganda for the purpose of deceiving us into granting of new concessions which will permit them to cover up their past misdeeds and set again in motion their gigantic train of crime.
"These twelve private credit monopolies were deceitfully and disloyally foisted upon this Country by the bankers who came here from Europe and repaid us our hospitality by undermining our American institutions. Those bankers took money out of this Country to finance Japan in a war against Russia. They created a reign of terror in Russia with our money in order to help that war along. They instigated the separate peace between Germany and Russia, and thus drove a wedge between the allies in World War. They financed Trotsky’s passage from New York to Russia so that he might assist in the destruction of the Russian Empire. They fomented and instigated the Russian Revolution, and placed a large fund of American dollars at Trotsky’s disposal in one of their branch banks in Sweden so that through him Russian homes might be thoroughly broken up and Russian children flung far and wide from their natural protectors. They have since begun breaking up of American homes and the dispersal of American children. "Mr. Chairman, there should be no partisanship in matters concerning banking and currency affairs in this Country, and I do not speak with any.
"In 1912 the National Monetary Association, under the chairmanship of the late Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, made a report and presented a vicious bill called the National Reserve Association bill. This bill is usually spoken of as the Aldrich bill. Senator Aldrich did not write the Aldrich bill. He was the tool, if not the accomplice, of the European bankers who for nearly twenty years had been scheming to set up a central bank in this Country and who in 1912 has spent and were continuing to spend vast sums of money to accomplish their purpose.
"We were opposed to the Aldrich plan for a central bank. The men who rule the Democratic Party then promised the people that if they were returned to power there would be no central bank established here while they held the reigns of government. Thirteen months later that promise was broken, and the Wilson administration, under the tutelage of those sinister Wall Street figures who stood behind Colonel House, established here in our free Country the worm-eaten monarchical institution of the "King’s Bank" to control us from the top downward, and from the cradle to the grave.
"The Federal Reserve Bank destroyed our old and characteristic way of doing business. It discriminated against our 1-name commercial paper, the finest in the world, and it set up the antiquated 2-name paper, which is the present curse of this Country and which wrecked every country which has ever given it scope; it fastened down upon the Country the very tyranny from which the framers of the Constitution sough to save us.We promised you the full files, and now, The Tab presents some of the strangest deanings Cambridge has ever seen: including hamsters, police dogs, a casino and plenty of vomit.
In part one, The Tab explored the basics of Cambridge discipline. But which colleges have the biggest problems with bad behaviour? Today, we publish files gained under the Freedom of Information Act, from three of the worst-offending colleges – Churchill, Sidney and Clare.
————————————————————————————————-
As a Guardian columnist, and expert on post-colonialism, Dr Priya Gopal was probably unused to sexual advances from naked students.
But after taking over as Dean of Churchill, that’s exactly what she got in 2007.
In her annual report to the College Council, Gopal wrote about an evening ‘involving several very drunk students and alumni after a Rugby dinner, some of whom were running naked around college, and one of whom propositioned me’.
The incident is one of 91 recorded in the Dean’s reports, obtained exclusively by The Tab and published in full online. Taking group events into account, well over 100 individuals were involved.
‘The report does not reflect the entirety of incidents that have taken place, or suggest that only this many incidents occurred during the last academic year’, she said.
They cover a period of four years – between 2005-2008 (read the file), and 2009-2010 (read the file) – and some of the strangest deanings Cambridge has ever seen: including hamsters, police dogs, a casino and plenty of vomit.
‘Hamster and rabbit found in student’s room while student himself was away’ Churchill, March 2007
Like many other colleges, alcohol is cited as a major factor. The Bulldogs, a banned drinking society, are mentioned on numerous occasions.
In March 2008, they were involved in the booking of a ‘fake sports dinner’ in the name of University Lacrosse Club.
‘The result was extreme drunken behaviour, damage and fouling of the room and adjacent toilets’, says the report. Two alumni involved were banned from college.
An initiation ceremony involved ‘persons running naked around college’.
‘Female student extremely inebriated; fouls corridor’ Churchill, January 2008
Gopal also blames Pav, the weekly Churchill ent.
“I think we might be slightly more likely to be badly behaved in college”, admitted Alan Cruickshank, Churchill JCR president.
He added this was: “simply because of the great facilities and ents on offer.
“The consistent weekly turnout at Pav I think is probably proof.
“There are, of course, issues which come with Pav which are exactly what you might expect with an event of that size and sort.
“Students from other colleges sometimes cause trouble at Pav, but certainly in one case this was a group of guys from a central college slagging off Pav in a room of around a hundred drunk Churchillians, which by all accounts is a pretty stupid idea.”
In Michaelmas 2009, Trinity Hall students were caught throwing a bicycle into the college pond, but ‘were too drunk to be able to retrieve it’.
A Trinity student was also caught ‘making off with [a] college projector’.
‘Loud room party after hours with casino for 22 players’ Churchill, February 2007
Cruickshank blames the more serious incidents in the reports on “specific repeat offenders”.
In February, The Tab exclusively reported two serious incidents involving the same Churchill student.
In the first, third-year Christian Ruhr was assaulted with a bottle at Churchill Spring Ball.
Gopal came down hard on the offender: he was banned from the bar, slapped with a 10pm curfew, required to pay damages and costs as well undergoing ‘mandatory counselling’.
The next week, the same student was caught on the roof of college, and was MAULED by a police dog.
This Easter, he was summoned by the Dean for the FOURTH time: ‘To celebrate the lifting of the curfew, the offender got drunk with friends and smashed in a door, injuring himself in the process’.
Gopal recommended ‘he either be rusticated for a year or sent down permanently.’
‘Graduates at a whisky tasting evening refused Porter’s instruction to clear the room at closing time. The organiser was found (drunk) urinating outside the Porter’s Lodge.’ Sidney, 15th March 2010
Sidney’s chronic problem with their bar is clear in their incident reports from 08/09 (read the file) and 09/10 (read the file). There were 112 cases over the two years, although not all of these resulted in deanings.
In one case a drunk student ‘vomited in room hand basin, left it running, which blocked and flooded the library below. Prompt action by Porter prevented any major damage to books, fixtures, fittings and electrics.’
In another, a guest of a student urinated in the bar, and there have also been fights involving Fitz, Caius, Girton and Magdalene.
But perhaps the best record, on 6th January this year, was a fire in Hobson Yard, ‘caused by a vagrant burning pallets below student accommodation’. He was later charged with arson.
And files released by Clare (Click HERE to read the file) show the college recorded 43 incidents over the last five years, including rowdy Oxford students in town on a swap, an ‘innapropriate message’ left for a bedder, and second years causing ‘damage’ to a waitress’ clothing.
What do you think about the files? Let us know below…Image & Form Games has released the launch trailer and the first PS Vita screenshots for its award-winning action strategy shooter SteamWorld Heist.
In SteamWorld Heist, you command a robot squad in a series of epic tactical shootouts. As the captain of a steam-driven pirate crew you will board, loot and shoot your way through enemy spaceships. Overcome the challenges of the vast frontier by upgrading your recruits with unique abilities, weapons – and even stylish hats.
SteamWorld Heist will be released for the PS Vita and PS4 in North America on June 7, 2016 and in Europe on June 8, 2016 digitally via the PlayStation Network featuring Cross-Buy support for $19.99 / €19.99 / £15.99. PlayStation gamers will get a 15% discount, available now for pre-orders in Europe and in the Americas at launch.
Check out the SteamWorld Heist PS Vita Screenshots:
Check out the SteamWorld Heist – HD Launch Trailer:U.S. President Barack Obama waves as he leaves an announcement on government efficiency at the White House in Washington December 21, 2009. REUTERS/Jim Young
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama may delay his year-end Hawaiian vacation to remain in Washington as a bill to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system makes its way through the U.S. Senate, the White House said on Tuesday.
“They are going to make a decision later this evening about when the president will leave,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said at a press briefing.
Obama had been expected to leave for Hawaii, the state where he grew up, on Wednesday.
Obama’s fellow Democrats in the Senate cleared the second of three 60-vote hurdles early on Tuesday to move the landmark legislation — Obama’s top domestic policy priority — one step closer to passage by Christmas.
Republicans, who have just 40 seats in the Senate, have vowed to use every tactic they can to delay passage of the measure, which has consumed Congress for months and inspired intense political brawling.Watermelon tourmaline
All Tourmalines are powerful crystals with dynamic energy or vibrations. They come in a myriad of colours, with prices varying almost as much as the choice of colour. Most are readily available in either shops or on the internet; with Black (Schrol) Tourmaline being the cheapest and Paraiba Tourmaline being extremely expensive. Blue (Indicolite) Tourmaline specimens can also be pricey for good quality specimens. By far the most popular are black, pink, blue and green Tourmaline.In mineralogical terms, Tourmaline is best described as a group of related but very complex aluminum borosilicate minerals. There are eleven distinct mineral species of Tourmaline, based on chemical composition: Buergerite, Chromdravite, Dravite, Elbaite, Feruvite, Foitite, Liddicoatite, Olenite, Povondraite, Schorl and Uvite. They get their vast array of colours from various metal ions like Iron, Manganese, Titanium and Copper.Some Tourmalines have been give common names like Rubilite for pink to red, Schrol for black, Indicolite for blue and Watermelon for those with a pink or red centre surrounded by green Tourmaline. Others are named after the person who first recorded them (‘Buergerite’ after Professor Buerger), whilst others still, are named after their prime source, as with ‘Paraiba’ Tourmaline, from Paraiba State in Brazil. Many are so similar to the naked eye, though, that the only way to accurately define which of the eleven groups they fit in to would be via lab analysis. Elbaite, for example, comes in a wide range of colours in itself, from green, blue, pink, yellow and so on. Those, therefore, without a common name or certification are usually referred to by their colour, such as Green Tourmaline. The name ‘Tourmaline’ comes from the Sinhalese (language spoken by the natives of Sri Lanka) wordwhich was originally used to refer to an assortment of coloured stones., Tourmaline crystals have been valued throughout the ages for their stunning beauty as much as for their healing qualities. When faceted the pink/red, blue and green varieties have often been mistaken for Rubies, Sapphires and Emeralds. In healing terms, Tourmaline crystals act fast in resolving problems; cutting straight to the heart of the issue with their clarity, energy and glorious colour. They can disperse negative energy, enhance psychic ability and increase self-confidence. Below is a brief description of the most popular Tourmalines used for healing purposes, plus they are the most readily available. We have also included a special entry for Paraiba, which in our opinion (and in fact that of many Tourmaline collectors worldwide), is the Holy Grail and most magical of all Tourmaline crystals!(common name:The black variety is said to provide protection from negativity in all forms; from people, spirit entities, electromagnetic smog and geopathic (environmental) stress. It absorbs and deflects this energy, so regular cleansing is essential. It is not advised that this be done via water or salt, but sitting a piece in a bowl or organic, brown rice for 24 hours (or until you feel it has been fully cleansed) should suffice. Always safely discard of the rice afterwards, NEVER cook and eat it or feed to your pets! Black Tourmaline is also said to sharpen ones mind; to speed up our reactions and mental processing. It resonates with the Base |
Bron on Heat's four trips to NBA Finals: 'We'll take 50 percent'
OFFSEASON OUTLOOKS: Up next for Big 3, Heat? | Spurs not done?
PHOTOS: SI's best shots from 2014 Finals | Top 100 in historyMONTREAL — The Montreal Alouettes announced on Tuesday that the club has signed veteran national offensive lineman Dominic Picard to a one-year deal.
Picard, a 6-foot-2, 310-pound centre who’s played 10 seasons in the CFL, became a free agent last month after being released by the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. The 33-year-old is a Ste. Foy, Que. native and will suit up for the Als for the first time in his career after splitting his time between Winnipeg, Toronto and Saskatchewan.
“We welcome Dominic home and to the Montreal Alouettes. His availability and passion to play in Montreal come at a time of need,” said Alouettes General Manager and Head Coach Jim Popp. “With the injury to Luc Brodeur-Jourdain, we obviously had some concern with depth at the centre position.
“Picard’s acquisition brings veteran leadership and experience to our talented offensive line.”
Before being released by the Riders after the 2014 season, Picard helped Saskatchewan win the Grey Cup in 2013, an historic victory on home turf for the Riders. He also played for the Toronto Argonauts and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, who selected him in the third round (23rd overall) of the 2006 CFL Canadian Draft.
Last season, Picard started 14 games at centre for Winnipeg. He’s played 151 career-games in the CFL and made 143 starts, while he was voted the Most Outstanding Offensive Lineman of the Argonauts in 2011 and of the Roughriders in 2012 and 2014.
In the collegiate ranks, Picard played for the Université Laval Rouge et Or, winning the Vanier Cup twice. He was the recipient of the J.P. Metras trophy in 2005, awarded to the top offensive lineman in the country. He was named a CIS All-Canadian in 2004 and 2005. He was also voted the Quebec conference rookie of the year in 2002.This article is about the ethnic group. For their language, see Beothuk language
Newfoundland, historic home of the Beothuk
The Beothuk ( or ; also spelled Beothuck)[1][2] were an indigenous people based on the island of Newfoundland.[3]
Beginning around AD 1500, the Beothuk culture formed. This appeared to be the most recent cultural manifestation of peoples who first migrated from Labrador to present-day Newfoundland around AD 1. The ancestors of this group had three earlier cultural phases, each lasting approximately 500 years.[4]
In 2007 DNA testing was conducted on material from the teeth of Demasduit and her husband Nonosabasut, two Beothuk individuals who had died in the 1820s. The results assigned them to Haplogroup X (mtDNA) and Haplogroup C (mtDNA), respectively, which are also found in current Mi'kmaq populations in Newfoundland. It also demonstrated they were solely of First Nation indigenous maternal ancestry, unlike some earlier studies that suggested European admixture.[5] However, a 2011 analysis showed that although the two Beothuk and living Mi'kmaq occur in the same haplogroups, SNP differences between Beothuk and Mi'kmaq individuals indicated that they were dissimilar within those groups, and that a "close relationship" was not supported.[6]
Description [ edit ]
The Beothuk lived throughout the island of Newfoundland, particularly in the Notre Dame and Bonavista Bay areas. Estimates vary as to the number of Beothuk at the time of contact with Europeans. Beothuk researcher Ingeborg Marshall has argued that a valid understanding of Beothuk history and culture is directly impacted by how and by whom historical records were created, pointing to the ethnocentric nature of European accounts which positioned native populations as inherently inferior.[7] Scholars of the 19th and early 20th century estimated about 2,000 individuals at the time of European contact in the 15th century.[citation needed] There is purportedly good evidence that there may have been no more than 500 to 700 people.[8] They lived in independent, self-sufficient, extended family groups of 30 to 55 people.[9]
Like many other hunter-gathering peoples, they appear to have had band leaders but probably not more formal "chiefs". They lived in conical dwellings known as mamateeks, which were fortified for the winter season. These were constructed by arranging poles in a circle, tying them at the top, and covering them with birch bark. The floors were dug with hollows used for sleeping. A fireplace was made at the center.
During spring, the Beothuk used red ochre to paint not only their bodies, but also their houses, canoes, weapons, household appliances and musical instruments. This practice led Europeans to refer to them as "Red Indians".[citation needed] The use of ochre had great cultural significance. The decorating was done during an annual multi-day spring celebration. It designated tribal identity; for example, decorating newborn children was a way to welcome them into the tribe. Forbidding a person to wear ochre was a form of punishment.
Their main sources of food were caribou, salmon, and seals, augmented by harvesting other animal and plant species. The Beothuk followed the seasonal migratory habits of their principal quarry. In the fall, they set up deer fences, sometimes 30–40 miles (48–64 km) long, used to drive migrating caribou toward waiting hunters armed with bows and arrows.[10]
The Beothuk are also known to have made a pudding out of tree sap[citation needed] and the dried yolk of the eggs of the great auk.[11] They preserved surplus food for use during winter, trapped various fur-bearing animals, and worked their skins for warm clothing. The fur side was worn next to the skin, to trap air against a person's body.
Beothuk canoes were made of caribou or seal skin, and the bow of the canoe was stiffened with spruce bark. Canoes resembled kayaks and were said to be fifteen feet (4.57 m) in length and two and a half feet (0.76 m) in width with enough room to carry children, dogs and property.[12]
The Beothuk followed elaborate burial practices. After wrapping the bodies in birch bark, they buried the dead in isolated locations. In one form, a shallow grave was covered with a rock pile. At other times they laid the body on a scaffold, or placed it in a burial box, with the knees folded. The survivors placed offerings at burial sites to accompany the dead, such as figurines, pendants, and replicas of tools.[10]
Tribal territory of Beothuk
About 1000 AD, Norse explorers encountered natives in northern Newfoundland, who may have been ancestors of the later Beothuk, or Dorset inhabitants of Labrador and Newfoundland. The Norse called them skrælingjar ("skraelings" or barbarians).[13] Beginning in 1497, with the arrival of the Italian John Cabot, sailing under the auspices of the English crown, waves of European explorers and settlers had more contacts.
Unlike some other native groups, the Beothuk tried to avoid contact with Europeans; they moved inland as European settlements grew. The Beothuk visited their former camps only to pick up metal objects. They would also collect any tools, shelters and building materials left by the European fishermen, who had dried and cured their catch, before taking it to Europe at the end of the season. Contact between Europeans and the Beothuk was usually negative for one side, with a few exceptions like John Guy's party in 1612. Settlers and the Beothuk competed for natural resources such as salmon, seals and birds. In the interior, fur trappers established traplines, disrupted the caribou hunts and pillaged Beothuk stores, camps and supplies. The Beothuk would steal traps to reuse the metals, and steal from the homes and shelters of Europeans and sometimes ambush them.[14] These encounters led to enmity and mutual violence. With superior arms technology, the settlers generally had the upper hand in hunting and warfare. (Unlike other indigenous peoples, the Beothuk appeared to have had no interest in adopting firearms.)[15]
Intermittently, Europeans attempted to improve relations with the Beothuk. Examples included expeditions by naval lieutenants George Cartwright in 1768 and David Buchan in 1811. Cartwright's expedition was commissioned by Governor Hugh Palliser; he found no Beothuk, but brought back important cultural information.
Governor John Duckworth commissioned Buchan's expedition. Although undertaken for information gathering, this expedition ended in violence. Buchan's party encountered several Beothuk near Red Indian Lake. After an initially friendly reception, Buchan left two of his men behind with the Beothuk. The next day, he found them murdered and mutilated. According to the Beothuk Shanawdithit's later account, the marines were killed, when one refused to give up his jacket, and both ran away.[14]
In 2010, a team of European researchers announced the discovery of a previously unknown mitochondrial DNA sequence in Iceland, which they further suggest may have New World origins. If the latter is true, one possible explanation for its appearance in modern Iceland, would be from the capture and removal of a Native American woman, possibly a Beothuk.[16]
Causes of starvation [ edit ]
The Beothuks attempted to avoid Europeans in Newfoundland by moving inland from their traditional settlements. First they attempted to move to different coastal areas of Newfoundland where the Europeans did not have fishing camps set up, but soon they were so overrun that they had to move into inland Newfoundland.[17] The Beothuks' main food sources had traditionally been caribou, fish and seals, but their forced migration inland deprived them of two of these. This led to the over-hunting of caribou to survive, which soon led to a decrease in the caribou population in Newfoundland. The Beothuks were put into a position where they were forced from their traditional land and lifestyle into ecosystems that could not support them and that led to undernourishment and eventually starvation.[18]
Extinction [ edit ]
Suzannah Anstey (née Manuel. 1832–1911). Daughter of Beothuk woman called 'Elizabeth' & husband Samuel Anstey (1832–1923). Twillingate
Mary Pond (née Anstey) 1858–1895. Granddaughter of Beothuk woman known as 'Elizabeth'. Twillingate
Population estimates of Beothuks remaining at the end of the first decade of the 19th century vary widely, from about 150 up to 3,000.[19] Information about the Beothuk was based on accounts by the woman Shanawdithit, who told about the people who "wintered on the Exploits River or at Red Indian Lake and resorted to the coast in Notre Dame Bay". References in records also noted some survivors on the Northern Peninsula in the early 19th century.[20]
During the colonial period, the Beothuk people also endured territorial pressure from Native groups: Mi'kmaq migrants from Cape Breton Island,[21] and Inuit from Labrador. "The Beothuk were unable to procure sufficient subsistence within the areas left to them."[5] They entered into a cycle of violence with some of the newcomers. Beothuk numbers dwindled rapidly due to a combination of factors, including:
loss of access to important food sources, from competition with Inuit and Mi'kmaq as well as European settlers;
infectious diseases to which they had no immunity, such as smallpox, introduced by European contact;
endemic tuberculosis (TB), which weakened tribal members; and
violent encounters with trappers, settlers and other natives.
By 1829, with the death of Shanawdithit, the people were officially declared extinct.[10]
Oral histories suggest that a few Beothuk survived for some years around the region of the Exploits River, Twillingate, Newfoundland; and Labrador; and formed unions with European colonists, Inuit and Mi'kmaq.[22] Some families from Twillingate claim partial descent from Beothuk people of the early 19th century.
In 1910 a 75-year-old Native woman named Santu Toney, who said she was the daughter of a Mi'kmaq mother and a Beothuk father, recorded a song in the Beothuk language for the American anthropologist Frank Speck. He was doing field studies in the area. She said her father had taught her the song.[23]
Since Santu Toney was born about 1835, this may be evidence that some Beothuk people survived beyond the death of Shanawdithit in 1829. Contemporary researchers have tried to transcribe the song, as well as improve the recording by current methods. Native groups have learned the song to use in celebrations of tradition.[24]
Genocide [ edit ]
Scholars disagree in their definition of genocide in relation to the Beothuk, and the parties have differing political agendas.[25] While some scholars believe that the Beothuk died out due to the elements noted above, another theory is that Europeans conducted a sustained campaign of genocide against them.[26]
If this campaign did occur, it was explicitly without official sanction no later than 1759, any such action thereafter being in violation of Governor John Byron's proclamation criminalizing violence against the Beothuk.[21] as well as the subsequent Proclamation issued by Governor John Holloway on July 30, 1807, which prohibited mistreatment of the Beothuk, and offered a reward for any information on such mistreatment.[27]
In spite of these proclamations, no person was ever punished for killing a Beothuk.[28] There is evidence that the Beothuk were hunted by Europeans and Settlers. The largest massacre of Beothuks took place near Hant's Harbour, Trinity Bay, where a group armed for hunting, managed to trap a large group of Beothuks, driving them out on a peninsula, where they murdered every man, woman and child. While there is no exact count of the number killed, it is estimated to be around 400.[28]
Notable Beothuk captives [ edit ]
Several Beothuk persons captured by the English were well documented.
Demasduit [ edit ]
Demasduit, 1819
Demasduit was a Beothuk woman who is thought to have been about 23 years old when she was captured by the British near Red Indian Lake in March 1819.
The governor of Newfoundland was seeking to encourage trade and end hostilities between the Beothuk and the British. But he approved an expedition, to be led by Captain David Buchan, to recover a boat and other fishing gear that had been stolen by the Beothuk. John Peyton Jr. led one of the groups. His father was John Peyton Sr., a salmon fisherman known for his hostility toward the small tribe. On a raid, Peyton's group killed Demasduit's husband Nonosbawsut, then ran her down in the snow. She pleaded for her life, baring her breasts to show she was a nursing mother. They took Demasduit to Twillingate, where Peyton Jr. earned a bounty on her. Her baby died. Peyton Jr. was later appointed Justice of the Peace at Twillingate, Newfoundland.
The British called Demasduit Mary March after the month when she was taken. Officials later took her to St. John's, Newfoundland. The colonial government hoped to make Demasduit comfortable while she was with the British, so that one day she might be a bridge between them and the Beothuk. Demasduit learned some English and taught the settlers about 200 words of the Beothuk language. In January 1820, Demasduit was released to rejoin her kin, but she died of tuberculosis while making the trip back to Notre Dame Bay.
Shanawdithit [ edit ]
Shanawdithit was Demasduit's niece and the last known full-blooded Beothuk. In April 1823 she was in her early twenties when she, her mother and sister sought food and help from a British trapper. They were starving. The three were taken to St. John's, where her mother and sister soon died of tuberculosis, which was endemic among the First Nations. Called Nancy April by the British, Shanawdithit lived for several years in the home of John Peyton, Jr., where she worked as a servant.
The explorer William Cormack had founded the Beothuk Institute in 1827 to foster friendly dealings with the Beothuk and support their culture. His expeditions found Beothuk artifacts but he also learned that the group was dying out. Learning of Shanawdithit, in the winter 1828–1829, Cormack brought her to his center so he could learn from her.[29] He drew funds from his institute to pay for her support.
Shanawdithit made ten drawings for Cormack, some of which showed parts of the island, and others illustrated Beothuk implements and dwellings, along with tribal notions and myths.[29] As she explained her drawings, she taught Cormack Beothuk vocabulary. She told him there were far fewer Beothuk than twenty years previously. To her knowledge, at the time she was taken, only a dozen Beothuk survived.[29] Despite medical care from the doctor William Carson, Shanawdithit died of tuberculosis in Botwood on June 6, 1829. At the time there was no known cure for the disease.
Archaeology [ edit ]
The Beothuk tribe of Newfoundland is extinct as a cultural group. It is represented in museum, historical and archaeological records.
The area around eastern Notre Dame Bay, on the northeast coast of Newfoundland, has been found to contain numerous archeological sites containing material from indigenous cultures. One of them is the Boyd's Cove site. Situated at the foot of a bay, it is protected by a maze of islands that shelter it from waves and winds. The site was found in 1981 during an archeological survey to locate Beothuk sites, in order to study their artifacts and gain more insight into Beothuk culture.
Existing historical records were too limited to answer a number of important questions about the people. Few record-keeping Europeans had been in contact with the Beothuk, and information about their lives has been more limited. By contrast, peoples such as the Huron or the Mi'kmaq interacted with the French missionaries, who studied and taught them, and had extensive trade with French, Dutch and English, all of whom made records of their encounters.
Numerous historical references document Beothuk presence in the region of Notre Dame Bay, especially in the last half of the 18th and the early part of the 19th century. Previous archaeological surveys and amateur finds indicated that it was likely that the Beothuk had lived in the area prior to European encounter. Eastern Notre Dame Bay has been known for its rich animal and fish life: seals, fish, and seabirds, and its hinterland supported large caribou herds.
Archaeologists found 16 Aboriginal sites, ranging in age from the Maritime Archaic Indian era (7000 BC – modern) through the Palaeo-Eskimo period, down to the Recent Indian (which includes the Beothuk) occupation. Two of the sites have been found to be associated with the historial Beothuk. Boyd's Cove, the larger of the two, is 3000 sq. m. and is located on top of a 6-m glacial moraine. The coarse sand, gravel and boulders were left behind by glaciers.
The artifacts have provided answers to an economic question: why the Beothuk refrained from the fur trade with Europeans. The interiors of four houses and their environs produced some 1,157 nails, the majority of which had been worked by the Beothuk. The site's occupants had manufactured some 67 projectile points (most made from nails and bones). They had also modified nails to use as what are believed to be scrapers to remove fat from animal hides, they straightened fish hooks and adapted them as awls, they fashioned lead into ornaments, and so on. In summary, the Boyd's Cove Beothuk took debris from an early modern European fishery and refashioned materials for their own purposes.Former Guantanamo detainee and War on Terror critic Moazzam Begg, who was arrested on dubious terror charges in February, is once again free. Earlier today, British authorities announced that charges against Begg had been dropped in full, and that he would shortly be released from Belmarsh Prison in London.
In a press statement regarding his release, West Midlands police said that:
New material has recently been disclosed to police and CPS, which has a significant impact on key pieces of evidence that underpinned the prosecution’s case….I understand this is going to raise many questions. However, explaining what this newly revealed information is would mean discussing other aspects of the case which would be unfair and inappropriate as they are no longer going to be tested in court.
Begg had been jailed for the last seven months on allegations that he had attended a terrorist training camp during a 2012 visit to Syria. He has maintained that his visits were part of an investigation into Britain government involvement in the torture and rendition of War on Terror detainees, an investigation which was being conducted under the aegis of his detainee advocacy organization CAGE UK. As reported previously by The Intercept, far from being clandestine, Begg’s trip to Syria had in fact been conducted with the full knowledge and permission of MI5. Despite this, over a year after he came home from Syria, he found himself suddenly detained on allegations that he had engaged in terrorist activities while in the country.
From the start, it was clear that Begg’s arrest by British authorities was motivated by the government’s dislike for his advocacy rather than any actual criminality. As we wrote back in February when reporting on Begg’s arrest:
Begg has long been a vituperative critic of the British government’s conduct during the War on Terror but throughout this time he has always been a public figure under constant media and government scrutiny. The notion that he’d be able to engage in terrorism surreptitiously on a trip sanctioned by MI5 — then hide this for over a year — seems dubious in the extreme.
In the weeks before his arrest, Begg wrote that he had suffered escalating harassment from British authorities, something which he claimed was due to his “investigations and assertions based on hard evidence that British governments, past and present, have been wilfully complicit in torture.” In a cryptic Facebook post he wrote shortly before his arrest he would say: “Sometimes knowing too much can be a curse.”
In a statement to The Intercept, a spokesperson for CAGE said of the decision today:
This the second time in his life in which Moazzam has been denied his freedom without trial by a Western government. There has never been any evidence to back up the allegations against him, yet he has repeatedly been denied his basic rights as a British citizen. We believe the decision to drop the charges against him today is based on a desire to avoid the embarrassment of a trial where the weakness of the case would have been publicly exposed. Nonetheless, we are elated at the news of his release and the restoration his freedom.
Coupled with the time he endured under detention at Bagram airfield and Guantanamo Bay, Begg has now spent over three and a half years of his life behind bars, all without being convicted of anything. No allegation against him has ever been tried in court, and until recently no attempt has ever been made to even charge him. Nonetheless, he has been subject to repeated detention, harassment, and allegedly physical abuse.
While the release of Begg today is undoubtedly a positive development, the facts of his detention and continued persecution remain troubling. As one of the most prominent critics of the conduct of the War on Terror – particularly government complicity in torture and other serious human rights abuses – Begg has become a prime target for official scrutiny. His arrest and detention corresponds to a broader pattern of suppression of dissent during wartime, especially among Muslim populations living in Western countries.
Photo: Bruno Vincent/Getty ImagesGREENBURGH, N.Y. –- If James Dolan says the Knicks will beat the Atlanta Hawks on Wednesday, Carmelo Anthony is going to try to make his owner happy.
Dolan guaranteed his Knicks will bounce back against the Hawks during a show he played with his band, JD and the Straight Shot, on Sunday night.
“I guess we got to win,” Anthony said when asked about Dolan’s guarantee on Monday. “If the owner said it, I guess we’ve got to make it happen. We want to win. You know. If he said he put the pressure on us to go out there and win the game.”
Head coach Mike Woodson said he likes the way his owner feels.
“As a coach, I think every time we suit it up and step on the floor, we are supposed to win,” Woodson said. “That is just how I feel as a coach. And I want our players to feel the same way.”"All of them told us their stories, and behind each of these stories looms the shadow of that formidable father, a stern, arrogant, and violent man, whose voice alone made Adolf cringe, and who would thrash his son unmercifully for any little reason."
—John Gunther on Alois Hitler, Vanity Fair, September 1934
There has been no greater villain in the story of mankind than the bad father. The one who hits or humiliates. The one who doesn't show up. The one who leaves. The one who won't (please, God) leave. The drunk or the liar or the condescending prick. Bad fathers have ruined more lives than famine and war put together, bruising and battering their sons and daughters emotionally, mentally, and/or physically and dooming them to repeat the cycle, generation after generation until kingdom come.
Men know this. We had friends growing up who had bad fathers, assholes on the sidelines or dinner-table tyrants, or perhaps we had or have one ourselves, the man whose voice alone makes us cringe. We understand the damage that a bad father can do, and we understand what things can and cannot be undone. And when the time comes, as it does for most of us, to have a child of our own, we feel the first measure of that responsibility, that weight, and we say, with confidence: Not us. We will do better. We will hug our kids and hold their hands. We will support and nurture. We will keep our voices down, and our hand, too. We'll go to the games or recitals we can and we'll feel guilty when we can't. We'll be there for bedtime and teacher conferences, and we'll be home on the weekends. We'll do everything we can to be everything they need, because that's what it means to be a good father today, isn't it?
Isn't it?
"I think that adults now pay too much attention to their children at the expense of themselves. Parents close off interests or avenues that they formerly pursued that made them fuller and more interesting people. And they're totally focused on their little ones, signing them up for every activity under the sun. They're just all over them. It's a little bit overdone, and it's a little obnoxious."
—An 81-one-year-old father and grandfather, February 2014
It's worth pointing out that nobody really needs to become a father at all anymore.
Yes, it's helpful when you're a politician to have a little one up on the bandstand with you (otherwise, well, the rumors...), and if you're religiously inclined and spurn contraception, then, okay, kids might be unavoidable, but for the rest of us, it has never been practically easier or more socially acceptable to simply opt out of having a child altogether, and a growing number of us are instead choosing childless cohabitation or perpetual singledom or whatever Clooney has going on these days. More than any other time in modern or ancient history, we've got options.
Of those who are choosing to be fathers, though, and choosing to be what they consider to be good fathers—well, these guys are in it. We're spending three times as many hours every week with our kids as men did in the '60s. (Two economists, Valerie and Garey Ramey, noted that among both mothers and fathers, "if the hours were valued at their market wage rate, the increase in childcare time would amount to over $300 billion per year.") We're twice as likely as our spouses to say we aren't spending enough time with our kids,and, like our spouses, we're nearly twice as likely to find "significant meaning" in child care than in our paid work.We're the targets of big-balled advertisers from Chevy, Hyundai and VW to Google, Tide, Sears, and Dove; and even Major League Baseball islooking to profit from paternal insecurity and/or pride. We're having fun with the musings of fellow dads—buying Adam Mansbach's Go The Fuck to Sleep by the truckload; trying to pass Louis C.K.'s bad-dad riffs off as our own; "liking" the hell out of the recurring "Dadspin" feature on Deadspin.com (with one December post, about one kid's "insane Christmas wish list," clocking 3.3 million hits and huge viral play.)You've got America's quarterback kissing and hugging his boys at the playground.You've got Snoop Dog coaching kid's football. You've got the heir to the English throne, that Everest of emotional unavailability, saying he changes diapers. (He gets that from his mother.)
And you've got Tom Cruise. Last year he sued a tabloid, not for the usual reason he sues tabloids but because said tabloid had indicated Cruise had "abandoned" his daughter because he didn't see her for a few months while he was busy shooting a movie overseas.(Not unlike—though, really, not at all like—how military personal and oilrig workers and untold many more are required to spend months away from their little ones. Cruise ended up dropping his suit.) Meanwhile, when Mets second baseman Daniel Murphy took a few days off after his son was born, Mike Francesa called paternity leave "a scam and a half" on air and his listeners lit into him for being out of touch, old-fashioned, old. That this wasn't the NPR crowd parsing modes of patriarchy but a bunch of guys who argue about designated hitters might be the ultimate proof: more men are more active, and more interested, in being fathers today than at any time in anyone's lifetime.
And this is all to the good—for the kids. Unless you're a drunk or a bully, or merely one of the so-called helicopter parents who sow seeds of dependency and narcissism in your little centers of the universe, there is no evidence that being present in your kids' lives is anything but a boon for them. But for you? Your stress levels will go through the roof, as will your odds of experiencing depression. Your physical health and social life will suffer. Your marriage could easily turn into one of those roommate situations you swore it would never become. And you might find yourself, late at night or in the shower or chauffeuring your kid to yet another lesson or practice, thinking that this wasn't what you signed up for. That you love your children, and that you really would sacrifice anything for them, but that being the kind of father you want to be—a good father—involves too many sacrifices, too much compromise, too high a price.
Does thinking such thoughts make you a bad father?
Does it?
"I made $970,000 last year. How much'd you make? You see pal, that's who I am, and you're nothing. Nice guy? I don't give a shit. Good father? Fuck you! Go home and play with your kids. You wanna work here—close! You think this is abuse? You think this is abuse, you cocksucker?"
—Blake (who might as well actually be Alec Baldwin), Glengarry Glen Ross, 1984
It's called "the fatherhood premium," and for generations, it was understood that having a child (or starting a family) would not only increase a man's salary but his productivity and his loyalty to the company. That premium, in some form, still exists: among other researchers, Rebecca Glauber of the University of New Hampshire found that for "married whites and Latinos, the birth of a child is [still] associated with an increase in... annual earnings and annual time spent at work." (The former is a premium for you; the latter, for your employer. Everybody wins. Kind of.) Other probable upsides to becoming a dad: you're more likely to enjoy long-term job stability and you're also more likely to find whatever work you're doing fulfilling. Brad Harrington, the director of Boston College's Center for Work and Family, has interviewed thousands of men over the course of his research, and "the majority of people who are [equally focused on work and family] tend to say that they find more fulfillment in their work than people who were work-centric. The fact that they're spending more time with their kids actually makes their job more enjoyable." These benefits are not nothing.
However, Harrington says, "If you're looking to find conclusive evidence that says that men who spend more time with their family are going to advance higher in the workplace, that's not going to happen. If you really are family-centric, you're probably not going to get to the top in corporate America." This sounds like a specious claim out of an Ayn Rand nightmare—and Rand did once claim that for "young people who are ambitious and struggling...parenthood would force [them] to give up their future and condemn themselves to a life of hopeless drudgery, of slavery to a child's physical and financial needs"—but there's growing evidence to support the claim. Jennifer L. Berdahl of University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management recently conducted a survey of middle-class Canadians and showed a direct correlation between parental involvement and workplace harassment (in the form of taunting, dissing, and all-purpose shit-giving)."The men who are changing diapers, cooking dinner, taking kids to the dentist, helping with the homework: they reported significantly more mistreatment than other men at work," she says, particularly in comparison to those men who played more traditional, hands-off dad roles.
Meanwhile, here in America, the workplace isn't much kinder. According to a 2013 series of studies out the Center for Work-Life Law at the University of California Hastings, men seeking greater work-life flexibility from their employers are more likely to receive lower performance evaluations and face greater risks of marginalization. Scott Behson, a professor of management at Fairleigh Dickinson University who's been tracking men's attitudes toward work and fatherhood for more than a decade, wasn't surprised by the findings. "The number-one predictor to making it to the top of organizations is willingness to put in the time, and to really advance, you really need to have a spouse that can pick up the slack. In fact, most CEOs are men and have spouses who do not work." Which is nice if you're part of the 20 percent of married couples in America with such an arrangement. For the 47 percent of couples with something approximating a fifty-fifty partnership, the odds of going as high as you could possibly want to go are more daunting.
(This might be more troubling if it appeared that involved fathers actually cared as much as they used to. A recent study from the Families and Work Institute charted the evolution of work-life attitudes among young American (29 and younger) from 1992 to 2008, and 80 percent of the male '92 respondents wanted jobs with more responsibility compared to just 68 percent of the '08. Meanwhile, the number of working dads who'd prefer to stay home, and who actually do stay home with the kids rather than work in an office, is on the rise, with rates significantly higher among younger, more active fathers.)
"We have a lot of evidence to suggest that more active fathers are lower achieving," says Gayle Kaufman, author of Superdads and professor of sociology at Davidson College, and it's not because they're not working as hard. Men with kids work more hours every week than men without kids, beginning more or less right away. "Men tend to work more in the first year of their child's life than they do before, probably not by choice," says Behson. "And that first year is unbelievably hard in terms of stress, and spending more time at work is just another stressor."
According to the Family and Work Institute, there is a direct correlation among fathers between the number of hours spent on child care every day and the amount of work-life stress,and David Eggebeen, a sociologist with Penn State who's studied this issue for thirty years, sees that struggle manifesting itself in many ways: "Men's health declines when they become fathers. They become ill more often and they rate their health as lower. They reorganize their social lives; instead of recreational softball and hanging out with their friends, they're going to Cub Scout meetings and Parent Teacher meetings and getting involved with organizations that revolve around children. It reaches the point where you can't nurture a wide array in your social network." (Perhaps this explains why, in a recent survey of 10,253 men, conducted over the course of 20 years, younger fathers—aged 25 or so—were 68 percent more likely to suffer symptoms of depression during their first five years of being a dad than their childless peers. The prospect of den meetings can do that to a man.)
A great many men today have fewer close friends than they did a generation ago (according to one study, it's down from 3.5 "discussion partners" in 1985 to 2.0 today).They have less free time and fewer hobbies. (Ten fewer hours a week than in 1965, according to Valerie Ramey from the University of California, San Diego.) And while there is ample evidence to indicate that having children strengthens and prolongs marriages due to reasons both emotional (stronger, deeper bonds) and practical ("for the kids," etc.), there is also the fact that, well, something's gotta give. In reporting Superdads, Kaufman "found that the men who were more egalitarian, wanting to be more involved, were less likely to get divorced. But most |
for some reason, that the F.B.I could leak reports.
“…if there’s political interference, then I assume that somebody in the FBI is going to leak these reports and it’s either going to have an effect politically or it’s going to lead to prosecution if there’s enough evidence.”
The article stated that he was responding to someone who had provided a long answer to a question about the status of the investigation. But when asked by a reporter later whether he was suggesting that the bureau intentionally leak out the reports, he said it would be a violation of the law and he “does not encourage a violation of the law.”
Chuck Grassley [Image via U.S. Senate | Wikimedia | Public Domain] But he also stated that he had heard about it somewhere.
Politico reported on Democratic senate minority leader Harry Reid’s response to Grassley’s leak prediction in an article which refers to both politicians as raging bulls. It said that Reid has been on the attack since February over many decisions, mostly that of blocking senate hearings for Merrick Garland.
The Inquisitr reported on a mentioned plan to force hearings to take place.
But as the op-ed by the Washington Post suggests — aside from the growing amount of speculative reports on what the F.B.I may or may not do — there have not been any updates on the investigation and where the current one might lead.
In many of these sources, even the president himself has provided his view of the case, which many have interpreted as a way to diffuse the weight of a potential criminal indictment, causing the public and media sources to continue to make predictions or form theories within the context of the election year.
During the campaign, when Hillary Clinton was asked about the e-mail investigation and whether she would be or what she would do if she were indicted, she has expressed that the charges or even the question is absurd.
[Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Images]In early July the 38-year-old man in Seved, Malmö, was severely assaulted when he ran out into the street after his window was smashed.
Police initially classified the case as a hate crime, as the man had been hanging an Israeli flag in his window.
The man said the flag had been there for over a year, and suspected that the true issue behind the smashed window was his social media activism against the Iranian regime.
After hearing additional witnesses, the police have a new interpretation of events. Malmö police now have no reason to suspect that the severe beating was related to the flag.
"It was quite a while after the first stone was thrown that the man went outside to look for the people who had smashed the window," Thomas Bull, policeman in Malmö, told newspaper Sydsvenskan.
A witness reported that the man was "noticeably upset" and armed with a knife when he went out into the street. A few hundred metres from his apartment he confronted a gang of between five and ten people, who proceeded to beat him with an iron pipe.
However, police said there is no evidence that the gang included the person who had smashed the window, and the two incidents are not necessarily connected. Bull said that witnesses agree the assault was carried out by a group, and no one was able to point out a specific individual who may also have been responsible for throwing the stone.
"The assault was an isolated event," Bull said.A BOY who died after falling into the River Thames yesterday has been named locally as Aown Dogar.
Police confirmed today that a teenager had been pronounced dead at 9pm last night after he had got into difficulty in the River Thames.
Emergency crews had pulled him out of the river yesterday near Donnington Bridge on Weirs Lane and he was taken to the John Radcliffe Hospital.
Aown was a pupil at Cheney School, which today paid tribute to his "great sense of humour and fun loving personality."
A statement from the school said: "The Cheney School community is deeply saddened by the loss of Aown Dogar and our thoughts are with his family and friends at this difficult time.
"Aown was a much loved student within Cheney due to his great sense of humour and fun loving personality. He loved both football and cricket, and was a member of the school cricket team.
"He was a pleasure to teach as he really valued his education. He will be sorely missed by the whole school community and we he will always be remembered with great fondness."
On a Facebook tribute page to Aown, loved ones posted messages about the teenager, offering their thoughts and prayers for his family.
According to the group, Aown played for Quarry Rovers FC and the club have said they will retire his number 17 shirt.
One user on the Facebook page, Akhi Zeeshan Mahmood, posted: “RIP Aown.
“It feel like yesterday I would come up to you shake your hand and be like how are you?
“And he would always look at you with his smile.”
Thames Valley Police said the boy's family had been informed and the body has been formally identified.
Police could not confirm his age but described him as a teenager.
The scene on Abingdon Road last night
Ambulance, fire and river rescue services also attended the scene in Weirs Lane, which was temporarily shut while the rescue unfolded.
A spokesman for South Central Ambulance Service said it was called at 7.14pm, and send a Hazardous Area Response Team, one ambulance and a helicopter.
He added the boy was unresponsive when he was rescued.
A police helicopter was also deployed.
Kyle King, 18, who lives in Weirs Lane, said: "I heard all different sirens.
"I had a look because the whole road was closed off. I ran around to the weir and saw a man looking into the river.
"There were three members of the emergency services in the water searching with big long poles trying to find the boy.
"Police officers came and told us to leave the area.
"Ten minutes later a helicopter landed in fields near the river and then went off again."
The tragedy came two-and-a-half years after teenager Hussain Mohammed died after jumping off Donnington Bridge after being dared by a friend in May 2012.SOCCER’S governing body has stepped up its probe into soccer star Harry Kewell’s deal with Fiat Chrysler as the scandal surrounding the auto giant escalates.
Football Federation Australia has asked Melbourne City for emails and other correspondence about superstar Kewell’s dramatic move from Melbourne Victory to rival club Heart in 2013.
“Football Federation Australia has requested documentation from Melbourne City in relation to its enquiries into the Harry Kewell matter,” said an FFA spokesman.
COURT STOUSH PROMPTS CELEBRITY CAR ‘RECALL’
FFA, which keeps its own record of player contracts, opened an investigation into the Kewell deal after questions from the Herald Sun in late May.
Details of Kewell’s $1 million-a-year Jeep deal were revealed in a lawsuit between Fiat Chrysler Australia and its former chief executive, Clyde Campbell.
Documents filed with the Federal Court allege Mr Campbell offered Kewell a raft of incentives, including business class airfares, school fees and rental assistance, if he signed with Heart for the 2013-14 season.
There is no suggestion Kewell did anything wrong.
Sports lawyers say deals between players and parties other than their clubs that relate specifically to club contracts risk breaching salary cap rules.
Meanwhile, corporate regulator the Australian Securities and Investments Commission says it is aware of the Federal Court case involving FCA Australia and has not ruled out taking action once the litigation concludes.
The FCA matter is listed for a hearing in the Federal Court on Friday.
FCA has applied to seize the assets of Mr Campbell and wife Simone, including shares, their Brighton home and their holiday homes.
Mr Campbell has denied any wrong doing and has signalled his intention to fight the claim.
carly.crawford@news.com.auI’m technically disabled — but not mentally disabled the way some of my foes on CNN seem to believe. No, my disability is hearing loss (in one ear I’m nearly deaf).
I have to turn the TV up so loud the neighbors say they can hear it in the house next door. My friends complain that watching TV with me is like watching the Saturday Night Live version of Garrett Morris shouting into the camera to provide news for the hard of hearing.
There are some 30 million Americans like me suffering from severe to moderate hearing loss. Not being able to hear precisely what people are saying is an occupational handicap for sure.
I also lose my prescription hearing aid at least 3 or 4 times a year. These little gizmos are expensive, costing as much as $3,000 (I can’t get insurance anymore because of my pre-existing condition of carelessness), and so having access to cheaper over-the-counter hearing devices is an attractive option.
Granted, the non-prescription aids don’t work as well, but in a pinch they sure work a lot better than no hearing aid at all. Some of the devices at Walmart are so cheap, they are practically disposable.
Congress will soon vote on a bill called the OTC Hearing Aid Act that would allow much easier access to over the counter hearing aids. And get this. The bill is bipartisan, sponsored by Senators Grassley (R-IA) and Warren (D-MA) and Representatives Blackburn (R-TN) and Kennedy (D-MA). (This may be the first and last time I’ve ever been on the side of Elizabeth Warren!).
Here’s why this bill is important to the health and well-being of millions of Americans like me. According to the NASEM report, Hearing Health Care for Adults, more than two-thirds of the 30 million people in the U.S. with hearing loss may benefit from hearing aids but do not use them.
Why don’t they? Too expensive. A 2014 report by the CTA finds that the high price for prescription aids are a major barrier to consumers. Prescription hearing aids typically cost $1,000 to $6,000, or about10 times more than the cost of OTC aids — typically, $100 to $500.
Current law prohibits over the counter PSAPS (personal sound amplification performance systems) from making any claim to treat hearing loss. The Food and Drug Administration, which regulates hearing aids, places prohibitions on advertising for these cheaper devices, because the regulators say they don’t significantly improve hearing. I can personally attest that PSAPs do help, especially when standing in a crowded room with a lot of ambient noise or talking on the phone.
Under the new law PSAPS could be marketed and sold as a more affordable hearing aid alternative to people with hearing loss. The highest quality prescription hearing aids that are personalized and fitted for each patient and superior in quality would still be available and regulated by the FDA.
This would seem to be a no-brainer. It would drive down prices for all hearing devices by increasing choice and competition. The opponents to the bill are the doctors and the manufacturers of the expensive aids are against competition — of course. It’s the same rent seeking lobbying that taxicab companies use to keep Uber out of cities.
What we have here is a classic case of regulation that is promoted by the industry that is regulated in order to keep prices high and keep out cheaper alternatives — all under the phony guise of “consumer protection.”
We now have over the counter reading glasses and over the counter painkillers and over the counter flu medicines. These options don’t prevent people from getting prescriptions for the heavier drug dosage or more personalized contacts and eye glasses. Thanks to the Internet, consumers are much smarter and cost-conscious about what their range of choices are than 20 years ago.
One worry is that this new law will give the FDA new powers to regulate OTC devices. Conservatives should be arguing that there is no compelling reason for the FDA to be regulating this industry at all. You’re not going to die if you get snookered and buy a bad hearing aid.
This should be the first step in a conservative pro-consumer crusade to severely limit FDA regulations on the sale of scores of medical devices and drugs — where there is no issue of endangerment. Why does the FDA have to regulate hearing aids, dental and skin care products, Viagra, wheel chairs, and so on?
Everyone in Washington in both parties keeps saying they are for “affordable care.” Here’s one way they can make that a reality for tens of millions of Americans. Is anyone listening?The U.S. Navy Blue Angel fly in the Diamond formation at the Rhode Island National Guard Open House Air Show. (Photo: U.S. Navy)
In the wake of a high-profile misconduct investigation of the Blue Angels, the Navy on Tuesday announced sweeping changes to the flight demonstration squadron's structure.
Vice Adm. David Buss, the head of Naval Air Forces, ordered that the Blue Angels will get an executive officer for the first time in the squadron's history and the member selection process will be overhauled to include more oversight from personnel officials.
The executive officer will be a aviator, Buss said, but will not fly as part of the team, instead focusing on travel, training and other administrative programs.
"We're not going to add another plane or position to the flight demonstration," Buss said in an exclusive phone interview Tuesday with Navy Times. "The XO will oversee the day-to-day management and business of the command, and I think that will be very helpful in strengthening this command triad."
The team announced Tuesday that new executive officer is Cmdr. Bob Flynn, 45, of Moorestown, N.J. He is a 1992 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy.
Cmdr. Tom Frosch, the current Blue Angels commanding officer, will continue for another year.
The controversy that led to the changes burst into public view in April, when a former member of the squadron alleged that former commanding officer Capt. Greg McWherter and members of the team fostered a hostile working environment rife with pornography, lewd behavior and other sexual harassment.
McWherter was fired as the executive officer of Naval Base Coronado, California, in April. A subsequent investigation into McWherter's 2010-2012 Blue Angels command tour — his second as their skipper — found that pilots flew with pinups of naked women in their cockpits, pornographic images were sent across a group text messaging service used in an official capacity, and McWherter on occasion requested to see naked photos of a junior officer's girlfriend in the ready room, among other incidents of misbehavior.
The report said authority lines blurred under McWherter. The team's officers are trained to see each other as equals, where junior officers are free to critique the flying of more senior team members, including the commanding officer, all of whom are flying at high speed in tight formations. But under McWherter, this democracy extended to situations well beyond flying, the investigation found, and diminished the commanding officer's charge to enforce Navy regulations.
Buss described the changes as "opportunities to update and strengthen" how the squadron operates on a day-to-day basis. He has also updated the selection process for new team members, from the pilots down to the support personnel.
Some officials close to the team had recommended against installing an executive officer and other changes to the selection process. Retired Rear Adm. David Anderson, president of the Blue Angels Association, said in a June interview that if the unit "were to select officers for the team the way the Navy selects officers for a squadron, it would be very detrimental."
Buss disagrees.
"The reason I did that is because within naval aviation and across the Navy, we have a very powerful leadership and organizational model in our commands that we call the command triad, made up of the commanding officer, executive officer and command master chief," he said.
"Rank structure is important, but to be able to have a solid two-way conversation between CO and XO in a peer or near-peer relationship is important for the heath and welfare of the origination," Buss added.
Buss also overhauled the selection process. The Blue Angels will still get to pick the next generation of team members, but once those selections are made, Buss said new checks and balances will be used to vet those selections.
Once the flying and nonflying new members are picked, those selections will first get looked at by the squadron's immediate boss, the chief of Naval Air Training.
From there, Blue Angels selections will be sent to Navy Personnel Command for a final review to ensure there's nothing in the person's record to preclude their selection and that a tour of duty with the team won't be bad for their career progression.
Contributing: Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1rzyzwCThe Alienware AW251HF is actually the first monitor specifically designed for gaming that I have personally used so I was quite eager to compare it with my current monitor (HP 2511x). At 240 Hz and a 1 millisecond response time, this monitor is sure to grab the attention of most gamers looking for high specifications. With the addition of Free Sync, the monitor should be free from any ghosting or tearing that would otherwise distract during gaming sessions. From a design perspective, I was actually quite surprised at how heavy and sturdy the stand was. The style of the stand was actually quite innovative, with two legs branching out and seemed secure and sturdy. On the back, the silver had a nice brushed finished and, while plastic, it did not feel cheap. In addition, there was a stylish alien logo in the back. Once the stand is installed, the monitor can be rotated to the left or right, as well as up or down depending on how high you want it. Lastly, the monitor can pivot around in 90-degree increments to fit your needs. At eye level, the monitor looked amazing and was actually more comfortable than the current viewing angle on my monitor. In the back of the monitor, you will note two HDMI 2.0 ports and a Display port connection; only an HDMI cable is included along with a bracket to cover up the cables once they are rerouted through the hole in the stand. There are two USB 3.0 ports and a audio jack directly underneath the Alienware logo. A USB 3.0 cable is included as well. On the monitor, there are several modes that are worth mentioning. First, there are several presets based on which type of game you are playing such as FPS, RPG, and RTS. Additionally, there are 3 different game settings for your own personal customization. Standard is default and implies both 75% brightness and contrast. On max contrast, the colors are actually quite vibrant especially for an anti-glare monitor. Additionally, max brightness was actually fairly bright especially at its rated 400 nits. Another feature that is worth noting is the dark mode, which improves viewing on dark images. However, I noticed it almost sharpens the image too much if your game is not extremely dark or your game's brightness is too high. In addition to those presets above, you will also find warm, cool, comfort view and custom presets. Custom allows you to adjust the standard red, blue, and green colors with an additional yellow, magenta, and cyan setting. As for image quality, overall I think most will be pleased with the image, provided that you know what to expect from an anti-glare monitor. For me personally, as my last 3 monitors have all had a glossy screen finish, the color reproduction can be somewhat of an adjustment. Thus, I was actually surprised that on standard preset, the color is crisp and was not as dull as I was expecting. Whites were a bit muddy at first but after adjusting the settings, it improved. In addition, with a screen size of 25'', it was perfect for viewing 1080p content. At this resolution, I typically avoid anything higher than 25'' as it tends to look washed out to me. Additionally, the pixel pitch is listed at 0.2832mm by 0.2802mm. Usually, pixel pitch is listed with one number but I would assume the first number would be for the horizontal portion of the display (1920) though I could be wrong. In addition, I viewed and set several different wallpapers as backgrounds to view the color. The blacks were actually handled fairly decent, though understand they aren't the deepest or as rich as some of the IPS panels. Greens looked fairly deep as well. I also looked at some backgrounds with more orange and red and the color seemed fairly accurate. Dell also lists this as 90 pixels per inch. With these specs, text and color seemed perfectly adequate and everything was sharp and concise. As for game performance, all of the games played fluid and smooth and obviously, there was no evidence of ghosting. One feature I would like to mention is that the monitor has a built in frame rate display so while playing games I had that enabled as well as fraps. When you have the monitor's frame rate overlay enabled, it would seem that it only works while Free Sync is enabled. There was one instance while playing Rise of the Tomb Raider where when I would set the graphic settings high enough, the monitor's frame rate counter was higher than what fraps showed. Thus, I assume that the monitor's frame rate counter was only showing the monitor's Free sync rate instead of the game's FPS once it gets low enough. Once the settings were lowered, both the fraps and monitor counter matched. Conversely, when you have the Free Sync disabled, it would just display the monitor's 240 Hz refresh rate and never moved. Overall, every time I played normally though, the monitor and the game play remained fluid and smooth. As for Free Sync itself, I tested several games to see if I could feel a difference or see any when I had it enabled versus with it turned off. For the most part, I could not detect a noticeable difference even when it was disabled. However, when Free Sync was enabled, game play on this monitor, even in the 40-55 FPS range, was smooth just like it was when it was off. The feature, nonetheless, is great to have as it does seem to work while it was on, as evident by the monitor's frame rate overlay. In conclusion, I would recommend this monitor for those who are looking for a high performance gaming monitor that are not afraid of the price tag. Personally, while I have had always preferred monitors with glossy screens, this monitor surprised me more than I thought it would. Its image isn't as washed out as some others tend to be and the brightness is actually better than my current monitor. With that said, you will need adjust the image to your liking and I caution those especially who are coming from either gloss finish monitors or even IPS ones that it may take some time to get used to it. Perhaps the best feature for me was that ability to adjust and pivot the monitor to my needs. Playing at eye level is actually comfortable rather than having to look down at a monitor. At 240 Hz and a 1 millisecond response time, it offers everything that those who play games would require of such a monitor. Games were smooth and pictures looked as they should. As such, I think it would fulfill the needs of gamers at a price that most are willing to pay. Recommended.
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Newly elected Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) isn’t a believer in God, but now it seems that she’s not a nonbeliever either.
Philosophers perk up their ears when informed that a logical dichotomy, such as “believer or nonbeliever” is in fact a false dichotomy. Let philosophers rethink their logic. We need to re-think how labels work in the secular world of the Nones.
As exhaustively researched by the Friendly Atheist ( link here ), Sinema denies being any sort of atheist. The key quotation from her spokesman is this:
“Kyrsten believes the terms non-theist, atheist or non-believer are not befitting of her life’s work or personal character. She does not identify as any of those.”
Since she isn’t announcing how she does believe in God either, what are we to make of this development?
One obvious conclusion is that the Rise of the Nones has brought with it a secular independence of mind. No longer will those among the Nones complacently accept categorizations or labels from egg-head atheology philosophers or ideology-driven atheist organizations. For whatever personal reasons — a matter of private choice, or public politics, etc. — there’s no way to assume that your favorite label for their lack of belief will be automatically and gratefully adopted. The Nones are growing up right before our eyes.
The rise of the Agnostics against the Atheists was just the opening salvo. Recent decades have seen the rise of the Nontheist, the Nones, the Faitheist, and the Apatheist. Now we are dealing with a novel yet inevitable phenomenon: discontent with accepting God has now evolved towards discontent with accepting labels. Unlike the Apatheists, who can’t care enough about God or religion to even utter a word of choice either way, Sinema represents a different attitude, of caring just enough to renounce any labeled position on the whole matter.
To conclude with a tone of irony, let’s call these nouveau Nones as the “Evatheists” because they feel the need to evade the whole issue. Don’t you dare call one of them an “evatheist” to their face — although hearing a quick denial only proves that this label fits.American losses that morning were estimated as high as 3,500. Some of Pershing's generals saw a last chance at glory and, believing the Armistice was letting the Germans off the hook, Pershing did nothing to dissuade them. US Marines suffered more than 1,100 casualties trying to cross the River Meuse. Had they been allowed to wait until 11:00, they could have safely crossed the river with no casualties. Henry Gunther was the last American and the last Allied soldier to be killed. He and others advanced through fog toward two German machine guns. The Germans fired a burst over their heads and the Americans dropped to the ground. The Germans, knowing that it was almost 11:00, assumed that would be the end of it, but Gunther got back up and started running at them. The Germans shouted and waved at him to stop, but when he didn't, they fired a burst of five shots. One of them struck Gunther in the left temple, killing him instantly. It was 10:59, 60 seconds before the end of the war.PsychNotes
by Monica A. Frank, Ph.D.
Clinical and Sport Psychologist
September 18, 2018 Don't Accept Criticism Without Evaluating the Source When I studied karate katas (elaborate forms demonstrating techniques) I learned the value of criticism. The more my instructor seemed to nitpick on everything I did, the better I became and the more tournaments I won. The reason for this is I realized he could only focus on minor details if I was learning the katas well generally. Otherwise, his focus would be on more major mistakes. I came to value his criticism. However, I noticed others could easily become discouraged with the same type of instruction. Criticism can be devastating for many people. Even constructive criticism causes them to lose self-esteem and self-confidence. I think one of the main reasons for this is they accept all criticism without evaluating it. So, instead of picking and choosing which criticism is worthwhile, they accept all criticism which leads to criticism overload. At that point, they don't hear the nuggets of helpful advice. Instead, all they hear is the fact they are receiving criticism. The result is repeated blows to the sense of self creating feelings of failure, hopelessness, and worthlessness. How can criticism overload be avoided? One of the best ways to avoid criticism overload is to evaluate it before accepting it. This can be difficult to do because you need to listen to the criticism to evaluate it which can cause distress and affect self-esteem. However, one way to decrease the amount of criticism you absorb is to first evaluate the source of the criticism before even listening to it. Read more...
September 14, 2018 Measuring Progress Creates Progress One of the differences between behavioral therapy and other types of psychotherapy is the concrete measurement of progress. Psychological research has shown repeatedly that people's episodic memories, or memories of past events, are often not very reliable. Such memories are easily influenced, in the case of memories of progress the influence usually is current state of mind or mood. Frequently, clients would come into my office discouraged: “I just don't feel I'm getting any better. Is all this work worth it?” Now, fortunately for me, as a behavioral therapist I had all kinds of data. For instance, when my clients arrived for their appointment, they completed a short assessment rating symptoms. I could pull out their prior assessments to show how their ratings had improved. Another way we could assess progress was that assignments were created with ways to measure improvement. For example, a person with depression is often told to try and engage in activities that brought pleasure in the past. Instead of telling someone this and relying on their memory of the past week, I had them write it down with a rating of how enjoyable it was. What often occurs especially for those with depression is the memory is distorted by the depressed mood. So, if asked about enjoyable events, they say, “Nothing is enjoyable. I always feel the same.” Yet, when they rate an event immediately after it occurs, the rating often shows something different. I could look at the ratings and respond, “No, there is variability in your ratings. You don't always feel the same.” Read more...
September 10, 2018 “Are You Depressed?”: Understanding Diagnosis and Treatment When Gina told her doctor she was feeling depressed, he gave her a screening test that asked about her symptoms: little interest in doing things, feeling depressed or hopeless, sleep problems, lack of energy, poor appetite or overeating, feelings of failure, problems concentrating, restlessness or slow movements, and thoughts of self-harm. Other than suicidal thoughts, Gina endorsed all of the symptoms and scored high on the test. Her doctor immediately prescribed an anti-depressant. What is wrong with this scenario? 1) No follow-up questions. A screening test doesn't determine whether someone is depressed or not. The purpose of the test is to determine the possibility of depression. If a person scores high on the test, it is crucial for the doctor to ask follow-up questions and to possibly do other medical tests because a person can have all of these symptoms and not have depression. In fact, as discussed below, there are conditions (called rule-out criteria) that exist indicating a different type of problem could be causing the symptoms. These need to be determined prior to diagnosis. Read more...
September 4, 2018 Healthline included Excel At Life's "Stop Panic & Anxiety Self-Help" app in Best Anxiety Apps of 2018 "If you’ve experienced panic attacks due to anxiety, this app can help you manage them. Keep a personal diary or use the panic assistance audio to help you overcome attacks. It also features relaxation audio to lower stress and relax the body. Articles cover emotional training, cognitive behavioral therapy, and more." Some links: Stop Panic & Anxiety Self-Help app Panic Assistance audio How to Manage Panic and Anxiety
August 14, 2018 50 Rules of Life
Rule 20: Be Responsible to Yourself So many people, especially those with perfectionistic tendencies, feel a responsibility to others while ignoring their own needs. Certain types of perfectionistic behavior appear on the surface to be beneficial and are considered by the perfectionistic person to be an essential aspect of their personality. Even when they accept that the perfectionistic traits cause them stress, anxiety and/or depression, they are still unwilling to make the cognitive and behavioral change. Many of my perfectionistic clients argued with me about changing their perfectionistic tendencies especially when it involved desirable character traits. I think my rejoinder to their claim regarding the value of perfectionism usually convinced them. The problem with their argument is thinking in all-or-nothing terms: “But I SHOULD be responsible and reliable!” To them, the opposite of being perfectly responsible is being irresponsible. Read more...
July 31, 2018 To Effectively Use the Cognitive Diary Limit Your Evaluation Cognitive Diary CBT Self-Help Download The Cognitive Diary CBT Self-Help app helps you to determine some ways to challenge the irrational thinking. Once you have done that, it is important to read the rational challenges frequently until they automatically come to mind rather than the irrational thinking. Many times when thinking is changed about a situation problems can be resolved more easily. Using the cognitive diary method can aid in this process. To learn more about the cognitive diary and Excel At Life's Cognitive Diary app, read Understanding and Using the Cognitive Diary. The one complaint about the Cognitive Diary app that I refuse to change is that the user can only select up to six irrational beliefs for each entry. Although other complaints are related to the usability of the app, this issue is related to the effectiveness of the technique. I did relent somewhat and raised the limit to six from three but I recommend only selecting two or three. Several problems occur when a person chooses too many irrational beliefs: 1) Overwhelming. When I worked with clients who wrote their cognitive diaries on paper they weren't likely to select more than a few irrational beliefs when evaluating the distressing event. However, the app makes it easy to check any irrational belief that is even remotely a possibility. Unfortunately, when a person views a long list of irrational beliefs that need to be changed it can become overwhelming and confusing about where to start. Read more...The Buddha’s Birthday (May 10, this year) is far and away the most important celebration on the Korean Buddhist calender. The preparations start nearly a year ahead of time at our center, and by January preparations are in full gear. By the time things are finished in April, the lanterns and floats will be gorgeous! (Click on the images for a bit higher resolution image.)
For everyone in the Seoul area, there’s been one important change this year: the main lantern parade will begin at dusk Saturday, May 7th, and will go from Dongguk University to Jogye Temple. Sunday, May 8th, will be the street fair in front of Jogye Temple, with a celebration/party in the evening. The actual day is May 10, Tuesday, and so temples big and small across the country will be having their own celebrations.
elephant at the base of the Avalokitesvara lanternAt only four years old, Prince George is already one of the most relatable British royals. From not wanting to go to school to being too sleepy for your forced cheerfulness, the young prince just gets it.
And in a recent interview, his father Prince William revealed Prince George is a fan of classic Disney movies. Unlike his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, who reportedly enjoys watching Netflix's The Crown, Prince George likes to use his screen time for some more kid-friendly viewing, specifically The Lion King.
The interview, posted on Twitter by Rhiannon Mills of Sky News, was conducted by a young boy, who asked Prince William about his son's favorite shows to watch. Among a list of other adorable shows and movies, Prince William revealed that Prince George loves The Lion King.
We should employ this kid @SkyNews...he got #PrinceWilliam to reveal that #princegeorge likes to watch the Lion King pic.twitter.com/bzdVhwqa1I — Rhiannon Mills (@SkyRhiannon) October 16, 2017
"He quite likes The Lion King," Prince William said. "We've watched that a few times."
Perhaps the song, "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" has something to do with it.
"He's watched Octonauts," William also revealed, adding that his son is a fan of "Lego movies," though he and Duchess Kate try to limit their children's screen time as much as possible. "Trying to keep [George] off the television is hard work," Prince William said in the brief interview.
This story originally appeared on Townandcountrymag.com.
* Minor edits have been made by the Townandcountry.ph editors.A ringing call for a new militant Civil Rights movement “2.0” centered on the fight for jobs was recently made by leaders of the United Steelworkers, Leo W. Gerard and Fred Redmond.
“It’s time to stand up and be heard,” they said. “It’s time to mobilize online and in the streets. Together, let’s tweet, facebook and text. Let’s rally, vote and, where necessary, sit-in.”
The 50th anniversary of the “Greensboro Four,” when Black college students ignited a movement challenging racial segregation and injustice in the South, served as shining example for the labor leaders.
“The involvement of young people in that movement – along with religious, labor and other community leaders – cannot be underestimated,” they noted. “They forced America to change for the better, to change for them.”
Five decades later, “it’s time for America’s youth to lead another revolution, one that forces the nation to solve the critical civil rights challenge of this time.” This challenge is jobs.
The labor leaders pointed to the unique problems facing young people. Of the more than 46 million uninsured Americans, 13.2 million are young adults – the fastest growing segment of citizens without health benefits. One-third of Latinos and one-fifth of blacks are uninsured compared to 13 percent of whites.
The official unemployment rate nationwide is nearly 10 percent and 20 million workers ages 16 to 24 were jobless in 2009. That’s more than 50 percent of all people in that age group, union leaders note. And unemployment rates for Blacks and Latinos are twice as high.
“It’s time for a revolution,” they said.
Leaders of the civil rights movement knew good jobs provided a pathway to a better life and they knew that justice wasn’t going to happen without coordinated, sustained and organized action, noted Gerard and Redmond.
Gerard and Redmond said young people today must have the same opportunities as prior generations, laying stress on the manufacturing industry, the “great equalizer” for America.
“We’re talking about new, high tech, clean, efficient and world-class manufacturing. The making of wind turbines and solar panels to power the clean energy industry; hybrid and electric cars, components for iPhones, laptop computers and other electronics; materials for energy-efficient office buildings, homes and roads. Parts needed for high-speed rail, modern schools, updated water lines, sewer systems and other infrastructure that’s costing us money and precious time in the fight against global warming.”
Gerard and Redmond note every manufacturing job supports five more jobs, compared to just one job supported by a service sector position.
Such jobs pay an average 10 to 50 percent more than service sector jobs.
Creating 2.5 million new manufacturing jobs would mean at least $100 billion for the American economy over the next decade.
Most union workers earn more than nonunion workers and more importantly they share a voice on the job when it comes to health care, stronger safety and health protections and retirement security.
If Wall Street shareholders are entitled to a share of profits, then the hard working employees who help businesses thrive should also get their fair share too, they charge.
The Steelworker leaders are calling on young people to lead the way.
“Imagine the opportunities. Think about the |
and actual war zones. When Mr. Mosallam took over, Fordson was newly ranked in Michigan's academic percentages, at seventh from the bottom. It was a football school. There were students like Hussein, a 240-pound lineman whose father was gone, whose mom was raising him and his siblings on her own. "Football was his savior," the principal said, "but he knew if he didn't keep his GPA up, he wouldn't play football." If Hussein wasn't at school, Mr. Mosallam would go looking for him. Check in, check out. That was their system.
The Fordson Tractors have produced a Super Bowl winner and remain a Michigan high school football powerhouse. (AP Images)
Those outside Dearborn were intrigued by another type of system that had come to be known as the Night Practices, when Ramadan coincided with the first week of training camp. Fordson players would break their fast, sometimes as late as 11 p.m. Have a little snack. Practice until 1 a.m. And again, from 2 to 4 a.m. Then they'd all feast together at one of the halal butchers on Warren. In a time when the true believers have come to lament the mollification of football, the Tractors had made some preternatural commitment to the game. Fans in neighboring districts, who still called them "sand niggers" and "Hezbollah High," had to swallow their admiration. Nothing rattled Fordson. Dearborn High and Crestwood, which had half as many Muslim kids as Fordson’s team, sometimes emulated the Night Practices. Sometimes non-Muslim coaches and players would even join the fast.
Mr. Mosallam believed as deeply in football as anyone in America, but he didn't want to be principal of a football school. In the hallways, he would ask, "How do you want to be remembered?" He made them recite his mottos: PRIDE. TRADITION. LEGACY. He said it so often that the students shortened it. PTL. He was tough on them, but he was one of them. "We just never give up on anybody," Mr. Mossallam said.
✦ ✦ ✦
There are certain indelible characters who, at once, embody and transcend Dearborn. There's the principal. There's Ali Abdallah, better known as Bulldog, who makes viral videos about Dearborners. (Check out The Ed and Moe Show on YouTube.) You want to buy a new pickup truck, they say, "Go see Catfish." (His name is Moe "Catfish" Beydoun.) There's the butcher on Warren, who is missing part of his right thumb and index finger. (Thirty years slicing meat, and he lost it operating a snowblower.)
And then there is Mike Ayoub, who bought that RE/MAX ad on Monday Night Football at more than five times his average buy. "I knew it was going to be watched in Dearborn," he said.
When Henry Ford opened the Rouge plant in Dearborn, paying $5 a day, the population began to swell. By the time the Arab-Israeli wars broke out, entire sections of Dearborn had become completely Arab.
They came from two different towns in South Lebanon: Bint Jbeil and Tebnine. Immigrants from the two villages had a rivalry, expressed in this country by who chased the American Dream harder. Metro Detroit became fertile ground for a unique sort of radicalization: football fandom. The Cowboys and the Steelers preyed on these eager new Americans.
The Lions weren't just hopeless. Between 1958 and 1981, they made the playoffs exactly once. (Dallas knocked them out in their lone appearance in 1970.) Eventually, they would "achieve" a perfect 0-16—the type of suffering that went unacknowledged in the rest of this country. If you had arrived from a village in Southern Lebanon, eager to become American, it was easy to find some sense of belonging in what that very American voice on NFL Films called America's Team. This is what happened to Ayoub. "I don't know who came from where," he said. "My idol was Tony Dorsett. It was that simple." The Cowboys were always on national TV. They had the star on their jersey. Dorsett was the man. "It was easy to like them. They were a winner."
"'Eh-rabs, camel jockeys'—you try to turn the other cheek," says Ayoub. "But it's hard, especially in sports when the fire's already burning."
Like Mr. Mosallam's parents, the Ayoubs didn't have the first clue about football. Mike's dad worked in one of Chrysler's plants, literally breaking his back working the line. Mike was the youngest. He was eight when Jackie Smith dropped the pass in Super Bowl XIII. He broke his dad's new 19-inch TV with a pillow. Neither of his parents understood, and neither could read English—they'd wait for their children to get home to read the mail. Mike Ayoub played football for Fordson, fullback and linebacker.
While the NFL was a choice, Michigan and Fordson are your identity. Well, that and your garage. "A garage is not for cars" is a saying you will hear around Dearborn. And on the Friday night before New Year's Eve, Ayoub was in his nephew David Makki's garage, all reclaimed barnwood and corrugated steel and scented smoke in the air. "David's garage is nicer than the inside of his house," another cousin joked.
The garage was heated by propane—Dearborn's interpretation of Michigan garage culture is a cold-weather throwback to the courtyards in those villages of Southern Lebanon—and a framed Jerome Bettis jersey hung over them. But as 10 men huddled together watching the Orange Bowl, they all wore Michigan blue.
They talked about the rivalry with Dearborn High (known to Fordson Tractors as the Cake Eaters), where David had started on the defensive line. "Undefeated, unscored upon, the only team in the history of the whole United States to do it, and we can't get no respect!" he yelled at Ayoub.They slither and squirm, give some people the heebie-jeebies and pack a seriously deadly punch or, well, bite. But for some Central Florida residents, they're pets.
Keeping venomous snakes, including cobras, vipers and mambas, is described by some owners as a hobby of sorts. Typically desired by thrill-seekers, the deadly animals have a charm unlike any other.
So what's the draw?
They're beautifully unusual, unique and fascinating reptiles, says Carl Barden, director of Medtoxin Venom Laboratories in DeLand.
"There is certainly a special allure to venomous snakes, and dangerous animals all around," he said.
And as with any other "dangerous" hobby, it can be done safely for years, Barden said.
Florida has a reputation for being one of the craziest states in the country and it's not without good reason. We're hit by hurricanes and tornadoes almost every summer, we have the title of being the lightning strike capital of the country and we've got a handful of crazy Florida men and women who've made major headlines. Even a relaxing day at the beach can turn wild if you're invaded by a brain-eating amoeba or impaled by a needlefish. Whether you're on land or in the sea, there's most likely something nearby that you should be wary of.
"Managing the risk of venomous snakes is no different than managing the risk with anything: automobiles, airplanes, firearms," he said.
As Central Florida has seen recently, though, there is always a chance for an accident.
That happened earlier this month when a king cobra escaped from its owner's home, and again Thursday, when a Winter Park man was bitten by his Gaboon viper.
Police responded about 5 p.m. to a home on the 2500 block of Temple Drive near Howell Branch Road, where they found 73-year-old Robert Smith had been bitten, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
He was attempting to feed the snake when it struck his left hand, a Winter Park police report states. He was rushed to a local hospital, where he is recovering.
The Gaboon viper that bit him was one of two that he owns and was only about an arm's length — fairly small considering they can grow up to 6 feet long.
Fish and Wildlife spokesman Greg Workman said the man has all the proper permits and cages to keep the "highly venomous" snake. Police said they counted about 16 to 18 venomous snakes in locked cages at Smith's house Thursday night.
David Dewitt, who is also permitted to keep venomous snakes at his Winter Garden home, said he knows Smith and that he's a "great guy and a responsible venomous keeper."
"He follows all the rules set in place by FWC and has been keeping them safely for around 40 years," Dewitt said in an email.
Smith is a retired science teacher, and Dewitt said that helps him appreciate the snakes "from a less-biased perspective."
"Like most of us, he has a genuine interest in these amazing animals," Dewitt said.
Records show that more than 60 people in Orange, Osceola, Seminole Lake, Volusia, Brevard and Polk counties have permits to keep venomous or potentially dangerous reptiles. Some of those are zoos and wildlife reserves, but others are people keeping the animals at home.
That fact terrified many residents after the 8-foot king cobra escaped Sept. 1 near Orlando. It hasn't been found, and some snake lovers say it might not ever be, as king cobras are experts at hiding.
Much like the Gaboon viper, which can grow some of the largest fangs of all venomous snakes, the king cobra is considered an extremely dangerous animal. One bite can produce enough venom to kill an elephant. It's unlikely the one on the loose will ever bite a human, though, officials say.
Barden, who has king cobras and Gaboon vipers, among numerous other snakes, said there's plenty of antivenin available in Central Florida if something does happen.
And the chances of dying from a snake bite in the U.S. are only about 1 in 50 million during any given year, according to the University of Florida.
On average, about five or six people die from snake bites each year. That's about a fifth of the number of people who die each year from dog bites, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Venomous snake owners, such as Dewitt and Barden, aren't naive in underestimating the dangers of keeping the reptiles. But they're drawn to the animals.
"Snakes are so misunderstood and so unusual," Barden said. "You might know a dozen people who collect things, whatever they might be: dolls, cars, fishing memorabilia. You might not personally know anyone who collects venomous snakes."
sallen@tribpub.com or 407-420-5417When the Canucks originally acquired Keith Ballard back at the 2010 NHL Draft, a lot of people in Vancouver were thrilled about the move (myself included).
Throughout his time with Phoenix and Florida, Ballard had proven himself to be a capable top four defenseman known for his excellent skating and ability to jump up into the rush (as well as his ability to nearly decapitate teammates, unfortunately).
Mike Gillis was looking to construct a defensive group based on sound defensive play, mobility, and offensive prowess on all three pairings. On paper, Ballard seemed like a natural fit and a suitable replacement for Willie Mitchell or Kevin Bieksa (who was involved in just about every possible trade rumour that summer) on Vancouver’s back end.
However, Ballard’s time in Vancouver has been marked by injuries, inconsistent play, and limited opportunities to do much of anything on the ice. Assuming Ballard isn’t given top four minutes this season (and unless a few injuries strike, expect him to remain on the bottom pairing), what will the Canucks do with him this coming summer? He has two years left on his current contract (a $4.2 million cap hit).
Option #1 – Keep Him
Of the three options (the other two are below), this is the least likely outcome in my estimation. At $4.2 million, Ballard is simply too expensive for a number five or six defenseman, especially in light of the recent extension given to Alex Edler ($5 million per for the next six years after this one). I could see the Canucks rolling with a top six of Edler, Bieksa, Garrison, Hamhuis, Tanev, and Kevin Connauton next season (or a similarly priced veteran defenseman in Connauton’s spot).
If Ballard has a strong season in 2013 with the Canucks, it wouldn’t be completely out of the question for him to stick around. It would be a lot of money to pay for a defenseman, but there likely wouldn’t be a ton of options available through trade or free agency that would represent a significant upgrade at a reduced cost.
And by all accounts he is well-liked in the dressing room – the Canucks really pride themselves on having a team that is self-policing. What I mean by that is that Alain Vigneault doesn’t micromanage like many other coaches around the league. They let the players run the dressing room, and those that don’t fall in line often find their way out of town (Shane O’Brien, as an example).
Keeping Ballard around would also mean more of this:
And this:
Option #2 – Trade Him
Even with the NHL salary cap set to drop from $70 million to $64.3 million in 2013-14, Ballard should carry some trade value. He is 30 years old and has two years left on a reasonable contract for a top four defenseman (assuming teams out there still consider him top-four calibre). Some of the reasons why Ballard hasn’t fit in with the Canucks may not limit his ability to play 20+ minutes a night elsewhere (he averaged well over 20 minutes per game during his time with the Panthers, and he was their best defenseman during the 2008-09 season).
Ballard is a great skater, but he isn’t a great passer (especially on the breakout). The Canucks require their defensemen to be able to quickly move the puck up the ice – Hamhuis and Edler in particular are really good at outlet passes. Some teams allow their defensemen more freedom to skate the puck into the offensive zone with regularity (Florida, for example, when Ballard played there). Ballard also can’t play the right side, and the Canucks are set on the left side for the foreseeable future with Hamhuis, Garrison (and Edler, frankly) locked in as top four defensemen at LD. A team looking for a second pairing left side defenseman may have some interest in Ballard and it wouldn’t take a ton to acquire him.
However, with how little Ballard has played in Vancouver the past couple of seasons, it is possible that he’s got "negative trade value" and the Canucks would need to part with additional assets in order to move his contract.
Option #3 – Buy Him Out
And if the Canucks are unable to move Ballard in a trade, the compliance buyout is the most likely outcome. With two years and $8.4 million left on his deal, Ballard is eligible to be bought out (a player must make over $3 million per season). The Canucks, unlike most NHL clubs, don’t really have a “bad” contract on the roster. Ballard is overpaid for what he brings to the table, but he is still a solid NHL defenseman (or was). And he is the most logical candidate if the Canucks choose to use one or both of the buyouts each club is granted from the NHL.
Whatever happens with Ballard, it has been unfortunate that he hasn’t been able to do more with the Canucks. At the very least, he has quietly become one of the best interviews on the team, thanks to his dry and self-deprecating sense of humour.
Some examples:
And we saw flashes of his dynamic offensive ability, but in a depth role he wasn’t able to truly show his full capabilities:
I wrote a similar piece on Ballard almost two years ago, and not a whole lot has changed since then.
This one seems obvious, but it was ignored last season. Ballard is a great skater, and he sees the ice well. What is the point of having him out there with plodding defensemen and fourth line forwards? Good players generally need good players to play with in order to excel (a notable exception being Sidney Crosby, no offense to Pascal Dupuis). Put Ballard with Edler and the Sedin twins at even strength. Give him prime offensive minutes. Give him time to get used to the role. The team doesn’t really have a choice with this after Ehrhoff left for greener pastures, but it still is something worth mentioning.
It goes to show how important pro scouting is. The Canucks may have misevaluated Ballard and how he could fit into their system. And in the process, they traded away a good young player in Michael Grabner, a 1st round pick and allowed Willie Mitchell to walk. Oh, and they traded Steve Bernier, too, but whatever.
I have no qualms with the team keeping Ballard for this season. We see it every year – the Canucks need to have at least nine or 10 capable defensemen on the depth chart. Ballard has never earned the full confidence of Vigneault, and he has likely lost some confidence in his own abilities, but there may be a time when the team will need him to step up.The PML-N has decided upon members of the incoming cabinet under incumbent Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, sources in PM House revealed to DawnNews on Friday.
The new federal cabinet is expected to consist of 46 ministers and state ministers, the sources said.
The cabinet will reportedly take oath on Friday morning, the sources added, naming a few of the appointments which have apparently been decided on by the party.
List of appointments shared with DawnNews:
Khurram Dastagir: defence minister
Ahsan Iqbal: interior minister
Khawaja Asif: foreign minister
Ishaq Dar: finance minister
Saira Afzal Tarar: health minister
Marriyum Aurangzeb: information minister
Darshan Laal: interprovincial coordination minister
Balighur Rehman: religious affairs minister
Saad Rafique: railways minister
Lt Gen (retd) Abdul Qadir Baloch: states and frontier regions (safron) minister
Former interior minister Chaudhry Nisar has been left out of Abbasi's cabinet.
Talal Chaudhry, Daniyal Aziz, Abdur Rehman Kanju, Arshad Leghari, Hafiz Abdul Karim, Jawed Ali and Ikram Khan are expected to be appointed ministers of state, the sources said.
The latest development comes hours after the PML-N's top brass held two back-to-back consultative meetings at Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif's Donga Gali residence.
The party has been deliberating over membership of the new cabinet over the past few days, as well as its contender for the upcoming NA-120 by-poll for the seat left vacant by ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
The federal cabinet was dissolved after Sharif stepped down following a landmark Supreme Court ruling on the Panama Papers case.
The court in its July 28 verdict concluded that Sharif had been 'dishonest' by not declaring in his nomination papers for the 2013 General Election ─ as required under Section 12(2)(f) of the Representation of the People Act (ROPA), 1976 ─ a salary of 10,000 dirhams receivable as chairman of the board of Dubai-based company Capital FZE owned by his son Hassan Nawaz.
Following the prime minister's ouster, PML-N leader Shahid Khaqan Abbasi was nominated as the party's choice for interim prime minister. He was elected premier by MNAs on Tuesday, and took oath the same day.
Abbasi, in his maiden speech to the National Assembly following his election, put forward his vision to improve the socio-economic conditions and security situation in the country, showing that he has some personal ambitions apart from PML-N guidelines.
Otherwise reserved and media-shy Abbasi, who surprised members and visitors alike with his wit and backhanded attacks on opponents, vowed to broaden the tax net to include every affluent individual, "including those sitting in the house".
He also vowed to take steps to improve education, health and agriculture sectors in the country.
"Be it the government, bureaucracy, opposition or the intelligence agencies — we are in the same boat, and a hole in this boat will sink everyone," he said.
"I am the country’s prime minister. If I am here for 45 days, I will do 45 months of work in this time," he promised.I’m looking at the life support stats and I can still hear the computer’s voice in my head, even though I disabled it hours ago, it’s right there in red text and my mind automatically fills in the blanks, that gender-neutral voice, the matter-of-fact way in which it would be reading aloud to me, “Oxygen levels, twelve percent. Situation critical. Return to base immediately.” As if I needed a reminder.
It’s one of these situations I’ve only read about in cheap sci-fi, but I can’t even panic anymore. That’s it. I’m like two days from the nearest base, no other craft nearby. I don’t know what to do. I got out the spacesuit, I hooked up the suit’s oxygen to the ship’s air supply. And what did that give me, twenty extra minutes?
I mean, I guess I could hold out hope that the monitor is malfunctioning, that maybe there’s more air in here than the ship’s capable of reading. But I don’t think so, and yeah, I went through emergency protocol, right, I did every step, right? Is there something I’m missing? Because I don’t think so. I think … I turned the oxygen down, OK. That bought me an hour and a half, but I’m definitely feeling it, a little light-headed.
What else? I did the spacesuit, right? Maybe it’s better if I just crank it back up again, I mean, what’s the ideal situation? Would I rather have three and a half hours of regular oxygen levels or six and three quarters hours of what it’s currently set to right now? Either way, I’m dead. And six and three quarters hours, it’s like, I don’t have a headache right now, but I’ll definitely have a headache in an hour or two. I don’t think I want to go out with a headache.
Maybe if I could get it to five hours. I won’t have to start really freaking out for another three. Shit, this is bad. I’m still trying to piece together what happened, autopilot was on, right, it must have been a really, perfectly timed piece of debris or asteroid or whatever. And why didn’t the computer seal the leak right away? I don’t know. I have no idea if there’s any justifying this.
And I sent out the distress, right, but that doesn’t matter, they’re not going to get it until it’s too late. OK, I’ve got to stop freaking out here, I’ll have plenty of time to freak out when there’s no time left. What can I do for five hours? I’m not going to watch a movie. I guess I could watch a movie. Do I really want to zone out though? My last moments of existence? What should I be doing?
Do I want to like reflect on life? I don’t know. I don’t want to get myself bummed out here. You know it’s like whenever this stuff happens in a movie, there’s always one obvious solution that’s never obvious until right when it looks like there’s nothing that’s left to do but give up and die. But this is worse, man, it’s like I almost wish that I could give up here, but I’m still stuck on that idea, like if I just keep looking through this emergency manual, something’s going to pop out at me.
I don’t think it’s going to happen. I wish once in my life I had made an effort to pay attention to one of those artsy movies where nothing winds up working out in the end. But no, just blockbusters for me, and now I can’t turn it off, that never say die voice in my head, always banking on that happy ending. It’s crazy, man, it’s like when I found my old lock from high school, I was positive if I stared at it long enough, the combination would come back to me, and I’d start in with some random numbers, but nothing. Whatever was in there, that’s gone.
I’m fucking dead. I wish I could override the computer and just get it over with, because I don’t know, I’m trying to stay calm here but I can’t do it, I wish it were at least cold in here or something, but it’s just the oxygen that got hit, not the heat, not whatever it is that powers this stupid monitor in front of me. I don’t want to keep staring ahead at the oxygen levels, it’s going down in real time before my eyes, but it’s so slow, I’m conscious of every second and … did I mention how I can’t get the computer’s voice out of my head? And it won’t let me just cut the air, I’ll black out, I can’t believe there’s nothing stronger in this med-kit than ibuprofen and, fuck, am I getting a headache? Or is this just a freak-out headache? Maybe I’ll just pump it up, all the oxygen, whatever, an hour and a half, I’ll put on a movie, I won’t ever have to worry about how it ends, just get me nice and oxygened up here, endings are the worst part anyway, at least I’ll be comfortable, at least it’s warm in here.The Islamic State militant group has released a guide to the capture, punishment and rape of female non-believers. It outlines how to use them as their sex slaves and also justifies child rape.
The guide appears in the form of questions and answers about how to capture and subjugate woman of other beliefs.
The sickening list appears to have been printed on December 3 by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS)in-house publishers for their“Research and Fatwa Department”.
The document has been translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, an NGO based in Washington DC.
Researchers from the anti-extremism think tank Quilliam told the Independent that they believed it “can be traced back to some of ISIS’s most active propagandists.”
READ MORE: British women oversee ISIS abuse, sexual slavery of Yazidi girls
It’s known the Islamic State has kidnapped more than 2,500 women, and another 4,600 are missing.
In their twisted, medieval interpretation of Islam the document makes crystal clear how these woman are treated, and that such treatment is permissible because the captives are non-Muslims.
The rules then state that it’s alright to rape a slave “immediately after taking possession of her” and that it is “permissible to have intercourse with the female slave who hasn’t reached puberty if she is fit for intercourse.”
In the simplistic document, called ‘Questions and Answers on Taking Captives and Slaves’, slave woman are referred to as al-Sabi and they can only be taken from ‘ahl al-harb’, a group of people with whom the IS considers itself at war – in other words, anyone who doesn’t follow their extreme interpretation of the Koran.
Among some of the points on the list were: "It is permissible to beat the female slave as a form of darb ta'deeb [disciplinary beating], but it is forbidden to use darb al-takseer [literally, breaking beating], [darb] al-tashaffi [beating for the purpose of achieving gratification], or [darb] al-ta'dheeb [torture beating]. Further, it is forbidden to hit the face."
While another also said “A male or female slave's running away [from their master] is among the gravest of sins…"
“The content, while it is abhorrent and shocking, is not surprising – we know that IS ideologues have justified and legitimated slavery in past publications,” Charlie Winter, from the Qulliam Foundation, told the Independent.
READ MORE: Pope brands ISIS violence in Syria, Iraq ‘grave sin against God’
The pamphlet emerged at the same time as information about young British female Muslims came to light. These women have used social media to boast about joining Islamic State’s terrifying all-female police force, which dole out beatings and manage brothels where thousands of Yazidi women are kept after being sold for just $42.
The Islamic State believes that Yazidis are devil worshipers and are therefore worse than ‘people of the book’ such as Christians and Jews, who can escape imprisonment by paying a monthly tax. Yazidis, however, are not able to pay their way out of jail.
The Yazids live in the north of Iraq and north east of Syria, who follow the ancient Yazidi religion.
The IS price list for slaves ranks the cost of a woman by age, so while a woman aged 40-50 would sell for just 50,000 dinars or $43, a girl aged 10-20 would be worth 150,000 dinars ($125) and a child under nine would sell for 200,000 dinars ($166).Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Friends of the Family Banquet in Des Moines, Iowa, Nov. 9. (Justin Hayworth/Associated Press)
The musings of Sarah Palin always make for a target-rich environment. Whether promoting a book or just spouting off about things she doesn’t know much about, the half-term former governor of Alaska and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee turned best-selling author and reality television star never fails to bring the absurd to her endeavors.
Take, for instance, Palin’s interview with Jake Tapper. Here’s what she had to say when asked by the CNN anchor for her thoughts on Pope Francis.
I’m kind of trying to follow what his agenda is. You know, I’m surprised he came out with a couple of things in the media. But, then again, I’m not one to trust the media’s interpretation of somebody’s message. But having read through media outlets … he’s had some statements that to me sound kind of liberal, has taken me aback, has kind of surprised me. Unless I really dig deep into what his messaging is and do my own homework, I’m not going to just trust what I hear in the media.
And I’m not going to hold my breath until she does her own homework on what the “lamestream Pontiff” (h/t Fred Hiatt) means. That would be considered suicide, even though the homework is as simple as reading through the transcript of his extraordinary interview with the magazine America: The national Catholic Review from September.
All that stuff about not judging gays, being one with the poor or having compassion for those who go through tough spiritual times must be lost on Palin. But if recent reports are to be believed, the Pope’s message is leading to a resurgence of the Catholic Church.
Gov. Chris Christie celebrates his reelection. (Mel Evans/Associated Press)
But Palin was particularly rich and hypocritical with comments about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R). They stemmed from her remarks about Hillary Clinton and sexism on the campaign trail, particularly about references to her appearance. Tapper remarked that Christie gets comments on his appearance all the time. “That’s because it’s been extreme,” Palin said. “So it’s hard for some people not to comment on it.”
Hearing this gave me a sense of deja vu. Three years ago this month, Palin blasted First Lady Michelle Obama for her “Let’s Move” campaign to combat childhood obesity:
Instead of a government thinking that they need to take over and make decisions for us according to some politician or politician’s wife’s priorities, just leave us alone, get off our back, and allow us as individuals to exercise our own God-given rights to make our own decisions and then our country gets back on the right track.
So much for leaving Christie alone and getting off his back as he exercises his “God-given right” to make his own dietary decisions. If I were Christie, I’d tell Palin what he told a caller who had the temerity to note that the then-new governor didn’t send his children to public school: “Hey, Gail? You know what? First off: It’s none of your business.”
If Palin possessed an ounce of class or statesmanship, she would have given the governor kudos for trying to get his weight under control. But, as we all know, that’s asking too much.
Follow Jonathan on Twitter: @CapehartjSea levels across the globe will rise faster than at any time throughout human history if the Earth’s warming continues beyond 2 degrees Celsius.
The Atlantic coast of North America will be one of the worst-hit areas as melting glaciers cause the sea level to rise over the next century, a new study published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds.
However, that rise is not expected to be uniform, as gravity and the movement of the ocean will play a role in how the water is distributed, and some areas will be hit worse than others. New York and other cities along the East Coast could see seas rise by more than 3 feet by the end of the century if the Earth warms by 4 or 5 degrees beyond preindustrial levels.
If the rate of carbon emissions continues unabated, the authors said, the globe would warm by 2 degrees and cause significant sea-level rise by 2040. It would be worse along the East Coast of North America and Norway, which are expected to experience a sea-level rise of about a foot. The relative speed of the sea’s rise means many areas won’t have time to adapt, researchers found. And from there, warming would accelerate even faster.
“The coastal communities of rapidly expanding cities in the developing world and vulnerable tropical coastal ecosystems will have a very limited time to adapt to sea-level rises after the ‘2 degrees Celsius’ threshold is likely to be reached,” said Svetlana Jevrejeva, a researcher at the National Oceanography Centre in Liverpool, England, and lead author of the study.
The sea-level rise comes as the Earth’s record-breaking warmth is expected to become the “new normal,” according to another study published this week in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. While 2015 was the hottest year on record, it could be the average within the next decade if carbon emissions continue to rise at their current rate, it found. And even if countries take action to limit carbon dioxide, humanity may have already locked in the increased warmth by 2040.
But limiting emissions now will mean some of the regions of the globe are not locked in for the new levels of warmth, and that they can still have significant variability.
“It gives us hope to know that if we act quickly to reduce greenhouse gases, seasonal extremes might never enter a new normal state in the 21st century at regional levels for the Southern Hemisphere summer and Northern Hemisphere winter,” said Sophie Lewis, a researcher at the Australian National University.
Millions of urban dwellers at risk
Nations that signed the Paris Agreement limiting warming to a maximum of 2 degrees are meeting this week in Morocco to put the accord into motion. Meanwhile, the United Nations has already cautioned that the emission targets countries voluntarily set may not be strict enough to meet the 2-degree goal.
Two degrees of warming is expected to cause an average global sea-level rise of 8 inches, but virtually all coastal areas will see more of a rise, Jevrejeva found. If warming exceeds 2 degrees by 2100, as some climate scientists worry it might, about 80 percent of the global coastline could experience a rise in sea levels of 6 feet. Such a rapid rise in sea levels is unprecedented since the dawn of the Bronze Age about 5,000 years ago, according to the study.
The research takes further the potential for sea-level rise posed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which argued that sea-level rise of 11 to 38 inches is possible by 2100. Many climate scientists have since claimed that estimate is too conservative.
Absent a concerted effort to limit warming, cities and island nations across the globe are at risk, researchers found.
“Coastal communities, notably rapidly expanding cities in the developing world; small island states; United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Cultural World Heritage sites; and vulnerable tropical coastal ecosystems will have a very limited time after midcentury to adapt to these rises,” they wrote.
The rise for New York is predicated on a warming of 5 degrees by 2100, which some researchers have contested may be too high. But at the upper scale of that level of warming, tens of millions of people around the world would be displaced. That includes “2.5 million living in low-lying areas of Miami; 2.1 million in Guangzhou [in China]; 1.8 million in Mumbai; and more than 1 million each in Osaka [in Japan], Tokyo, New Orleans, New York, and [Vietnam’s] Ho Chi Minh City,” researchers contended.
The study is part of a growing body of research that looks for possible scenarios that involve the potential for catastrophic sea-level rise, but more attention should be paid to the loss of land ice, as well, said Tad Pfeffer, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. While researchers typically focus on the loss of glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland, the loss of land ice in other spots across the globe is now contributing to sea-level rise at almost the same rate as the Arctic’s melting ice, he said. It’s the full scope of the current glacial loss that concerns political leaders and policymakers because it has already presented a pressing need to be addressed, he said.
“This near-term time scale is the time of greatest concern to decisionmakers,” he said. “Research that reaches out to 2100 and beyond is scientifically exciting, but really of secondary importance to the people who are trying to make sense of the science for decisionmaking.”
Reprinted from ClimateWire with permission from E&E News. E&E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net.'Sad man with a broken retro TV' [Shutterstock]
By Lisa Richwine and Liana B. Baker
(Reuters) – U.S. broadcaster CBS went dark for millions of Time Warner Cable subscribers on Friday in the nation’s two largest markets and other cities after |
/ 15 PUG. Cross-classes include PUG/LNC. White Mage – Healer. Requires 30 CNJ / 15 ACN. Cross-classes include ACN/THM.
– Healer. Requires 30 CNJ / 15 ACN. Cross-classes include ACN/THM. Black Mage – Ranged DPS. Requires 30 THM / 15 ARC. Cross-classes include ARC/ACN.
– Ranged DPS. Requires 30 THM / 15 ARC. Cross-classes include ARC/ACN. Summoner – Ranged DPS. Requires 30 ACN / 15 THM. Cross-classes include THM/CNJ.
– Ranged DPS. Requires 30 ACN / 15 THM. Cross-classes include THM/CNJ. Scholar – Healer. Requires 30 ACN / 15 CNJ. Cross-classes include CNJ/THM.
Ability Sharing
So you might have heard me talk about cross-class abilities. FFXIV is unique in that each class gains a cross-class slot every 5 levels. In these slots, you can equip abilities from other classes you’ve leveled. This allows you to complement your playstyle with additional abilities not native to your current class. Please note, while a soul crystal is equipped and a job is activated, you only get one slot every 10 levels. You can also only choose abilities from the two classes corresponding to that specific job. These are restrictions put in place to reinforce the intended role specialization of jobs.
Stat Definitions
Primary
Each race/subrace has varying base stats. Please keep in mind that by the time you reach end game, these base stats are trivial. I would highly recommend simply playing the race you enjoy the most, but if you are stuck on min/maxing, you can find the base stats chart here.
Strength (STR) – Increases Attack Power, which directly increases melee physical damage. Primary stat for Lancer, Pugilist, Maruader and Gladiator. Also increases the amount of damage mitigated when blocking or parrying an attack.
– Increases Attack Power, which directly increases melee physical damage. Primary stat for Lancer, Pugilist, Maruader and Gladiator. Also increases the amount of damage mitigated when blocking or parrying an attack. Dexterity (DEX) – Increases Attack Power, which directly increases ranged physical damage. Primary stat for Archer and Bard. Also increases block and parry chance.
– Increases Attack Power, which directly increases ranged physical damage. Primary stat for Archer and Bard. Also increases block and parry chance. Vitality (VIT) – Increase Health Points (HP). Primary stat for Gladiator and Marauader.
– Increase Health Points (HP). Primary stat for Gladiator and Marauader. Intelligence (INT) – Increases Attack Magic Potency, which directly increases magic damage. Primary stat for Thaumaturge, Black Mage, Summoner and Arcanist.
– Increases Attack Magic Potency, which directly increases magic damage. Primary stat for Thaumaturge, Black Mage, Summoner and Arcanist. Mind (MND) – Increases Healing Magic Potency, which directly increases healing spells. Primary stat for Conjurer, White Mage and Scholar.
– Increases Healing Magic Potency, which directly increases healing spells. Primary stat for Conjurer, White Mage and Scholar. Piety (PIE) – Increases Magic Points (MP). Useful to Disciples of Magic.
Secondary
Offensive Properties
Accuracy – Increases chance to hit for all attacks.
– Increases chance to hit for all attacks. Critical Hit Rate – Increases critical hit chance for all attacks.
Increases critical hit chance for all attacks. Determination – Increases amount of damage from all abilities, auto-attacks included. Also increases potency of incoming heals.
Defensive Properties
Defense – Reduces damage taken from physical attacks.
– Reduces damage taken from physical attacks. Parry – Increases chance to block and parry.
– Increases chance to block and parry. Magic Defense – Reduces damage taken from magic attacks.
Physical Properties
Attack Power – Increases potency of physical attacks. Strength increases this for melee. Dexterity increases this for Ranged.
– Increases potency of physical attacks. Strength increases this for melee. Dexterity increases this for Ranged. Skill Speed – Reduces cast time and cooldown of weaponskills.
Elemental Resistances
Fire – Reduces damage taken from fire attacks.
Reduces damage taken from fire attacks. Ice – Reduces damage taken from ice attacks.
– Reduces damage taken from ice attacks. Wind – Reduces damage taken from wind attacks.
– Reduces damage taken from wind attacks. Earth – Reduces damage taken from earth attacks.
Reduces damage taken from earth attacks. Lightning – Reduces damage taken from lightning attacks.
– Reduces damage taken from lightning attacks. Water – Reduces damage taken from water attacks.
Note: Deity selection during character creation affects elemental resistances. See chart here.
Physical Resistances
Slashing – Reduces damage taken from slashing attacks.
Reduces damage taken from slashing attacks. Piercing – Reduces damage taken from piercing attacks.
– Reduces damage taken from piercing attacks. Blunt – Reduces damage taken from blunt attacks.
Mental Properties
Attack Magic Potency – Increases potency of offensive magic attacks. This is increased by Intelligence.
Increases potency of offensive magic attacks. This is increased by Intelligence. Healing Magic Potency – Increases potency of healing spells. This is increased by Mind.
– Increases potency of healing spells. This is increased by Mind. Spell Speed – Reduces cast time and cooldown of spells.
PvP Properties
Morale – Reduces damage taken from other players during PvP.
Gathering
GP – Gathering Points – Used for gathering actions, similar to MP consumption.
– Gathering Points – Used for gathering actions, similar to MP consumption. Gathering – Increases chance to receive an item while gathering.
– Increases chance to receive an item while gathering. Perception – Increases chance for the gathered item to be high quality.
Crafting Stats
CP – Crafting Points – Used for crafting actions. Regenerates after completing a craft.
– Crafting Points – Used for crafting actions. Regenerates after completing a craft. Craftsmanship – Increases progress percentage generated when using crafting actions.
– Increases progress percentage generated when using crafting actions. Control – Increases quality percentage generated when using crafting actions.
Levequests
These are task-based repeatable quests obtained from an NPC you can find in town and at various camps. Levequests provide a means of gaining quick experience outside of the main story line. Once you complete a levequest, an allowance is consumed. You generate 3 allowances every 12 hours (5am PDT and 5pm PDT), with a cap of 100. Once all allowances are used, you can no longer accept levequests, so plan accordingly. Levequest difficulty can also be adjusted before you begin one. This allows you to do still gain decent experience for a lower level levequests or while in a party.
FATE (Full Active Time Event)
These are the dynamic events that pop up throughout the world. They are typically fairly quick and yield experience, gil, and Grand Company seals once you have joined one.
Guildhests
These are very quick instance-based encounters completed in a party of four. These can be initiated via the Duty Finder or speaking with a Battlewarden. Please note, these yield large experience and gil upon first completion, then considerably less after that.
Dungeons
These are your typical dungeon instances, also completed in a party of four. Dungeons can be initiated via the Duty Finder or visiting the actual entrance of the dungeon. They typically last between 30-60 minutes and yield great experience and generally the best gear you’ll find while leveling.
Primals
These are encounters you can queue for via the Duty Finder that puts you and your party against a notable Primal in the FFXIV world. These are generally part of progressing through the storyline.
Raids
There are two different types of raids, 8-man raids and Alliance raids, which are 24-man. Raids will also have a Hard Mode setting, catering to the higher geared, more skilled groups. These raids will generally yield the best gear.
Hunting Log
This is a log of level-based tasks you should try to complete while you are leveling. Each entry in the hunting log asks you to kill X number of Y monsters. Once completed, you earn experience. The hunting log is individual for each class. So your progression on one class will be completely separate from another.
Limit Breaks
These are party-based actions that are to be triggered by a single member in the party to help the group during an encounter. These can be used as a means of pushing extra damage, suppressing incoming damage, or save your party with a clutch heal in a moment of need. Coordinate with your party to decide who should use their limit break and when.
Physical Attack (PGL, MNK, LNC, DRG) -Delivers a physical attack. This is single target and would be best used on a boss.
(PGL, MNK, LNC, DRG) -Delivers a physical attack. This is single target and would be best used on a boss. Magic Attack (THM, BLM, ACN, SMN) – Delivers a magic attack. This is an AOE attack and would be most beneficial for taking care of adds.
(THM, BLM, ACN, SMN) – Delivers a magic attack. This is an AOE attack and would be most beneficial for taking care of adds. Defensive (GLA, PLD, MRD, WAR) – Reduces damage taken by all party members.
(GLA, PLD, MRD, WAR) – Reduces damage taken by all party members. Healing (CNJ, WHM, ARC, BRD, SCH) – Restore HP of all nearby party members.
Macros
Macros are something you should absolutely familiarize yourself with. These are essentially custom commands you tie to a button on your action bar. These can be anything from swapping equipment sets to letting the party know if you’ve interrupted a monster. There are plenty of guides around to learn the specifics, possibly more to come at a later date.
Marking and Assisting
When it comes to grouping with other players, it’s important to understand the value of working together. The FFXIV UI offers the ability to mark targets with symbols. Using these symbols, you can coordinate together and create a plan of action.
On top of marking targets, you can assist other players. Assisting (/assist) allows you to target the target of the person you’re assisting. For instance, while doing a trash pull with multiple monsters, it might be a good idea to /assist the Tank so you don’t pull aggro on a monster they have no threat on.
Materia
Alright, so this is where it gets a little confusing – so I don’t want to get too deep into materia. I will, however, explain what it is and why it’s important.
Materia is an item you can place in weapons and armor to enhance the stats of that piece of gear. There are 5 grades of materia, based on the quality/level. Placing materia in an item’s materia slot is referred to as Materia Melding and can be learned at level 20. There is also an action called Advanced Materia Melding, learned at level 25, which allows you to add materia to an item without an available slot at a high risk of failure. Please note, there are stat caps per item, so buffing the stats of an item via Advanced Materia Melding is moderated. Please note that to meld a materia to an item, you must meet the DoH requirements for that item. Each item requires a specific job requirement to be able to meld materia to it. Pro tip: Make friends.
You gather materia via a process called Materia Assimilation. This action is learned around level 18 via your main quest line and allows you to convert a 100% soulbound item into materia. To meld the materia to an item, you must have the following:
Materia Melding ability (level 20)
A materia to meld into the item
Carbonized Matter (a harvested item from Miners and Botanists)
Just so you know…
Grand Companies are the factions in the game. You are able to freely switch between these, so don’t stress if you think you made the wrong choice.
Free Companies are the “player guilds” in FFXIV. Each player is limited to one, much like traditional MMO guilds.
Linkshells are essentially just channels. You can invite your friends to linkshells and chat together even if you’re not in the same Free Company.
Airships are a means of quickly traveling between each of the major cities.
You can change the name of your personal Chocobo by speaking with the Chocobokeep in any major city.
Spiritbonding is an attribute earned while wearing an item. To quickly increase spiritbonding, complete dungeons while the item is equipped.
Tips while leveling…
Follow the main story line!
Always have a food/drink buff. This will provide a 3% experience increase and can be purchased from vendors and earned as quest rewards.
Preferably save some side quests for when you decided to level another class. Unless of course you’re racing to level up a specific class, then doing these would yield considerable experience.
Pay attention to the tutorials and hint dialogs – these are important.
You gain bonus experience to all classes lower than your highest battle class, once you unlock a second battle class. Be smart and utilize this bonus in your efforts.
Attune to every Aetheryte Crystal you come across. These will allow you to quickly access the Aetheryte Network and teleport quickly among each of the cities.
Talk with every Chocobokeep. These are NPCs that are linked to each other and allow you to quickly travel between them. If you are familiar with “flight paths” and “flight masters” in World of Warcraft, these are the equivalent.
Conclusion
Well, that wraps it up. I’d really appreciate your feedback regarding what you thought of the guide, how it could be improved and what other types of guides you’d like to see in the future. This is a new game and we’re all learning together. Sharing information with each other will allow us all to be more informed and overall better players!
If you have still yet to find a home in FFXIV, we have formed a new gaming community and our first game will be FFXIV! Tier Two is not only a multi-gaming community, but also a Free Company on the Leviathan server. If you are interested in joining, head over to our website and apply today!
Thanks all for taking the time to read through this guide – I truly do appreciate it and I hope it at least offers some help while we all venture into a new world. If you’d like to keep in touch, you’re welcome to find me on Twitter by following @Accomp. Thanks all!
Revisions
08/08/13 – Added more clarity over materia melding requirements.
SourcesA abnormally large toll booth sits on the side of the road. A well dressed troll mans the booth. Instead of asking for a toll, the troll gives each traveler 5 gold pieces and wishes them a safe journey.Igor's covered and enclosed wagon has broken down. He is hastily repairing the broken wheel as the wagon is shaking and his horses are bucking. The wagon filled with ice blocks and a recently sedated yeti has stirred from his sleep.This stretch of road is filled with leaves and branches. A dozen ankle holes have been dug throughout the trail. Anyone walking on this stretch of road must make a dexterity check to avoid twisting an ankle. A twisted ankle reduces movement by 1/4. A cure spell or 1d3 days of rest will eliminate the penalty.You hear a voice in the bushes. A wife is nursing her husband who broke his leg. They are from a nearby town and are on the run from a gang of tax collectors and their goons. Her husbands debt is so much that his life is forfeit.A Gypsy caravan is parked on the side of the trail. A smattering of tents and wagons fill the rest stop. A group of baccae has been travelling with the Gypsies and reveling in wine and spirits. Anyone who approaches the caravan will have a baccae invite them to party with them. First refusal irritates the baccae, a second refusal sends it into a rage.You stumble upon a boulder with a vaguely humanoid face. The boulder whispers that he knows all. The boulder is actually a trapped elemental spirit who been on this road for a thousand years and extremely lonely. He has vast knowledge of everyone who has traveled this road and is willing to share knowledge in exchange for companionship. It is lonely being a rock.A greased pig is dashing down for the road in a panic. Two farmers are settling a bet on who can capture the pig the quickest. The group is invited to participate. Winner gets the finest swine in the land.. Dream Wolves stalk the road. A distant howl has been known to put travelers to sleep. A save is needed or you doze off. You awake in shadowy version of the road and terrain. Your physical and mental stats swap places as Wolves of Ethereal descend upon your location. You can't break the slumber until the wolves are dead or your sleep turns eternal.The roadside inn has a problem. It has been shrunk to 1/20th its size and its patrons are in a panic. A Witch has curse them for stealing fruit from her garden. They beg the group to parley with the Witch and negotiate an end to the curse.On the side of the road is a lemonade stand. Two dopplegangers are disguised as teenage girls. They are selling lemonade to raise coin for the local orphanage. Of course, the lemonade is poisoned.An exhausted knight returning home from a distant war. He believes he is the lone survivor of his unit and paranoid that he is being trailed.A barnacle covered galley frigate boat is overturned in the middle of the road. The boat is landlocked and many miles away from a body of water. The group can hear movement from within the boat.For more random encounters and tables of inspiration, check out my Random Encounter IndexAfter the tenor Juan Diego Flórez popped out his nine shining high C’s in “La Fille du Régiment” at the Metropolitan Opera on Monday night, the crowd rose and cheered. Mr. Flórez obliged with something not heard on the Met stage since 1994: a solo encore.
He sang the aria “Ah! Mes Amis” again, nailing the difficult note — a kind of tenor’s macho proving ground — nine more times. It was one of those thrilling moments that opera impresarios live for.
And, in this case, prepare for. Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said on Tuesday that he had asked Mr. Flórez weeks ago whether he would be prepared to repeat the aria, if the audience demanded. Mr. Flórez had already done so at other houses, including the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, where last year he became the first to violate an encore ban since 1933.
Photo
Mr. Flórez agreed to Mr. Gelb’s request, and the orchestra and chorus were warned. A system was established. Mr. Gelb kept an open line on the phone in his box to the stage manager. After the explosive reaction he gave the stage manager the go-ahead. The manager activated a podium light for the conductor, Marco Armiliato.
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Mr. Armiliato held out a questioning two fingers to Mr. Flórez. “He just smiled, and that means ‘Yes,’ ” the conductor said, although Mr. Flórez said yesterday that he did not remember giving a signal. (After the encore, he jokingly held up a third finger.)This is a reprint, with permission, of my Stolypin column from Intellinews Business New Europe: the original was published on 16 November 2015. I have made one change as in hindsight I wished I had used ‘Normal Russia’ instead of ‘Real Russia’ for the essentially working substructure. On what I call ‘fantasy fatigue,’ Andrew Wilson has drawn an entertaining football analogy with his ‘Mourinho Effect.’
There have been many attempts to understand Russia by subdividing it. Is it a feudal Russia of rulers and ruled, or the four Russias posited by scholar Natalya Zubarevich, divided geographically and socio-economically? My own sense is that alongside such formulations, we also need to see the country and society divided into three, and the competition between them – one as much philosophical as practical – is likely to become all the sharper in 2016, defining Russia’s future trajectory, and the eventual post-Putin order.
The Three Russias
However little attention it may get in foreign coverage, Russia has a working, rational state. This is not some neo-fascist imperialism, nor an out-of-control kleptocracy where everything is plundered and funnelled into foreign bank accounts. There are inefficiencies, there is petty corruption – apparently on the rise again, as a result of officials’ shrinking real incomes – but in the main, the country works. Roads are paved, refuse is collected, teachers teach and police officers police. Most people essentially want to do their jobs, live – that perennial Russian dream and mantra – a “normal” life.
However, above Normal Russia squats the smaller, but vastly richer Kleptocratic Russia. This ugly parasite is much of the time happy to let its host do its thing, but has ultimate authority over the structures of state, routines of life and workings of justice, when it chooses to exert it. This is the realm of the embezzling senior officials, the pampered sons and daughters of the mighty, the businesspeople who depend as much on sweetheart deals and covert cartels as any real acumen.
Yet this country cannot simply be dismissed as a kleptocracy, because at the very top of the stepped ziggurat of national power lies the smallest and, perhaps, most dangerous and pernicious incarnation: Ideological Russia. It is hard to doubt that, whatever his motivations during his earlier presidencies, Vladimir Putin is driven now not by personal economic interest but an ideological programme, a vision of a nation restored to its due place in history and the world (and, by extension, a vision of his appropriate legacy). He has surrounded himself with a small coterie of like-minded cohorts – or at least figures willing and able to play that role – and they are ultimately in charge.
The Kleptocrats get to reach in to Normal Russia when they choose, to divert a procurement contract here, dictate a court decision there, but the Ideologists in turn have the final say. Ever since Crimea, the primary thrust of national policy has been towards confrontational geopolitics which have hit at the heart of the kleptocrats’ interests, grinding an already-suffering economy downwards and limiting their scope to move themselves and their assets at will. Beyond that, whereas in the past these two blocs collaborated smoothly, there are now indications that the Ideologues see some of the Kleptocrats and their parasitic habits as a growing problem in an age when dwindling resources need to be focused more directly on the ideological project. Witness, presumably, Russian Railways chief Vladimir Yakunin’s dismissal and the increasing evidence of a not-as-bogus-as-usual anti-corruption campaign on the way.
Of course, no such simple pattern can be exact and accurate. There are individuals high up in the system, from example, from cabinet ministers to Central Bank chair Elvira Nabiullina, whose technocratic instincts seem closest to those of Normal Russia. Likewise, even Ideologists still seem happy to help their children find comfortable and highly lucrative positions, from whence to steal with savage abandon. However, as a broad model for trying to understand the disparate and often contradictory forces working to shape Russia’s future, this seems to have some value.
Widening gaps in 2016
Although it is probably wishful thinking to expect dramatic and positive outcomes over the course of the coming year, for a variety of reasons 2016 is likely to see the relationships between the three Russias become increasingly tense, laying the groundwork for change to come.
On 18 September, elections will be held for the Duma, the lower house, which will in many ways also be a referendum on the regime. There is no question of United Russia (and its affiliated pseudo-parties) losing their control over the chamber, both because of the propaganda campaign likely to precede the vote and also, where necessary, judicial rigging of the process and the count. We can, for example, expect to see the more vocal and effective Kremlin critics systematically excluded, vilified and pressurised. How the vote will count, though, is that it forces the state to mobilise the masses – and the extent to which it has to struggle to produce the results decreed by the Kremlin will provide insiders with an index of true popular discontent.
After all, Putin’s sky-high personal ratings tell us little about the public mood. Arguably, the growing rash of local labour and social protests, from truckers blocking roads to demonstrations against rising utilities prices, are a better measure, as inflation, wage pressures and the effects of social spending cuts all come to bite.
The Ideologists may be tempted to crank up their propaganda about a Russia isolated and embattled, but there is a real risk of ‘fantasy fatigue’ if this is just a matter of intemperate words and invented threats. On the other hand, manufacturing or introducing Russia into crises abroad to give substance to the hype, from a renewed Ukraine campaign to picking fights over the Arctic sea lanes, would not only deplete dwindling resources but likely only deepen its economic and diplomatic isolation.
This is unlikely to please the Kleptocrats, squeezed between economic stagnation, popular dissatisfaction and Kremlin adventurism. However, at present political power trumps all in Russia: the rich are not so much wealthy in their own right so much as the temporary stewards of those assets until the day comes when the Kremlin seeks to reassign them. To this end, they have a perverse incentive to want to see genuine rule of law and secure property rights come to Russia, and an end to its geopolitical struggle with the West.
An archetypal bankrobber wants the police force to be inefficient and corrupt – until he is rich enough to own banks, at which point he wants the state to protect his ill-gotten gains. So too, a kleptocratic generation of Russian oligarchs, minigarchs and boyar-bureaucrats who have done well thanks to Putin may well come to feel that their interests have come to diverge from his.
And what about the poor Russian people, the perennially disenfranchised? There seems little prospect of their rising against the regime, literally or metaphorically (rising, after all, for what?). Instead, theirs are the weapons of the weak: refusing to conform, turning to the underground economy, passively resisting to behave as their masters would want. This does not go unnoticed, and will be visible – at least to those who see the real, uncooked books – in indices from labour unrest and productivity to suicide rates and support for local civic initiatives.
In itself, this will not force change on the elite. However, it may scare the Kleptocrats and technocrats. If the economy worsens, if the elections prove tougher to massage, and if the Kremlin looks increasingly willing to sacrifice their interests in the name of an ideological project, at some point they will begin to look for ways to protect them.
And here’s the inevitable prediction buried in all these “year ahead” articles. It may well not come in 2016, but whenever Putin is replaced or succeeded, it will not be with another Ideologist, but with a Kleptocrat. The interests of the elite will take precedence over the masses’ but also over Russian geopolitical grandeur, and this new regime will eagerly seek to mend bridges with the West.
As a generation of ruthless exploiters gives way to their more pampered and less sharp-toothed children, the pressure to create reliable protections for property rights (however that property may have been acquired in the first place) will only grow. Meanwhile, ordinary Russians and their technocrat fellow-travellers in the elite will be looking for change, and thus the possibility – no more – is that a Kleptocratic presidency may in turn give way, some day, sometime, to a generation finally eager to make real the promises of 1991, of building genuine, working political and economic democracy. Perhaps.When I studied at RMIT I saw students from a broad range of fields that had made the shift into Information Technology (IT) – photographers, project managers, trained economists, teachers. Even my undergraduate degree was in music.
Yet, for all those students that completed the same course as me – a Master of Information Technology – most of them had changed back to their original field and weren't successful at transitioning from their old careers into their new one. Even though they were now qualified as Masters students in the field of IT.
With university enrolments for IT and Computer Science degrees, we have seen a steady growth of the number of students commencing these courses since 2011.
This has coincided with new Masters degrees that can be completed by coursework with an undergraduate degree in any field, instead of only a traditional Computer Science degree.
Now, I respect that the changing nature of the IT Industry is a particularly difficult one for many people to keep up with.
To take what feels like the daily evolving culture of the industry, then try to not only navigate those changes, but to upgrade a major universities' syllabus to try and reflect them, just isn't going to work.
I, however, was one of the lucky ones. I managed to not only secure an internship, but a good one that gave me the industry specific training that I needed to be useful to an actual tech business. Skills that out of course graduates should know about, but were barely, if ever, touched on at uni.
This is a short intro to what I think are some of the most important things I learnt during my internship and during the first six months after finishing my Masters.
Learn about Code Repositories – Git
It was absolutely ludicrous that no where in my course, before I started my internship, had the concept of a code repository like Git had even been mentioned. I had completed a subject called 'Advanced Programming' and collaborated code on other projects with students, but still had no idea what a repository was.
Imagine the horror on my colleagues' face when a new intern rocks up on his first day, only to reply with the blankest of stares when asked to pull down the repository from 'GitHub'.
The most ridiculous part about this is that instead of learning how to add code to a repository, we were taught to back up our code by zipping it and emailing it to our personal RMIT email accounts. Instead of using the industry standard for code sharing and version control, we were told to send emails. It still sounds insane saying it out loud. A simple crash course on Git, (http://www.sitepoint.com/git-for-beginners/) even if we had to pull a zipped copy of the repository down to submit it through the online portal, would have made a lot more sense.
Start with the basics and practice, practice
When I started my internship, besides having been exposed to quite a few things and having a good grasp on the fundamentals of what programming was, I had no real programming value.
I remember being asked in my interview what I thought I was currently worth as a programmer. Even though I thought at the time, "well, $10 an hour seems fair for my skills," I knew I was still a fair way off being actually employable in the real world.
So, at the beginning of my internship, after being given my first assignment of 'learning front end web-dev', I didn't just work hard, I also studied and spent all my time working on a short course that would train me in all the front end web-dev stuff I needed.
I used teamtreehouse.com which has a free trial, excellent videos as well as a great'stream' that covers all the required basics of Front-End Web Development. I drove my housemates insane listening to all those videos at twice the speed all day everyday, but after two weeks I had given myself the basic skills to actually start being useful to the business.
If you are really struggling for where to start completely and you still can't get the basics down I highly recommend doing beginner courses in a lot of different languages.
I tried to learn Ruby, Python, Javascript, C++ and even C (although that was a dramatic failure) before I finally was introduced and settled on Java at Uni.
The good thing about this approach was that I was constantly going over the very basics of programming, how to set variables, how to declare functions, how to write for loops, something that at the time felt tedious because I had just learnt how to do that in another language, was actually extremely beneficial later on because I had a really strong understanding of these fundamental programming constructs.
Learn to ask the right questions
Something I found out very early on when working with people in the IT industry is that people really like sharing knowledge.
While you can still go out there and find the know-it-all computer genius, generally coders like sharing their knowledge with other people, normally because that's how they learnt in the first place.
What I did find important, however, was knowing when and what questions I should actually ask the people around me.
Most implementation questions, I found, while the person I asked would know how to do resolve my issue, would require a large amount of context into what I was doing while simultaneously destroying their work flow. Sometimes, as a rookie, that is going to be unavoidable otherwise you will sit there for hours staring at your code achieving nothing.
However the first call is to always try and find the answer yourself. This is such a critical step to learning to become a better programmer, because when you start working for a company you are essentially being paid to implement things. You will need to know how to solve those issues when a library doesn't work by trawling through Stack Overflow and Google for answers. When you have scoured all possible sources to your knowledge, that is when you ask someone else 'How the hell do I do this?'.
After a while you will find you stop asking implementation questions like 'How do I do this', instead you will start asking higher level architecture or design questions such as 'Should I do this like this, or like this?'.
I constantly ask high level architecture questions that help me understand when to make certain system design choices. Those questions give me the broader, more general understanding of why it is a good idea to do things in a certain way, then when it comes to implementing them, if I get stuck I always have my old friend Google for advice there.
Other good advice
Here are a few other quick points of advice that I have been given that I feel have been really helpful to keep growing in my current role.
You are not a Front-end or Back-end Web Developer, you're a Software Engineer
This one certainly sounds high on the wanky side, but what it really means is that you aren't just someone that builds out HTML, CSS and Javascript. Instead, you can learn to solve any problem that's put in front of you. Be it writing an iPhone app in Swift, or writing a command line program in Python, a Software Engineer can figure out how to solve a problem regardless of the technology stack.
Try to use a variety of languages when possible
The classic programmer wars of which programming language is the best is ultimately frivolous.
Switching languages often, not only helps you reinforce the basic concepts of programming by trying to relearn, how to define a function in Python for example, but also increases your ability to read a larger variety of code as well as improve your versatility within an organisation.
Don't get bogged down in your tools
Much like the language wars, the code editing or IDE wars can be just as annoying.
You're using Sublime Text? Why aren't you using Brackets. Oh you're using Atom? Why not use Vim.
The bottom line is that, like programming languages, there are some tools that for specific tasks will make them more efficient then others. Otherwise just use what ever you are most comfortable with.
Think about what you are trying to do in plain English first
Sometimes it can be a great help to actually write down the steps of what you are trying to do in plain English.
Programming is a logic and sequence based problem solving game, but in code it can very quickly look confusing.
A nested for loop iterating through a 2D array with a bunch of equality checks inside them won't be very clear if it isn't commented well.
Write documentation on how to run, update and deploy your application
The number of times I have thanked my lucky stars that I have written documentation (on very strong advice from colleagues) about how to run and deploy one of our applications has been un-countable.
Coming back to a project after two months of working on something else where you have improved all the build processes can set you back a day trying to understand how things are wired together. Not to mention if some other poor sucker is trying to read through all your old, rookie code and piece together how everything is connected.
Every time you finish a new project, the previous one will look terrible
It's amazing how many times I have thought, damn this code is looking so fine, only to return to it a month or two later and say 'What the hell was I thinking?'.
Besides reiterating the above point of always write documentation, you will always think of something new that you want to try the next time you start a new project.
Trying new ways to structure things or more complicated architectures is a great way to teach yourself as you go, just remember that the first time you try it, it will always look messy.
Practice some more
Probably the most important piece of advice at all, you just gotta practice actually writing code.
Coming from a music background, this was something I could highly relate too. I honestly believe that the key to mastering a skill is putting in the hours learning the right techniques, at the right time, preferably in the right order.
If you practised coding for eight hours every day for six months, explored its possibilities, tried new things, failed but tried again, you would be a'very talented' coder in the eyes of many others.
In the end, making the jump from uni to work presents a few challenges.
You no longer have the urgency of assignments forcing you to study. You no longer really have the motivation of other students, waiting for you to finish that data structure before they can implement their piece of the puzzle.
Once you finish uni and you have decided you are going to head into the programming industry – even if you haven't found that job yet – get out there into the community. Go to meet-ups about everything and anything, contribute to an open source project on Github, come up with a really simple app or idea and try to implement it.
Going to university is really about the existential overview of how the IT industry works, to make the jump, what you will |
respected market analyst at Standpoint Research, believes that recent announcements such as the introduction of bitcoin futures contracts by derivatives exchange operator CME Group will accelerate the pace of global bitcoin adoption ahead of his already-bullish target.
“Every day more headlines are hitting the newswires on crypto,” Moas wrote in a note emailed to clients. “More countries are embracing it and the few obstacles that were standing in the way are falling down like dominoes.”
This is not the only time Moas has raised his bitcoin price target in recent months. Earlier this year, he set a $5,000 bitcoin price target, which he later raised to $7,500 during the market’s Q3 surge. Now, as the bitcoin price approaches that revised target, he has written a note to Standpoint clients advising them that he believes the bitcoin price will hit $11,000 in 2018.
But Moas does not think bitcoin will stop there. He expects that within 10 years at least 1% of all capital – an estimated $200 trillion – will move into crypto assets, raising the total cryptocurrency market cap tenfold to $2 trillion. Assuming bitcoin holds a 50% market share, the bitcoin price would be roughly $50,000. That’s his conservative estimate.
My aggressive crypto market cap target is actually 2% within 5 years that would put the industry at $4 trillion dollars and bitcoin would be at 2 trillion (if it holds a 50% market share),” Moas continued. “The price would then be $120,000 and only 25% of where the gold market is today. Many people believe that Bitcoin will eventually catch up to gold($8 trillion) and I would not argue with that. $8 trillion would get bitcoin to $500,000.”
Bitcoin Not a Bubble
Elsewhere in the note, Moas addresses the litany of recent criticisms from entrenched financiers. Although Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein says he is “open” to bitcoin, other leading investment bankers have been far less conciliatory. UBS has called the market a “speculative bubble”, while JPMorgan head Jamie Dimon has lambasted it as an outright “fraud”.
Moas writes that these criticisms do not deter him from his positive outlook.
“What would we expect them to say?” he wrote. They’re “heavily invested in the publicly traded U.S. banks that are threatened by cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is not a scam and it is not in a bubble. You are more likely to find scams and bubbles in the U.S. stock market.”
Featured image from Shutterstock.
Source: CryptoCoinNewsFun Facts About America's Top 10 Hispanic Last Names!
Our Hispanic Heritage
Understanding our history and ancestry can provide insightful information about our lives today. Did you know that according to the U.S Census bureau the top 6 out of 15 last names are Hispanic? We thought we'd share some fun facts about the top 10 last names that you may want to share with your familia in order of popularity.
1. GARCIA - The Bear
According to the Surname Database, "Recorded in the spellings of Garcia, Garci, Garza, and Garces, this is a surname of Spanish origins, whose 'roots go back into the very mists of time. It is believed to be the most popular surname in the region, and this is not perhaps surprising as it derives from the word 'artz' meaning 'the bear'." The bear possessed strength, bravery, and power. "The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Diego Garcia, which was dated August 29th 1624, at San Pablo Apostal, Mexico. The coat of arms has the unusual blazon of a silver field charged with a flying bird of prey, inside a blue border, charged with a semee of saltires in gold."
Famous Garcias: Jerry Garcia (lead singer of Grateful Dead), Nicole Garcia aka Nikki Bella (WWE), Joanna Garcia (actress), Lilian Garcia (WWE, singer, announcer). Others include Andy Garcia (actor), Aimee Garcia (screenwriter), Francisco Garcia (NBA player), Jeff Garcia (former NFL player), and Nina Garcia (Fashion Editor, Project Runway).
2. RODRIGUEZ - Famous Power
"This is an ancient and noble surname recorded in many forms. These include Roderick (English), Rodiger (German), Rodriguez (Spanish), and Rodrigues (Portugese), as examples of popular surnames. There are apparently two quite separate origins, although with curious similarities which suggest a possible common source in pre-history. The first is from the ancient Gaelic-Breton compound "Rhyd-derch" which translates as "famous chief", a meaning which no doubt contributed to its early popularity. In the Middle Ages a secondary meaning was "the red haired one", although this in itself may also have harked back to the original meaning. The second origin is Germanic, from the pre 5th century, when German tribes, particularly the Vizigoths swept down into Spain and Portugal. They left behind many examples of their names, of which this is one of the most popular. The derivation is from 'hrod' meaning renown and 'ric' - power, a not dissimilar translation to the Gaelic." According to Srname Database. "Early examples of Rodriguez include Christobal Rodriguez de Leon in 1536, and Juan Rodriguez de Santos, in 1662, at Valladolid, Spain. The coat of arms has the blazon of quarterly, red and gold, in one and four an eagle displayed in gold, in two and three, three fleur de lis in blue."
Famous Rodriguez: Michelle Rodriguez (actress), Genesis Rodriguez (actress), Gina Rodriguez (actress), and Alex Rodriguez (baseball star). Others include, James Rodriguez (soccer star), Rico Rodriguez (actor), Chi Chi Rodriguez (golfer), and Paul Rodriguez (comedian).
Read more: http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Rodriguez#ixzz4ub9gfWom 3. MARTINEZ - God of War "This famous name is a development of the Roman 'Martinus', a personal name derived from 'Mars", the God of war. The spelling here is Spanish, the name in England being normally Martin but also found as the Huguenot Martineau from Poitou, France. Martinez the name is recorded heraldically in Castille, Milan and Sicily. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Martinez di Castille which was dated 1580, Madrid, Spain during the reign of King Philip II of Spain, 1528 - 1598. The Coat of Arms for Castille being, 'A green tree an a gold field, within a border of red with knight spurs in Gold'."- Surname Database
Read more: Read more: http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Martinez#ixzz4udlMQ4ev Famous Martinez: Natalie Martinez (actress), Susana Martinez (US governor), Pedro Martinez (baseball star), and Ivan & Emilio Martinez (Instafamous). Others include, Victor Martinez (baseball star), Angie Martinez (radio DJ), Maximiliano Hernández Martínez (former president of El Salvador), and Victor Matinez (baseball star). 4. HERNANDEZ - Brave Journey According to website House of Names, "The distinguished Spanish surname Hernandez is a proud sign of a rich and ancient heritage. The earliest forms of hereditary surnames in Spain were patronymic surnames, which are derived from the father's given name, and metronymic surnames, which are derived from the mother's given name. Spanish patronymic names emerged as early as the mid-9th century; the most common patronymic suffix being "ez." The Hernandez name is derived from the Spanish elements "faro," meaning journey and "nano," meaning brave." Further research according to website Family Crest Rings says, "The name has been in favour from the day of the Royal house of Castille, and the first of the name was King Ferdinand of Castille who lived from 1198 to 1252 and a notable member of the Royal family. Spain fell to the Moors around the turn of the eight century and this left a great mark on Spanish surnames. The Spanish knights wore heavy armour from head to foot and the only visible means of identification for his followers and enemies was the emblem that was painted on his shield and on his surcoat. The Hernandez coat of arms is one of the first granted from the very early centuries." Famous Hernandez: Peter Gene Hernandez aka Bruno Mars (singer), Javier "Chicharrito" Hernandez (soccer star), Laurie Hernandez (US Olympian), and Larry Hernandez (singer). Others include, Joseline Hernandez (reality tv star), Aaron Hernandez (former NFL player), and Xavi Hernandez (soccer star). 5. LOPEZ - The Wolf "It derives from the ancient words "lupus" and the 5th century a.d. "lobo", meaning the wolf. This suggests that either the name is a nickname or more likely it is a tribal and originally a form of endearment. The wolf, along with, in particular, the bear, the lion, and the stag, are figure regularly in the early records both of surnames and coats of arms. The popularity of the surname is such that it must have been given to a large number of people, so large that in general it has to relate to a tribe or clan. Amongst the early recordings of the name taken from authentic church and civil registers, in both its home country and the New World of the Americas, are Catalina Lopez and Alonso Juan Lopez, christened at Asuncion, Mexico, on February 8th 1637." - Surname Database
Read more: Read more: http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Lopez#ixzz4ue1oRRsP Famous Lopez: Jennifer Lopez (entertainer), George Lopez (comedian), Tai Lopez (investor, philanthropist), and Mario Lopez (tv host, actor). Others include, Brook Lopez (basketball player), Robin Lopez (basketball player), Sessilee Lopez (model), and Seidy Lopez (actress). 6. GONZALEZ - The Battle Field
"This famous surname recorded in the spellings of Gonzales, Gonzalez, Gonzalvo, Gozalo, Gonzalvez, Gosalvez, Goncaves, and Gonzalo, is usually accepted as being of Spanish or Portuguese origin. However in truth like so many Iberian surnames, its origins are Germanic. In the 5th century the Visigoths from Eastern Germany conquered the whole region, sweeping down from the Baltic and across the Pyrenean mountains into the Spanish Peninsula. the development is from the early German baptismal name 'Gundisalvus', which loosely translates as 'the battle field or battle place', a typical example of a warlike name so popular in the period. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Marcos Gonzales de Junguito, which was dated July 1st 1556, christened at Segovia, Spain, during the reign of King Philip 11 of Spain, 1554 - 1590. The coat of arms most associated with the name is probably that granted to Gonzales de Castille, which has the blazon of a triple towered castle on a red field." - Surname Database
Read more: Read more: http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/gonzalez#ixzz4ue7X1xYV Famous Gonzales: Tony Gonzalez (football star), Eiza Gonzalez (actress), Adrian Gonzalez (baseball star), Elian Gonzalez (Cuban boy caught in international custody battle). Others include, Jose Gonzalez (singer/songwriter), Carlos Gonzalez (baseball star), and Giant Gonzalez (WWE).
7. PEREZ - The Rock "Of all the surnames which derive from the saints and disciples of the Christian church, 'Petros' meaning 'The rock' has provided the world with the greatest number of both given names and the later medieval surnames. In their different spellings ranging from Peter, Pieter, and Pierre, to patronymics Peterson, Peters, Peres, Perez, Peers, and even the Armenian Bedrosian, to diminutives such as Poschel, Piotrek, Petrenko, and Pietrusska, there are estimated to be over seven hundred spellings. The original name was Greek, and Christ chose Peter to be 'the rock' on which the church was to be founded. Early examples of the surname recording taken from authentic registers in both Europe and the Americas include Luke Petre of London, England, in 1282, William Petres of Somerset, England, in 1327, Andres Guillen Perez, at Aguaron, Zaragoza, Spain, on December 7th 1565. The blazon of the coat of arms is very distinctive. It has a red field charged with a chross flory between four fleur de lis, all gold." - Surname Database
Read more: Read more: http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Perez#ixzz4ueDGTuo9 Famous Perez: Rosie Perez (actress), Pia Mia Perez (singer, YouTube star), Chris Perez (was married to Selena Quintanilla), and Marco Perez aka Markomusica (comedian, Youtube star). Others include, Alberto Moreno Perez (soccer star), Melina Perez (former WWE star), and Vincent Perez (photographer/director), and Janny Perez (founder of Mi LegaSi ;)...me!)
8. SANCHEZ - Saintly "This famous Spanish and Portuguese surname is recorded in many forms including Sancho, Sanchez, Sans, and the Italian Sanzio. However spelt it is both religious and baptismal in original, the derivation being from the Roman (Latin)'sanctus' meaning blameless, holy, and later saintly, a meaning which no doubt greatly contributed to its popularity both as a given name and later a surname.The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Alonso Sanchez de Copeda, which was dated 1509, at the city of Alicante, Spain, during the reign of King Ferdinand 11, of Spain and Portugal, 1489 - 1512. The coat of arms has the very distinctive blazon of a blue field charged with a gold eagle displayed wearing a crown." - Surname Database
Read more: Read more: http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Sanchez#ixzz4ueMFG9vW Famous Sanchez: Roselyn Sanchez (entertainer), Aaron Sanchez (chef, tv personailty), Alexis Sanchez (soccer star), and Mark Sanchez (football player). Others include Roger Sanchez (DJ), Jose Enrique Sanchez (soccer player), Jessica Sanchez (singer), and Natalia Sanchez (actress). 9. RAMIREZ - Wise and Famous "This famous name recorded as Reinmer, Remer, Reijmers, Reymers, and the Spanish Ramirez and Remirez, is of pre 5th century German origins. It derives from the original given name 'Raginmari' consisting of the separate elements 'ragin' meaning wise or counsel, and'mari' - famous. The reason why the name as 'Ramirez' is found in the Spanish peninsula, where it is one of the regions most popular surnames, is that in the year 410 a,d, the German tribe known as the 'Vizigoths' swept down from northern Europe, destroying as they went the Roman Empire which stretched down into Spain. As a result for several centuries the Vizigoths held onto Spain, and amongst the reminders of their stay are the prominent Spanish surnames Ramirez and Gonzales, as well as many others. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Johann Reimers, which was dated 1293, in the charters of the city of Bremen, Germany, during the reign of Emperor Adolph 1, of the German Empire, 1292 - 1298. The coat of arms has the distinctive blazon of per pale, red and silver, three fleur de lis, two and one, counterchanged." - Surname Database
Read more: Read more: http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/ramirez#ixzz4ueQaoqp8 "This famous name recorded as Reinmer, Remer, Reijmers, Reymers, and the Spanish Ramirez and Remirez, is of pre 5th century German origins. It derives from the original given name 'Raginmari' consisting of the separate elements 'ragin' meaning wise or counsel, and'mari' - famous. The reason why the name as 'Ramirez' is found in the Spanish peninsula, where it is one of the regions most popular surnames, is that in the year 410 a,d, the German tribe known as the 'Vizigoths' swept down from northern Europe, destroying as they went the Roman Empire which stretched down into Spain. As a result for several centuries the Vizigoths held onto Spain, and amongst the reminders of their stay are the prominent Spanish surnames Ramirez and Gonzales, as well as many others. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Johann Reimers, which was dated 1293, in the charters of the city of Bremen, Germany, during the reign of Emperor Adolph 1, of the German Empire, 1292 - 1298. The coat of arms has the distinctive blazon of per pale, red and silver, three fleur de lis, two and one, counterchanged." - Surname Database Famous Ramirez: Sara Ramirez (actress), Dania Ramirez (model, actress), and Cierra Ramirez (singer, actress). Others include Manny Ramirez (baseball player), Marisa Ramirez (actress), and Efren Ramirez (actor). 10. TORRES - The Tower "Recorded in the spellings of Tour, De la Tour, Latour, Torres, de la Torre, and diminutives such as Touret, Torricina etc, this is a surname which has to be described as 'European'. In origin it can be said to be Roman, and from the pre Christian period, however it is recorded in the many different spellings in every European country since the medieval times of the 13th century. The surname is both residential and status, and describes a person who lived in and probably owned a fortified castle or small fortress, one probably of a single tower. The original word being derived from the Latin 'turris'.The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Elyas de Toure, which was dated 1202, in the Pipe Rolls of the county of Somerset, during the reign of King John of England, known as "Lackland", 1199 - 1216.The coat of arms has the blazon of a blue field charged with a single silver tower." - Surname Database Famous Torres: Fernando Torres (soccer star), Gina Torres (actress), Dayanara torres (former Miss Universe), and Eve Torres. Others include, Dara Torres (Olympian), Tico Torres (musician), and Raffi Torres (hockey player).
Read more: Read more: http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/torres#ixzz4ueWQ8Am5 Check out some stats courtesy of https://names.mongabay.com/data/hispanic.html
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Comments will be approved before showing up.“Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth” ~ Alan Watts
Personality is defined as, “The set of emotional qualities, ways of behaving, etc., that makes a person different from other people; attractive qualities that make something unusual or interesting,” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary).
In theory this sounds great… right up our ego’s alley. To have qualities or behaviors that make us UNIQUE, DISTINGUISHABLE, and DIFFERENT from other people sounds like the perfect recipe to reinforce our separateness from others.
But is our personality who we really are? And who or what decides what our “personality” is? Since our perspective of ourselves may be vastly different than another person’s perspective of us, who would be the correct one if we were trying to define our specific “personality”?
One of the main properties of our ego is a craving for significance and a desire to be different than another. This craving can be manifested in any number of ways.
It can be in the adjectives we use to describe ourselves, “I am a deep-thinker, they are shallow” “I am kind and warm-hearted person, they are callous and cold” or “I am assertive, and aggressive, they are passive and weak” are all concepts we have in our minds about who we are. It can also manifest in the way we behave.
For instance, in any given situation or circumstance instead of responding with our natural instinct, we may find ourselves visiting our inner rolodex of “ways that are acceptable to respond based on who I ‘am’ (or who I think I am).”
In these instances we may find ourselves reacting in the same ways over and over to the same types of situations in our outer reality because we have limited ourselves to available options that coincide with our individual “personality.”
However, when we start to exist solely in these concepts of who we are and are attached to defining ourselves and others we may be limiting who we can become and consequently limit ourselves from being able to see other people for what they truly are… nobody.
In order to resonate in our own nobody-ness and start to see the nobody-ness in others we must first rise above our thought of who we were and what we thought has made us so different than others. But is that possible? Is it possible to transcend personality?
“We are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Personality can only really come from an attachment to an idea. We may have an idealized version of who we would like to be, or who would like the world to see us as in our heads that we begin to reinforce to ourselves over and over that this is who we are. Also, we may have picked up bits and pieces from what other people have said about us and attached ourselves to those labels as well.
For example, if enough people have told us that we are funny, we most likely will start to believe we are funny. Or if enough people have told us we are not funny, we may attach ourselves to that notion as well. However, all of these concepts depend on memory in order to survive.
We remember how we acted in a certain situation, we remember who we decided we wanted to be and are now acting in accordance with those beliefs, or we remember what someone said we were and are now behaving in accordance with the way a particular person chose to define us.
By choosing to be and act how we’ve always acted we remain a prisoner of the past. But in the present moment personality cannot exist, only being can.
Because personality is based in concepts and attachment to ideas, the minute we begin to explain our personality or ponder how we should react to something, based on how we were in the past, or how we want others to see us, we are immediately transported out of the present moment and into our own minds’ perspective of the present moment.
Yes, things like anger or sadness or rage can exist in the present moment. They can be experienced and felt and just as soon as they come they can also go. And we may have felt the emotion of anger 20 times in one day, but it doesn’t necessarily mean we ARE an angry person, all it means is we felt anger.
We felt it, and then it left us, but it has nothing to do with who we actually ARE. The less we try to define our personality we will then allow ourselves to be whatever pops up in that moment. We may experience sadness, or joy, or pure rage, but we will not attach ourselves to any of it, nor will we let it define who we are.
When we do this, we realize that other people we deal with are also not their personality, but just mere presence. They may experience outbursts of depression or anger but just like our own emotions are not who we are, but merely a sentiment that we felt in a particular moment, neither are theirs.
“Only those who are ready to become nobodies are able to love.” ~ Osho
Become a “nobody.” Recognize that everyone you meet is a “nobody.” Let the spontaneous combustion of human emotions and feelings come naturally and experience them fully without attaching yourself to the qualities so much that you start to believe that you ARE them.
Sometimes you may feel generous and kind, and sometimes you will feel jealous and envious, but it is not your job to judge the emotions themselves, only to completely surrender to them.
In this “experiencing” of the energy of emotions rather than the judging of the emotions we will find that we are not our qualities, characteristics and attributes.
We are only the presence that exists in the present moment… which is really nothing and nobody, and so is everyone else we meet. In our complete un-attachment to personality and complete anchoring in the presence, only one thing can emerge… love.
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CommentsThe U.S. government labeled a prominent journalist as a member of Al Qaeda and placed him on a watch list of suspected terrorists, according to a top-secret document that details U.S. intelligence efforts to track Al Qaeda couriers by analyzing metadata.
The briefing singles out Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan, Al Jazeera’s longtime Islamabad bureau chief, as a member of the terrorist group. A Syrian national, Zaidan has focused his reporting throughout his career on the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and has conducted several high-profile interviews with senior Al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden.
A slide dated June 2012 from a National Security Agency PowerPoint presentation bears his photo, name, and a terror watch list identification number, and labels him a “member of Al-Qa’ida” as well as the Muslim Brotherhood. It also notes that he “works for Al Jazeera.”
The presentation was among the documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
In a brief phone interview with The Intercept, Zaidan “absolutely” denied that he is a member of Al Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood. In a statement provided through Al Jazeera, Zaidan noted that his career has spanned many years of dangerous work in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and required interviewing key people in the region — a normal part of any journalist’s job.
“For us to be able to inform the world, we have to be able to freely contact relevant figures in the public discourse, speak with people on the ground, and gather critical information. Any hint of government surveillance that hinders this process is a violation of press freedom and harms the public’s right to know,” he wrote. “To assert that myself, or any journalist, has any affiliation with any group on account of their contact book, phone call logs, or sources is an absurd distortion of the truth and a complete violation of the profession of journalism.”
A spokesman for Al Jazeera, a global news service funded by the government of Qatar, cited a long list of instances in which its journalists have been targeted by governments on which it reports, and described the labeling and surveillance of Zaidan as “yet another attempt at using questionable techniques to target our journalists, and in doing so, enforce a gross breach of press freedom.”
The document cites Zaidan as an example to demonstrate the powers of SKYNET, a program that analyzes location and communication data (or “metadata”) from bulk call records in order to detect suspicious patterns.
In the Terminator movies, SKYNET is a self-aware military computer system that launches a nuclear war to exterminate the human race, and then systematically kills the survivors.
According to the presentation, the NSA uses its version of SKYNET to identify people that it believes move like couriers used by Al Qaeda’s senior leadership. The program assessed Zaidan as a likely match, which raises troubling questions about the U.S. government’s method of identifying terrorist targets based on metadata.
It appears, however, that Zaidan had already been identified as an Al Qaeda member before he showed up on SKYNET’s radar. That he was already assigned a watch list number would seem to indicate that the government had a prior intelligence file on him. The Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE, is a U.S. government database of over one million names suspected of a connection to terrorism, which is shared across the U.S. intelligence community.
The presentation contains no evidence to explain the designation.
Peter Bergen, CNN’s national security analyst and author of several books on Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, told The Intercept, “I’ve known [Zaidan] for well over a decade, and he’s a first class journalist.”
“He has the contacts and the access that of course no Western journalist has,” said Bergen. “But by that standard any journalist who spent time with Al Qaeda would be suspect.” Bergen himself interviewed bin Laden in 1997.
The NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to answer questions about the basis of Zaidan’s inclusion on the watch list and alleged Al Qaeda affiliation. The NSA also declined to answer a set of detailed questions about SKYNET, and how it uses the information about the people that it identifies.
What is clear from the presentation is that in the NSA’s eyes, Zaidan’s movements and calls mirrored those of known Al Qaeda couriers.
According to another 2012 presentation describing SKYNET, the program looks for terrorist connections based on questions such as “who has traveled from Peshawar to Faisalabad or Lahore (and back) in the past month? Who does the traveler call when he arrives?” and behaviors such as “excessive SIM or handset swapping,” “incoming calls only,” “visits to airports,” and “overnight trips.”
That presentation states that the call data is acquired from major Pakistani telecom providers, though it does not specify the technical means by which the data is obtained.
The June 2012 document poses the question: “Given a handful of courier selectors, can we find others that ‘behave similarly’” by analyzing cell phone metadata? “We are looking for different people using phones in similar ways,” the presentation continues, and measuring “pattern of life, social network, and travel behavior.”
For the experiment, the analysts fed 55 million cell phone records from Pakistan into the system, the document states.
The results identified someone who is “PROB” — which appears to mean probably — Zaidan as the “highest scoring selector” traveling between Peshawar and Lahore.
The following slide appears to show other top hits, noting that 21 of the top 500 were previously tasked for surveillance, indicating that the program is “on the right track” to finding people of interest. A portion of that list visible on the slide includes individuals supposedly affiliated with Al Qaeda and the Taliban, as well as members of Pakistan’s spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence. But sometimes the descriptions are vague. One selector is identified simply as “Sikh Extremist.”
As other documents from Snowden revealed, drone targets are often identified in part based on metadata analysis and cell phone tracking. Former NSA director Michael Hayden famously put it more bluntly in May 2014, when he said, “we kill people based on metadata.”
Metadata also played a key role in locating and killing Osama bin Laden. The CIA used cell phone calling patterns to track an Al Qaeda courier and identify bin Laden’s hiding place in Pakistan.
Yet U.S. drone strikes have killed many hundreds of civilians and unidentified alleged “militants” who may have been marked based on the patterns their cell phones gave up.
People whose work requires contact with extremists and groups that the U.S. government regards as terrorists have long worried that they themselves could look suspicious in metadata analysis.
“Prominent American journalists have interviewed members of blacklisted terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda,” said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “It would surprise me if journalists in Pakistan hadn’t done the same. Part of the job of journalists and human rights advocates is to talk to people the government doesn’t want them to talk to.”
A History of Targeting Al Jazeera
The U.S. government’s surveillance of Zaidan is not the first time that it has linked Al Jazeera or its personnel to Al Qaeda.
During the invasion of Afghanistan, in November 2001, the United States bombed the network’s Kabul offices. The Pentagon claimed that it was “a known al-Qaeda facility.”
That was just the beginning. Sami al-Hajj, an Al Jazeera cameraman, was imprisoned by the U.S. government at Guantanamo for six years before being released in 2008 without ever being charged. He has said he was repeatedly interrogated about Al Jazeera. In 2003, Al Jazeera’s financial reporters were barred from the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange for “security reasons.” Nasdaq soon followed suit.
During the invasion of Iraq, U.S. forces bombed Al Jazeera’s Baghdad offices, killing correspondent Tariq Ayoub. The U.S. insisted it was unintentional, though Al Jazeera had given the Pentagon the coordinates of the building. When American forces laid siege to Fallujah, and Al Jazeera was one of the few news organizations broadcasting from within the city, Bush administration officials accused it of airing propaganda and lies. Al Jazeera’s Fallujah correspondent, Ahmed Mansour, reported that his crew had been targeted with tanks, and the house they had stayed in had been bombed by fighter jets.
So great was the suspicion of Al Jazeera’s ties to terrorism that Dennis Montgomery, a contractor who had previously tried peddling cheat-detector software to Las Vegas casinos, managed to convince the CIA that he could decode secret Al Qaeda messages from Al Jazeera broadcasts. Those “codes” reportedly caused Bush to ground a number of commercial transatlantic flights in December 2003.
But the U.S. government appeared to have somewhat softened its view of the network in the last several years. The Obama administration has criticized Egypt for holding three of Al Jazeera’s journalists on charges of aiding the Muslim Brotherhood. During the height of the 2011 Arab Spring, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised the network’s coverage, saying, “Viewership of Al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it’s real news.”
A Journalist and Al Qaeda
Zaidan first came to international prominence after the 9/11 attacks because of his access to senior Al Qaeda leadership. Zaidan wrote an Arabic-language book on bin Laden, and interviewed him in person multiple times.
“He covered the wedding of bin Laden’s son which was shortly after the [U.S.S.] Cole attack, and I think it was a very useful piece of journalism, because bin Laden declaimed a poem about the Cole which implied him taking responsibility for the attacks, which of course he later did,” said Bergen.
Zaidan also received a number of bin Laden’s taped messages to Americans, which were broadcast on Al Jazeera.
In 2002, he met a mysterious man with a “half-covered face,” who handed him a cassette tape with bin Laden’s voice, Zaidan told Bergen in an interview. In 2004, another bin Laden tape was dropped off at the office gate, Zaidan told the Associated Press. “The guard brought it to me along with other mail. It was in an envelope, I opened it and it was a big scoop,” Zaidan recounted.
Files collected from bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound after his death — a portion of which were released this year — indicate that Al Qaeda members viewed Zaidan as a journalist they felt comfortable dealing with.
In an August 2010 missive, discussing Zaidan’s plans for a documentary, bin Laden directs his deputies to get “brother Ahmad Zaydan’s” questions and “tell him it would be good if it was on the tenth anniversary of September Eleventh.” Any other input should come in “an indirect way,” bin Laden cautions. “If we want this program to be a success, then we should not get involved in the details of how it is run, except that I don’t want him to interview any of my family,” he wrote.
Zaidan released his documentary on Al Jazeera in December 2011, an oral history of bin Laden’s years in Pakistan and Afghanistan comprised of interviews with a range of people who had known him, including Taliban fighters, government officials, and many journalists.
Bin Laden had also grown paranoid about meetings with Zaidan, although he did not think the U.S. government had managed to kill anyone “from surveying Ahmad Zaydan,” he wrote in May 2010.
He continued, “keep in mind, the possibility, though remote, that the journalists may be involuntarily monitored in a way that we or they do not know about, either on ground or by satellite, especially Ahmad Zaydan of Al Jazeera, and it is possible that a tracking chip could be put into some of their personal effects before coming to the meeting place.”
Zaidan is still Al Jazeera’s Islamabad bureau chief, and has also reported from Syria and Yemen in recent years. Al Jazeera vigorously defended his reporting. “Our commitment to our audiences is to gain access to authentic, raw, unfiltered information from key sources and present it in an honest and responsible way.” They added that, “our journalists continue to be targeted and stigmatized by governments,” even though “Al Jazeera is not the first channel that has met with controversial figures such as bin Laden and others — prominent western media outlets were among the first to do so.”
Disclosure: As freelancers, Cora Currier wrote an article for Al Jazeera America and Andrew Fishman field produced segments for Al Jazeera English’s “The Listening Post.” Glenn Greenwald was a paid studio guest of Al Jazeera’s in Doha on the night of the 2012 U.S. presidential election.
———
Documents published with this article:
* The Intercept had redacted the documents to protect the privacy of individuals.
———by Roger Marsh
The National UFO ALERT Rating System has been updated for May 2014, with California, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan moving to a UFO Alert 3 as the highest reporting states with 25 or more cases during the month of April 2014, filed with the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON).
California was the leading high-reporting state in April with 80 cases, down from 103 March cases, 59 February cases, and 102 January cases. Those states in a UFO Alert 4 category with 13 or more reports include: New York, Missouri, Arizona, New Jersey |
wait to see everyone at Anime Weekend Atlanta!
5 months ago | Reblog ATTENTION! The homestuck shoot for dragoncon today will be moved to the hilton 12th floor! It will still be at 6 pm! Thank you! #dragoncon #dragoncon2018 #homestuck #atlstuck #atlantastuck #dragonconstuck
5 months ago | 1 note | Reblog Hey kiddos! Quick announcement for DragonCon’s Homestuck Photoshoot! This year we have a friday shoot for sure at 6pm on the 10th floor of the merriot host hotel! Saturday will be the same location at 6pm! @innovativefanboy will be running it and itll be a blast!Cant wait to see ya’ll there 💕💕 #dragoncon #dragonconstuck #atlstuck #atlantastuck #gastuck #georigiastuck #homestuck #homestuckcosplay #homestuckgroup
7 months ago | 1 note | Reblog Anonymous sent: Dragoncon 2018 is quickly approaching, we are now at T minus 7 weeks! Any shoots or meetups planned? Yes! there will be a photoshoot Friday and Saturday! i’ll have a post up for Dragon and AWA in a couple days!
8 months ago | 14 notes | Reblog xgeorgiabluebellx: The last homestuck shots that I have, tag people if you know them or recognize themFollowing at interview at Gamescom with Game Informer, EA’s Patrick Söderlund has stated that Mass Effect remasters are likely, hopefully with the release of a trilogy collection for the new-gen systems and PC. Söderlund did not say outright that the remasters will defiantly release, but it is something that EA are apparently considering, nor did he provide a release date estimate. Below is what he had to say:
What’s changed is that there is proof in the market that people want it, maybe more than there was when we spoke,” said Söderlund. “There were some that did it before, but I think there is even more clear evidence that this is something that people really want.” He added “The honest answer is that we are absolutely actively looking at it. I can’t announce anything today, but you can expect us most likely to follow our fellow partners in Activision and other companies that have done this successfully.
Let’s hope this collection of remasters release before Mass Effect: Andromeda, which is set to release early 2017, because it would be great to playthrough them all before then.
EA says Mass Effect remasters are ‘likely’ was last modified: byWhat It Is: An even harder-core version of Ford’s already bonkers Focus RS hot hatch called the RS500. All sorts of vents, scoops, and spoilers suggest a comprehensive set of upgrades meant to increase track performance. Expect the car to be significantly decontented for lighter weight and to feature larger wheels and tires for improved grip. The suspension likely will be even stiffer than in the standard RS, and the brakes should be larger, as well. Power may not increase much, but the lighter weight and the upgraded chassis should improve performance.
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Why It Matters: Ford has been elevating hot-hatch performance for a while now, and the previous Europe-only Focus RS500 quickly sold out its limited run of 500 units. A new RS500 would help fill another niche in the rapidly expanding Ford Performance portfolio and give the Focus range an even more capable flagship to do battle with compacts from the performance divisions of Audi, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz.
View Photos CHRIS DOANE AUTOMOTIVE
Platform: The RS500 will use the same basic chassis architecture as the Focus RS, which itself uses a modified version of the standard Focus compact’s platform. Bigger brakes, a stiffer suspension, and grippier tires should be on the menu.
Powertrain: The standard Focus RS hatch’s six-speed manual may give way to a dual-clutch automatic (Ford already has confirmed that it’s a possibility), while its trick all-wheel-drive system should remain. Don’t expect much more power from the high-strung 2.3-liter turbo four-cylinder, which already makes 350 horsepower and 350 lb-ft of torque in the standard car.
View Photos CHRIS DOANE AUTOMOTIVE
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Competition: Audi RS3, BMW M2, Mercedes-AMG CLA45, Subaru WRX STI, Volkswagen Golf R.
Estimated Arrival and Price: If the RS500 makes it to the U.S. market (it’s doubtful, but we’re hoping it does), it almost certainly will be sold in very small numbers. Look for it to command a significant price premium over the standard Focus RS, which starts at $36,775 on our shores. This supremely hot hatch should debut early next year in Europe, with a possible on-sale date of later in 2017.For years, there have been allegations that comedian Bill Cosby had sexually assaulted women.
Now, for the first time, there is a warrant for his arrest.
The charge of aggravated indecent assault, filed on Wednesday, relates to an incident at Cosby's mansion in suburban Philadelphia in 2004 involving a woman named Andrea Constand.
Constand was an employee at Temple University at the time, and now works as a massage therapist in Toronto.
She went to police in 2005, well after the incident, alleging Cosby had fed her drugs at his home that rendered her semi-conscious. She said she later woke in the wee hours of the morning with her clothes askew.
But Montgomery County prosecutors initially declined to charge Cosby, saying there was not enough evidence.
Constand then brought a civil suit against Cosby, lining up more than a dozen women as supporting witnesses. It was settled in 2006 for an undisclosed amount, and a portion of the sworn deposition that Cosby gave in the case was made public earlier this year.
Comedian Bill Cosby is scheduled to perform in Kitchener tomorrow night, London on Thursday and Hamilton on Friday. (Victoria Will/Invision/Associated Press)
That led current Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman to overrule her predecessor and bring the charge on Wednesday, setting the stage for what is likely to be a huge celebrity trial.
Little is known about Cosby's Canadian complainant. A confidential settlement reached as a result of a lawsuit against the embattled entertainer effectively silenced her.
But it was Constand's case from a decade ago that essentially opened the gates for a growing number of complainants to allege the septuagenarian entertainer drugged and sexually assaulted them.
Here's a look at what is known about Constand.
From Canada to Cosby
Andrea Constand was a standout basketball player at Albert Campbell Collegiate Institute in Toronto in the 1980s and dreamed of becoming the first Canadian to play in the Women's National Basketball Association, the WNBA.
A sports scholarship to study and play basketball at the University of Arizona in Tucson got her over the border and in front of a who's who of women's basketball in the U.S.
Instead of making the WNBA, however, Constand was recruited by a European team after being spotted playing with Canada's squad during the World University Games in Sicily, Italy, in 1997.
The stint didn't last long. After 18 months playing basketball in Europe, Constand was back in Ontario, working in a Nike store, finishing her studies and hoping for another shot at the WNBA.
Her next recruitment, however, would bring her back to the U.S., back to basketball and into Bill Cosby's orbit.
Temple calling
In 1999, Dawn Staley, Constand's friend and a former WNBA player, was hired as the new head coach of women's basketball at Temple University in Philadelphia, Cosby's alma mater.
Model Janice Dickinson is one of more than 50 women who have alleged that Bill Cosby sexually assaulted them. (Jonathan Leibson/Getty Images for VITY)
Staley asked Constand to join her, taking on the responsibility of director of operations for the women's team.
It was at Temple that Constand met Cosby.
The comedian attended the school in the 1960s, where he played basketball and was a member of the track team. He remained closely connected to Temple, often raising money for its athletics programs.
In court filings, Constand and Cosby agree they often met for dinner either alone or at his home where they discussed basketball, her career and other opportunities.
In January 2004, Constand says Cosby invited her to his Cheltenham home, just outside Philadelphia.
According to Constand's lawsuit, Cosby told her he wanted to "offer her assistance in pursuit of a different career." It was that night that he allegedly fed Constand pills and sexually assaulted her.
Four months later, she quit her job with Temple women's basketball and headed home to Canada to study massage therapy.
One year after the alleged incident, Constand went to police, filing a claim against Cosby with Durham Regional Police in Ontario, who passed it on to authorities in Cheltenham Township, Pa.
In the end, prosecutors did not lay charges against Cosby, who reached a confidential settlement agreement with Constand in 2006.
Back in Canada
Now 42, Constand is a registered massage therapist working in a downtown Toronto clinic. She also provides massage therapy services by private appointment through her web site, Medical Massage Therapy Centre.
Thirty-five women who have accused Cosby of sexually assaulting them appeared on the cover of New York Magazine for the July 27 issue. (Amanda Demme/New York Magazine)
When reached by Toronto Sun reporter Joe Warmington in July, Constand reportedly declined to discuss Cosby, telling Warmington, "I know I did not give you much of a story and yet there is so much more to say."
This summer, Cosby's lawyers filed court documents to block any attempt by Constand to publicly reveal the terms of their contract.
Cosby's deposition in the case, however, was made public earlier this year. In it, Cosby denied sexually assaulting Constand, but admitted to giving her three half-pills of Benadryl.
He also said he had gotten Quaaludes from his doctor to give to young women before sex years earlier. However, he said those sexual relations were consensual and he never gave women drugs without their knowledge.
In a striking show of solidarity, 35 women who have all said Cosby sexual assaulted them appeared on the cover of New York magazine in July.
Constand wasn't one of them, but her part in the story was represented on the cover by an empty chair.
This fall, her attorney, Dolores Troiani, told People magazine that Constand is ready to face Cosby in court.
"She's a very strong lady," Troiani said. "She'll do whatever she needs to do, whatever they request of her."Palestine has asked the EU to blacklist violent Jewish settlers as "terrorists", in what Israel is calling "a PR stunt".
The Palestinian foreign minister, Riad Malki, wrote to EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton on 11 May to complain that settler groups, called "price tag" and "hilltop youth", are attacking people in the West Bank to "forcibly transfer them away from their land and homes".
He reported a "sharp increase" in incidents, called "price tags" because they are meant to exact a price for anti-settler activities.
"In the last month alone, these … included vandalising Muslim and Christian cemeteries, beating children, attacking women with pepper spray, launching raids against villages, inscribing racist graffiti, torching cars."
He accused the Israeli army of giving them "protection".
"We call upon you [Ashton], who has regularly condemned such attacks, to take the only decision possible as regards 'price tag' and 'hill-top youth' by considering them as terrorist groups, with all the political, legal, and financial implications such a decision holds," he said.
Decisions on the EU blacklist are made by members states’ intelligence officers and interior ministry officials in Brussels every six months.
The latest list, from February, names eight Palestinian entities, including Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip.
If the EU listed a Jewish group, it would represent a sea change in Middle East politics, following decades in which "terrorism" has been used to label exclusively Arab actions.
Malki’s letter is carefully worded to match the EU definition of "terrorist" offences.
It is being studied by Ashton's staff. But for his part, Jean-Claude Piris, the former head of the EU Council’s legal service, told this website: “In my view, it would not be absolutely legally impossible, should there be a political will, to list such groups under article 1(3) of common position 931/2001.”
The EU is divided on recognising Palestinian statehood.
But Piris said the terms of the EU article are "wide enough" to cover crimes such as "intimidations of the population, attacks upon the physical integrity" of non-state actors. “A thorough motivation of the listing, and the seriousness of formal evidence justifying it, would be legally essential," he added.
Meanwhile, Israel does not believe the EU will take Malki seriously.
Paul Hirschson, a spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, called his letter "a PR stunt".
He said settler attacks are not designed to displace Palestinians, but to cause trouble for Israel if it takes steps against settlers. He also said the vast majority of settlers are law-abiding people.
"Anyone who knows anything about the price tag activity knows Israel is the actual target," he noted.
"It remains disappointing to see the Palestinian leadership pursuing conflict, through, in this case, a cheap stunt, rather than getting down to the serious business of negotiating a settlement."
Hirschson spoke after Israel broke off peace talks on grounds Palestine aims to form a unity government with the "terrorist" Hamas.
Softer on Hamas
How the EU responds to Malki remains to be seen, but it is taking a softer line on Hamas than Israel wants.
EU foreign ministers last week "supported intra-Palestinian reconciliation" on condition the unity government renounces violence, even if Hamas' old charter continues to call for armed resistance.
John Gat-Rutter, the EU's head of mission to Gaza and the West Bank, also told EUobserver Hamas is more moderate than its rhetoric.
"I think there's an opportunity to move Hamas in the direction that we have wanted to move it. There's an opportunity to embark on a process … where we will come to a stage where there is a readiness [for it] to commit to those principles," he said, referring to UN powers' principles on a negotiated settlement.
Militants fired 69 rockets at Israel from Gaza last year, compared to 2,557 in 2012.
Israel says Palestinians in the West Bank attacked Israeli targets 1,271 times in 2013, causing six deaths.
Malki says settlers attacked Palestinians 650 times in the past nine months. His aides say Israeli soldiers killed 61 Palestinians in the same period.
This story was amended at 10.30am Brussels time on 19 May to add quotes from Jean-Claude PirisRepublican lieutenant governor candidate E.W. Jackson sits down for an interview at a hotel in Tysons Corner in May. (Dayna Smith/The Washington Post)
At a morning sermon Sunday in Northern Virginia, Republican lieutenant governor candidate E.W. Jackson, a Chesapeake pastor, said people who don’t follow Jesus Christ “are engaged in some sort of false religion.”
Jackson offered that view while describing a list of the “controversial” things he believes, and that must be said, as a Christian.
“Any time you say, ‘There is no other means of salvation but through Jesus Christ, and if you don’t know him and you don’t follow him and you don’t go through him, you are engaged in some sort of false religion,’ that’s controversial. But it’s the truth,” Jackson said, according to a recording of the sermon by a Democratic tracker. “Jesus said, ‘I am the way the truth and the life. No man comes unto the Father but by me.’”
It is not the first time Jackson has weighed in with controversial comments on questions of faith and social issues. He has also said that gay people’s “minds are perverted. They are frankly very sick people psychologically and mentally and emotionally.”
The Web site of the Restoration Fellowship Church in Strasburg, where Jackson spoke Sunday, includes a recording of Jackson’s sermon. But a short section that included the “false religion” comment was missing from that part of the recording.
The church’s pastor, Jay Ahlemann, said he agrees with Jackson’s interpretation of scripture. He also said a member of his church staff told him nothing had been deleted from the recording.
As for non-Christians, “I would expect they would be offended,” Ahlemann acknowledged. “It’s not our purpose. And [Jackson] said he did not set out to offend people. It’s his purpose to proclaim what the Bible said as a preacher. That was not a political speech. That was a Bible sermon...Those of us who are Bible-believing Christians are very proud of what he had to say.”
Ahlemann added that the government should not curtail anyone’s religious liberty. While the nation’s founding fathers were Christians, “I don’t want government today to say Christianity is the state religion,” Ahlemann said.
“I want there to be absolute freedom of religion. If someone wants to put a stick in the ground and kneel down and worship that, that’s their choice. Historically, it is a fact that this nation was founded by individuals who were Christians and wanted this to be a Christian nation. That’s truth. That is historical fact,” he said.
Jackson did not respond to a request for comment.Guccifer is brilliantly creative. In addition to being a very adept hacker, his creative writing and way with words are among his more notable characteristics. He has a flair for the dramatic, using metaphor and imagery when speaking or writing. Like many highly intelligent, creative people, Guccifer has a worldview that is divergent from the common thought. Some might call him paranoid, a conspiracy theorist, or even delusional. Nonetheless, his ideas are interesting, and his way of expressing them is riveting.
Hillary Clinton, an authoritarian neoliberal, is his antithesis. Comparing his mind with hers is a bit like comparing an exploding nuclear reactor to a stretch of train track. Her goal driven, singular thoughts contrast sharply with his considerably more complex, intuitive, and completely non-standard processes. Perhaps this is among the reasons Guccifer finds her rise to power so objectionable. For whatever reason, Guccifer has labeled her a villain in his worldview. His goal is to expose her as corrupt and to overthrow her cabal of allies.
Guccifer’s passionate and extremely biased speech might border on paranoia at times, but with a complexity of frenetic cadence that shows an ability to hold many ideas at once. He has the writing style of a modern day Edgar Allen Poe taking on political science fiction. His “Guccifer Letter From Prison” published on Cryptome, is both amazing and bizarre.
Hillary Clinton, one of his favorite foes, is in his mind a danger to the world, an evil that must be exposed to the light of day, but she is not alone. She is part of a dangerous cabal of powerful people, according to Guccifer. His list of villains includes the Bush family, the Koch Family, and blue-blooded wealthy people from all over the world.
Guccifer sometimes speaks in a language of riddle and metaphor. It is hard to know if he means things literally or figuratively or if he believes all that he says, but from his own accounts, he is driven to discover more about the group he seeks to expose, a group he refers to as the Illuminati. Before dismissing him as yet another conspiracy theorist, readers might remember where he’s been and what he has seen. After all, he has read the Clinton emails, hacked into Tony Blair’s private documents, and has copies of the Bush family’s personal photos, just to name a few of his conquests.
Hillary Clinton was not the only political figure to be hacked by Guccifer. Years ago, this illustrious Romanian hacked the Bush family, first gaining access to the email of Dorthy Bush Koch. He obtained personal details about Dorthy’s father and brother, both former presidents of the United States.
Guccifer has proof of this hack in the form of personal family photos displayed on the Smoking Gun. More importantly, though, and far more valuable to him than pictures, he got her contacts, which supplied the young activist with more email addresses of important people to hack.
Guccifer claims to have photos of George W. Bush in a KKK hood.
“From the Facebook platform of the American secretary, I kept pictures and took screen captures from the email account of Dorothy Koch Bush, the only sister of President George W. Bush. Including pictures in which Bush wears a KU-KLUX-KLAN hood!!”
Guccifer has hopscotched his way into the email accounts of hundreds of celebrities, business people, and political leaders from around the world. He claims to have hacked Tony Blair and many members of British Parliament.
Bush Family Portrait [Photo by The White House/Getty Images]
Guccifer has gifted publications all over the world with information from his hacking. His deepest hope is in bringing down what he perceives as wickedness in very high places. Guccifer presented RT with some fascinating emails in March 2013.
Hillary Clinton and Sid Blumenthal’s email conversation regarding Benghazi, Libya, was given to RT. There is some incredibly sensitive information in these, and while they may have doubted the authenticity of the emails at the time, the mere fact Guccifer has been extradited give credence to his work. Guccifer speaks about his findings in his online letter from prison, on Cryptome.
“As far as the content of the emails is concerned, apart from the charts of ultra-secret CIA operations in Europe and North Africa – Libya’s entropy was in full progress – and substantial dialogues between Blumenthal and various decision factors in the Near Orient and leaders of the Arab Brotherhood, by far the most fruitful ‘prey’ I got my hands on were the CIA briefings that Sid unofficially transmitted to Hillary Clinton, then sitting on the chair of state secretary.”
Guccifer concluded from Hillary’s email that she did profit from clandestine information provided by Mr. Blumenthal and others. He also notes that he is aware Hillary Clinton is breaking the law by using a private email address.
“Hillary Clinton profited fully from the information supplied by the Blumenthal-Shearer-Drumheller-Grange clandestine network in 2011, 2012 and 2013. Especially that in 2011 and 2012 – the apex of the Libyan crisis – according to personnel lists, the American State Department didn’t have a bureau chief in Libya, and in the entire Maghreb – Algeria, Tunisia, Libya – were only two employees of the department on official duty. All this secret information was sent to Hillary on a private email address (!) hdr22[at]clintonemail.com, and not on an official address like American law demands!”
Guccifer, an impoverished Romanian national, was aware Hillary Clinton was breaking the law by using her private server.
Sidney Blumenthal [Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]
Hillary Clinton’s friend Sid Blumenthal received the dubious honor of a few descriptive paragraphs in the online letter from prison published by Cryptome. It could easily be said that perhaps the wording reveals more of the writer than of the subject, especially since there is no reason to think Guccifer ever met Mr. Blumenthal. Nonetheless, the description is a fascinating detail of the open letter, much of which is written in the third person.
“In March 2013, Guccifer succeeded in penetrating the email accounts of Sidney, ‘The Vicious Sid’ Blumenthal, a known press man from Chicago and the person closest to the Clintons. A man with a sordid reputation… who over decades didn’t spare any effort to cover up or carry out the crimes, blackmails, threats of the Clintons against political adversaries or business partners. With a simple Internet search, anyone can find a multitude of articles written by American journalists about the crimes and drug dealing to which ‘the Clintons’ have stooped in the eighties. Later, some of these journalists have disappeared or have died in suspicious accidents. F.B.I. – one of the basic “tools” of the Illuminati – ‘took care’ that none of the crimes of the Clintons would reach justice!”
More than any other publication, though, Guccifer supplies the Smoking Gun with his choice hacked finds, which they devotedly publish online.
Guccifer Hacked Hillary Clinton at least twice, copying her emails and, in his mind at least, collecting more information about the Occult Organization of the Illuminati. He delights in making reference to his theories about them.
“The hacking of the Facebook page of the American secretary with over 100 thousand fans/ supporters had appeared that very day as news in the American press. Colin Powell became the latest victim of Guccifer! The hacking took place on 11 March, a day with ritualic meanings in Freemason and pagan calendars!”
Guccifer referred to yet another email, which acknowledges some very old conspiracy theories and claiming to prove them.
“An email in which a person, C.E.O. in an important British press trust, was asking Powell to remind Tony Blair to participate in the annual meeting in California for the occult satanist organization ‘BOHEMIAN GROVE’ made the object of a very popular article on Russia Today! To dispel any doubt, a document written and signed by hand by the ex-British Prime Minister himself was published; this document proves Tony Blair’s belonging to the infamous esoteric organization, and it bears the sigil ‘Hacked by Guccifer’.”
Guccifer believes he is fighting evil when he takes aim at Hillary Clinton and other powerful individuals. His view of the world is far different than that of the mainstream, but is this because he has evidence or because he sees his evidence through the lens of his own unusual point of view?
Hillary Clinton’s coming hearings and trials will bring out new evidence collected by Guccifer and others. Readers should be sure to watch for more news of him as it should prove very interesting as always.
Guccifer and Hillary Clinton may face each other at some point during the hearings that are certain to follow the FBI investigation.
[Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images]WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday the Justice Department is prepared to defend in court President Obama's decision to oppose the release of Defense Department photos showing alleged abuse of detainees.
Photos were leaked in 2004 showing U.S. troops abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, Holder repeated Obama's assertion that the decision to oppose the photos' release had been made "consistent with the best interests of our troops."
Holder emphasized Obama's conclusion that making the photos public would endanger U.S. troops and have a "negative impact" on the military situation in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama expressed concern Wednesday that a release of the photos could "inflame anti-American opinion" and have a "chilling effect" on further investigations of detainee abuse without adding to the understanding of past abuses.
Before Obama's announcement, the Pentagon was set to release hundreds of photographs of prisoners in detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq by the end of the month. iReport.com: Obama right on photo decision?
The release initially was scheduled in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union. A lawsuit was filed in 2004 after the Bush administration denied the ACLU's request. The 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled last year the photos should be released.
The move would have followed Obama's decision to release Bush-era CIA documents showing that the United States used techniques such as waterboarding. Watch more on the dispute over the photos »
Images leaked to the news media in 2004 showing prisoner abuse caused outrage around the world. Detainees at the Iraqi military prison formerly called Abu Ghraib were photographed in degrading positions, as Americans posed next to them smiling. The images showed naked prisoners stacked on top of each other, or being threatened by dogs, or hooded and wired up as if for electrocution.
Obama said Wednesday that the photos he wants to withhold "are not particularly sensational, especially when compared with the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib, but they do represent conduct that didn't conform with the Army manual."
"The publication of these photos would not add any additional benefit to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals," he said. "In fact, the most direct consequence of releasing them would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger."
ACLU attorney Amrit Singh said that the decision "makes a mockery" of Obama's campaign promise of greater transparency and accountability.
"Essentially, by withholding these photographs from public view, the Obama administration is making itself complicit in the Bush administration's torture policies," Singh said.
Singh said the ACLU is prepared to "do whatever it takes" to have the photos released.
On other subjects, the attorney general:
Indicated that the Justice Department has begun a review of the disparity in sentencing policies for crack versus powdered cocaine;
Said he does not know where the 241 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ultimately will be placed, but that the government would not "release [or transfer] anybody who would pose a danger to the American people";
Promised Justice Department officials will follow the evidence and law to determine whether Bush administration officials would be prosecuted for torture;
Asserted that he has "a fundamentally different view" from the Bush administration on the question of whether a president has the ability to detain an individual indefinitely without filing charges.
"The notion that a president in an unfettered way... has [the ability to detain someone] is not something we agree with," Holder said.
"Without being tied to some statute, some international agreement... I do not believe the president has that power."
All About Eric Holder • Barack Obama • Abu GhraibStory highlights A mother beat her 2-year-old daughter and glued her to the wall over potty training
The mother, Elizabeth Escalona, pleaded guilty to first degree injury of a child in July
A pediatrician says at the sentencing hearing "the entire picture was very shocking"
Prosecutors want Escalona sentenced to 45 years in prison, a spokeswoman says
A Texas mother of five is expected to be sentenced Tuesday after admitting to gluing her 2-year-old daughter to a wall and beating her over potty training.
Elizabeth Escalona, 23, was in a Dallas County, Texas, court Monday as witnesses -- including her mother and the pediatrician who cared for the toddler -- testified in the first day of her sentencing hearing, while prosecutors showed pictures of the little girl's hands and bruised body and forehead.
"The entire picture was very shocking," said Dr. Amy Barton, then a child abuse pediatrician at Children's Medical Center of Dallas, choking back tears on the stand. "I see a lot of children, and this was one of the most shocking cases that I have seen."
Jocelyn Cedillo was less than two months shy of her third birthday in September 2011 when Escalona, her mother, used a powerful adhesive to glue her hands to a wall and beat her.
Three other children of Escalona, who was pregnant at the time, witnessed the abuse, according to Dallas County district attorney's office spokeswoman Debbie Denmon.
The child urinated on herself during the ordeal, during which she was hit in head and kicked in the groin, among other forms of abuse, said Denmon.
Oefelia Escalona, the defendant's mother, testified Monday that she found the girl and took her to the hospital.
"I saw Jocelyn laying in the bed. She was facing the wall and...," the 42-year-old woman said, before she started crying and turned away.
It wasn't clear exactly how long young Jocelyn was glued to the wall before she was brought to the Dallas hospital. Once there, medical authorities noticed severe bruises to her face and head, as well as a severe brain injury that led to her temporarily being in a coma.
Escalona pleaded guilty on July 12 to a charge of first-degree injury to a child, a crime punishable by anywhere between five years and life in prison.
Prosecutors are asking Escalona be incarcerated for 45 years, so she will not cause any more harm to her children, Denmon said.
"When these types of crimes occur we have to send a message, not only to the perpetrator, but to the citizens of Dallas County as a whole," District Attorney Craig Watkins told CNN. "If you choose to commit these types of crimes, we will ensure that you receive an adequate punishment."
Prior to this incident, Escalona had been investigated by Texas Child Protective Services but never arrested or charged, said Denmon.
The child welfare agency put all of her children in foster care after her toddler daughter was taken to the hospital. All five of them, including Jocelyn, are now in the custody of their grandmother, Oefelia Escalona.Brian O’Driscoll enjoys legendary status among Irish sports fans. The public perception of O’Driscoll is one of a truly exceptional player who stood apart from his peers in the era of professional rugby. Yet many rugby fans outside Ireland, while recognising that he was a great player, perhaps thought Ireland fans were inclined to exaggerate about his brilliance, especially later in his career.
The debate is understandable. When O’Driscoll burst on to the scene with a hat-trick of tries in Paris, his remarkable ability to change pace and direction was immediately apparent. As he matured, his contribution became a less obvious – a more subtle combination of passing, positioning and leadership.
So was Brian O’Driscoll truly exceptional? Generally speaking, it is very difficult to estimate an individual’s contribution to a team sport accurately. Descriptive statistics such as number of tries, assists, caps or trophies may be suggestive. But each depends on other factors including the quality of teammates, the player’s position and perhaps most importantly, whether the player is selected to play in the first place. Because players are more likely to be selected when on good form, measures of impact based on the games they do play will tend to be biased upwards.
However, with O’Driscoll we realised that it was possible to produce a better estimate, because there is one sense in which his career is truly unique. For 15 years, if Ireland were playing frontline opposition, O’Driscoll was an automatic selection unless injured. Furthermore, throughout his career he missed games sporadically through injury, including at least once against all frontline international teams. So by treating injury as a random event, statistical estimates can be produced of O’Driscoll’s contribution to the likelihood that Ireland won or lost, or to the points difference between the teams.
As two economists and ardent rugby fans, once we had realised this possibility, assembling the data and running some models proved irresistible. What we found also surprised us.
We went back through the archives to extract the team-sheets and the results for all matches that Ireland played from 1999 through to the end of the 2014 Six Nations Championship, when Brian O’Driscoll finally retired from international rugby. Using fixed effects models to control for the opposition and for whether the game was home or away, we estimated that the O’Driscoll effect on the scoreboard was not only statistically significant, but amounted to fully seven points per game. Or in rugby terms, one converted try.
Given that more than one third of Ireland’s games during the period were won or lost by less than seven points, this a striking figure for the impact of just one player among 30 on the pitch. Moreover, we found no significant difference between the O’Driscoll effect early and late in his career.
To check that this contribution was genuinely unique, we also estimated the equivalent contributions of 21 other top Irish players from the professional era. Although selection effects might be likely to bias their contributions upwards, none was statistically significant and no player’s estimated impact came close to seven points. For comparison, our estimate of the overall impact of home advantage was 11 points.
These first models did not distinguish between the impact on the points difference in close games and the impact in games where the issue was merely the size of the winning (or losing) margin. Yet whether a match is won or lost matters more than by how much. So we also built binary probit models to estimate O’Driscoll’s contribution to the overall outcome of the game.
This turned out to be more surprising still. Again, the O’Driscoll effect was significant, but this time we found his impact on the probability of winning the match to be even larger than the effect of playing at home rather than away.
To give an idea of the scale of the O’Driscoll effect, our statistical models allowed us to estimate the probability of Ireland winning home games against frontline teams with and without O’Driscoll in the starting line-up. The estimates are provided in the chart below.
The impact of O’Driscoll’s presence on the probability of winning was, to say the least, large. Games against top international sides like Australia, South Africa and France, which would be highly likely to be lost in his absence, became instead evenly balanced. A two-to-one chance of losing to England became a two-to-one chance of winning when O’Driscoll played, while games against the other three Six Nations teams would rarely be lost.
New Zealand could not be included in this analysis, since Ireland have never beaten them. When we constructed separate ordered probit models for whether games were won or lost by less than one score, we found that when O’Driscoll was fit he had a similarly large impact on the outcome.
Of course, the method we have used is a statistical comparison of outcomes when O’Driscoll filled Ireland’s No.13 shirt, with outcomes when someone else did. So it might be argued that the results measure not how good O’Driscoll was, but how poor the available substitutes were. But this argument does not bear scrutiny because when O’Driscoll was injured, he was usually replaced by seasoned internationals able to play in multiple positions in the back-line, not by inexperienced players.
There was one other interesting finding that emerged from our analysis. When we used the same methods to gauge the contribution of other players to whether Ireland won or lost, two other players emerged as significant – Peter Stringer and Jonathan Sexton. The estimates of their contributions may be biased upwards somewhat, because each had periods of less good form during which they were not selected. But the finding is notable because it supports rugby folklore. One is a scrum-half, the other a fly-half, and wisdom has it that these positions ( |
Department of Justice considers you worth investigating if you are missing a few fingers, if you have weatherproof ammunition, if you own guns or if you have hoarded more than seven days of food in your house. Adding a few of the obstructionist tactics of the Occupy movement to this list would be a seamless process. On the whim of the military, a suspected “terrorist” who also happens to be a U.S. citizen can suffer extraordinary rendition—being kidnapped and then left to rot in one of our black sites “until the end of hostilities.” Since this is an endless war that will be a very long stay.
This demented “war on terror” is as undefined and vague as such a conflict is in any totalitarian state. Dissent is increasingly equated in this country with treason. Enemies supposedly lurk in every organization that does not chant the patriotic mantras provided to it by the state. And this bill feeds a mounting state paranoia. It expands our permanent war to every spot on the globe. It erases fundamental constitutional liberties. It means we can no longer use the word “democracy” to describe our political system.
The supine and gutless Democratic Party, which would have feigned outrage if George W. Bush had put this into law, appears willing, once again, to grant Obama a pass. But I won’t. What he has done is unforgivable, unconstitutional and exceedingly dangerous. The threat and reach of al-Qaida—which I spent a year covering for The New York Times in Europe and the Middle East—are marginal, despite the attacks of 9/11. The terrorist group poses no existential threat to the nation. It has been so disrupted and broken that it can barely function. Osama bin Laden was gunned down by commandos and his body dumped into the sea. Even the Pentagon says the organization is crippled. So why, a decade after the start of the so-called war on terror, do these draconian measures need to be implemented? Why do U.S. citizens now need to be specifically singled out for military detention and denial of due process when under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force the president can apparently find the legal cover to serve as judge, jury and executioner to assassinate U.S. citizens, as he did in the killing of the cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen? Why is this bill necessary when the government routinely ignores our Fifth Amendment rights—“No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law”—as well as our First Amendment right of free speech? How much more power do they need to fight “terrorism”?
Fear is the psychological weapon of choice for totalitarian systems of power. Make the people afraid. Get them to surrender their rights in the name of national security. And then finish off the few who aren’t afraid enough. If this law is not revoked we will be no different from any sordid military dictatorship. Its implementation will be a huge leap forward for the corporate oligarchs who plan to continue to plunder the nation and use state and military security to cow the population into submission.
The oddest part of this legislation is that the FBI, the CIA, the director of national intelligence, the Pentagon and the attorney general didn’t support it. FBI Director Robert Mueller said he feared the bill would actually impede the bureau’s ability to investigate terrorism because it would be harder to win cooperation from suspects held by the military. “The possibility looms that we will lose opportunities to obtain cooperation from the persons in the past that we’ve been fairly successful in gaining,” he told Congress.
But it passed anyway. And I suspect it passed because the corporations, seeing the unrest in the streets, knowing that things are about to get much worse, worrying that the Occupy movement will expand, do not trust the police to protect them. They want to be able to call in the Army. And now they can.Text of Hedges’ Legal Complaint (Updated)NDAA Official TextA Delta 3D Printer Built Out of a Coffee Maker
Hackster Staff Blocked Unblock Follow Following Feb 2, 2017
Converting a coffee maker into a 3D printer may not be something that has ever crossed your mind. One look — rather a look then a few seconds of careful consideration — at this machine may make you wonder why someone hadn’t done this before. Not only is the coffee maker shaped in a sort of “C” with space inside for your extruder and part, but heavy duty models generally have a hotplate built in!
Besides the innovative frame, the movement mechanics are ingeniously simple. It uses three stepper motors to move the extruder head in a delta configuration. This is done using purely rotational motion and linkages, meaning there’s no need for precision rods or linear bearings.
In terms of electronics, the system is based on the popular combination of an Arduino Mega and RAMPS 1.4 shield.
If you’re skeptical of the design, check it out in action in the video below. It’s been the “workhorse at Tropical Labs for over a year now.”While the nation is all set to host the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) later this year, Sri Lankan democracy is disintegrating, with systematic torture and arbitrary detention increasingly becoming a ‘way of life’.
Colombo's Municipal Council, as Sri Lanka fumigates to contain Dengue Fever. Demotix/Tharaka Ruwansiri. All rights reserved.
In November this year, Sri Lanka will host the 23rd Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister of Canada has announced that he will not attend the meeting, citing the country’s dismal human rights record, and Nick Clegg, the British Deputy Prime Minister, has warned of “consequences” if the Sri Lankan authorities did not change their conduct.
As the nation is thrust into the global spotlight once again, hope that the conduct will change remains faint among its people.
For decades, Sri Lanka was embroiled in a civil war, which claimed thousands of lives, destroyed many others and scarred the consciousness of entire generations. The fighting stopped in 2009, with the Sri Lankan military’s victory over the LTTE, albeit controversially, with thousands of civilians losing their lives as a result of the military offensive.
Recently, the United Nations adopted a resolution based on a report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, condemning the “war crimes” which were committed by the LTTE and, more worryingly, by the government forces.
Yet, it sparked realistic hopes that the future would be a little brighter, with focus shifting to reconciliation and compromise to strengthen the fragile peace between the island’s two main ethnic groups.
President Mahinda Rajapakshe, however, dismissed demands for an international investigation and set up an Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) instead. Eighteen months later, it cleared the army of systematic crimes, calling for the investigation of only a few “individual incidents”.
After his re-election in the Presidential election of 2010, the credibility of which has been questioned, Rajapakshe initiated a series of reforms, which consolidated and augmented his powers, notably removing the two term limit for the Presidency. Members of his family occupy the most important portfolios in the cabinet, with younger brother Gotabhaya Rajapakshe being particularly influential.
The opposition candidate, Gen. Sarath Fonseka, the former Chief of Staff of the Sri Lankan army and the architect of the offensive that defeated the LTTE, was arrested for endorsing “corrupt military deals’. The accusations and the subsequent trial were dismissed by many observers as being part of a wider political agenda, with Fonseka’s stature and influence worrying the government.
Years after the end of the fighting, the country’s democratic structure is disintegrating and reports of torture and brutality by the police and security forces continue to surface. Arbitrary arrests, detentions and deaths in custody are becoming more prevalent across the country, with arcane security laws being used as political tools.
A report published in 2013 by Human Rights Watch states that “overly broad detention powers remained in place under various laws and regulations” and that “several thousand people continued to be detained without charge or trial”.
The Prevention of Terrorism Act in particular, according to another report by Amnesty International is being used by the government to “silence its critics”. Under it, people can be held without a proper charge or trial for up to eighteen months.
Equally worrying are the increasing cases of violence against those journalists who strive to uncover and bring attention to these issues. In 2009, prominent journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge was shot dead by masked men on motorbikes. Earlier this year, Faraz Shauketaly, another journalist at the Sunday Leader, the newspaper that Wickrematunge edited, was shot in the neck.
In an article that was published posthumously, Wickrematunge hauntingly proclaimed “When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me”.
A new code of ethics for the media proposed by the government worryingly aims to prohibit “any content that contains material against the executive, judiciary and the legislative”. Sri Lanka is already ranked 162 out of 179 countries in the 2013 Press Freedom Index published by Reporters without Borders.
In the beginning of 2013, Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake was impeached by the Parliament for “professional misconduct”. The fact that Bandaranayake had made a series of rulings against the government before her removal in a highly controversial manner is not seen as a coincidence by independent observers.
The International Commission of Jurists described the impeachment as an “evisceration” of judicial independence, adding that it had created a “constitutional crisis of unprecedented dimensions”.
The Commonwealth Lawyer’s Association, Commonwealth Legal Education Association and the Commonwealth Judge’s and Magistrate’s Association issued a joint resolution in April recommending the relocation of the CHOGM from the country, stating that “allowing the Sri Lankan government to host the meeting would call into grave question the value, credibility and future of the Commonwealth”
As the CHOGM approaches and reports of torture and abuse continue to surface, this is a sentiment that is being widely echoed.
Brad Adams, the Asia Director of Human Rights Watch, even stated that the Commonwealth would face “international ridicule”, if the summit was to be held in Sri Lanka, adding that “to allow the nation to host the summit without rapid improvements would be to reward an abusive government with an underserved badge of international peace”.
Further, Adams believes that Sri Lanka’s chairmanship of the Commonwealth from 2013 to 2015 would “undermine the credibility of the Commonwealth on human rights matters”.
Amnesty International has released a “six point human rights agenda” for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
Titled “Tell the Truth”, the agenda calls on the Sri Lankan government to “tell the truth on arbitrary detention and torture”.
It further urges the government to release “all individuals who have been arrested under emergency or anti terrorism laws, unless they are charged with recognizable criminal offences” and to “establish a registree of all detainees, with details of when and where they were arrested”.
In response to the intense criticism of the decision to stage the meeting in the country, Commonwealth Secretary General Kamalesh Sharma issued a letter to the Financial Times, asking foreign media outlets and the wider international community to “wait before judging Sri Lanka”.
In his letter, Sharma states that the question for the international community was “whether to criticise the lack of progress from afar or to offer and to make a practical difference”, adding that the Commonwealth had chosen the latter option and would work with the Sri Lankan government to advance the “Commonwealth values, including human rights and building mutual respect and understanding in communities”.
Sharma argues that “success should invariably be measured positively in the longer term in the form of real progress”, even if “Commonwealth soft power and behind the scenes contributions can often be at risk of negative judgement in the short term”.
Carl Wright, the Secretary General of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum stated in another letter to the FT that Sri Lanka needed the Commonwealth’s “active engagement” in the road to peace.
He cited a meeting with newly elected mayors from the country, including the mayor of the conflict-hit Northern province of Jaffna, who stressed the need for “ better democratic structures and essential services”, in what is still “very much a post-conflict situation”.
He adds that the Commonwealth Local Government Forum would initiate a grassroots programme “drawing on the experiences of Commonwealth countries that have undergone the same painful and often difficult transition to peace”.
Secretary General Sharma concludes his letter by stating that “to walk away and not to stay the course would be to the Commonwealth’s lasting discredit”. Only time will tell if this approach was right. Nevertheless, it is certain that the present debate will have a lasting impact in defining the agenda, role and relevance of these meetings and the Commonwealth itself in the near future.Egypt’s President Sisi Meets CIA Director
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi met with the Director John Brennan of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on Sunday in Cairo.
During the meeting, which saw the Egyptian President stress the importance of bilateral relations between Cairo and Washington D.C., the CIA’s Director praised Egypt’s regional and international role and the importance Egypt plays in resolving crises across the Middle East.
President Sisi also told Director Brennan that Egypt is continuing its fight against militants in North Sinai, stressing that terrorism is limited to an area that does not exceed one percent of North Sinai’s total land area.
In the meeting, which was also attended by the head of Egyptian General Intelligence Khaled Fawzy and US Ambassador to Cairo Stephen Beecroft, President Sisi expressed his wish to expand US-Egyptian relations to other fields.
Meanwhile, Director Brennan said the U.S. was committed to supporting Egypt in its fight against terrorism and congratulated the Egyptian President for the recent parliamentary elections.
Egypt-US relations have been strained since the ouster of former President Mohammed Morsi in July 2013. However, with recent moves including the return of US aid to Egypt, analysts say ties have improved.
Subscribe to our newsletterIsraeli researchers from the Technion and Carmel Medical Center have developed a unique device to monitor respiratory problems in premature infants.
The device immediately detects the development of respiratory deterioration and helps to characterize it, before the onset of distress that may lead to serious and irreversible injury to the premature babies. Thus, it provides early-stage treatment and prevents complications.
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The researchers, Dr. Dan Waisman from the Technion‘s Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and Carmel Medical Center and Prof. Amir Landesberg of the Technion’s Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, say that the device, called the Pneumonitor, continuously and systematically monitors the dynamics of premature babies’ breathing.
The device was tested successfully on mice, rats and rabbits in different disease models. “We simulated common conditions that occur in premature babies in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, as well as an animal model for asthma and compared the operation of our device to that of competing devices,” they explain. “We also tried the device in 63 cases in Carmel, Bnai Zion and Rambam Medical Centers.”
Avoiding fatal complications
According to the researchers, it has been reported that 45 percent of life-threatening situations that occur in a Neonatal Pediatric Intensive Care Unit go undetected by monitoring devices currently used and are detected only by staff visual inspection of their patients. Even when the devices do detect a problem, the patient is often already in distress and can develop serious complications. It then still remains for the doctor to identify the cause of the problem.
The Pneumonitor has three miniature motion sensors that are attached to the infant on both sides of the chest and the upper abdomen. When respiratory deterioration is detected, the device signals an alarm before the onset of distress, and provides information that can assist in the diagnosis of the nature and location of the problem. The motion sensors quantify the breathing effort and the symmetry of lung ventilation. The device displays data on the respiratory conditions and indicates changes in the level of ventilation.
The Technion reports that approximately 10 percent of all births worldwide are preterm and an additional 10 percent of full-term babies suffer complications and require tight respiratory supervision. Moreover, 15 percent of premature babies born under 1,500 grams do not survive and an additional 15 percent suffer from serious complications such as mental handicaps, hearing and visual problems and chronic lung disease.
A significant number of these complications are related to respiratory management and care, the researchers say, making early identification of respiratory distress in premature babies crucial.
The results of the research were recently published in the Journal of Intensive Care Medicine. The Technion has registered a patent for the device and has set up a company called Pneumedicare, located in Yokne’am, Israel, and managed by Dr. Carmit Levy, who received her Ph.D. from the Technion’s Department of Biomedical Engineering. The device is now ready for FDA review.
Photo by YannVolodymr Groysman is on the verge of making history as the first Jewish Prime Minister of Ukraine, a country firmly planted in the American psyche as a place of anti-Semitism and pogroms.
Groysman, 38, is proposing the formation of a new coalition government following the resignation of Prime Minister Areniy Yatsenyuk on Sunday.
If Groysman’s proposal is accepted by Ukraine’s parliament Tuesday – as seems likely — he will become the only Jew to occupy such a prominent political post in Central and Eastern Europe where political anti-Semitism remains a problem.
Groysman, the current chairman of the notoriously fractious Ukrainian parliament, is known as a capable administrator and has looked for several months like a favorite to replace the embattled Yatsenyuk.
In recent weeks, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko pushed hard to convince opposition parties to unite behind Groysman to try to stabilize the country following months of political turmoil that have endangered billions of dollars in IMF loans.
But Groysman’s position looked less secure last week after Poroshenko was damaged by revelations stemming from a massive leak of documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.
The documents showed that in 2014, when hundreds of Ukrainians were dying during a peak in fighting with Russian separatists in East Ukraine, Poroshenko was busy transferring his assets to an offshore account in the British Virgin Islands.
Corruption is endemic in Ukraine. One more financial scandal involving a politician — and one of the country’s richest businessmen at that — did not appear to hurt Poroshenko as much as it undermined other leaders such as Iceland’s Prime Minister, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, who was forced to resign in the wake of the Panamanian revelations.
But the scandal did force Poroshenko on the defensive. While Poroshenko insisted that he did nothing wrong, some populist opposition MPs called for a parliamentary inquiry, making Groysman’s position even more uncertain.
Groysman’s prospects were resurrected on Sunday when Prime Minister Yatsenyuk announced that he would step down officially on Tuesday and that he expected to be replaced by Groysman. Though the reasons behind the timing and nature of the announcement remain unknown, Yatsenyuk’s party is one of the largest in the Ukrainian parliament seeming to suggest that Groysman will have enough support.
As Poroshenko’s ally, Groysman is not a universally popular figure. But it is notable that in a region of Europe prone to anti-Semitism, Groysman’s Jewish background has been notably absent from opposition to his candidacy.
Anton Shekhovtsov, an expert on the European far right, says that’s because anti-Semitism is not as deeply embedded or as popular in Ukraine as it is in say, Poland, or in Hungary.
Shekhovtsov, a visiting fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, Austria, said that anti-Semitism in Poland and in Hungary still appeals, particularly to the generation that lived through World War Two when Jews were often linked to Soviet Communism.
“I can’t really imagine a person like Groysman being prime minister in Poland or Hungary,” Shekhovtsov said. “There would be huge opposition to him. Maybe people wouldn’t voice their opposition in anti-Semitic terms but they would find some other reason to oppose [such] a candidate.”
By contrast, he said, anti-Semitism was pushed to the margins in the independent Ukraine that emerged during the early 1990s following the fall of Communism.
Ukraine, which is often torn between its attraction to Russia in the east and to the European Union in the west, still suffers from its own brand of anti-Semitism.
The far-right Svoboda party has had varying degrees of success since its founding 25 years ago. In the 2012 parliamentary election, Svoboda won 10% of the vote. Yet just two years later, following the so-called Maidan revolution when the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych was toppled from power, the party failed to reach the 5% threshold necessary to win a seat on the country’s party list system.
This most recent turbulent period saw a fall in the already low number of hate crime assaults on Jews, from an average of four per year between 2012 and 2014, to just one assault in 2015, according to data gathered by the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress’s National Minority Rights Monitoring Group.
But there has been a rise in anti-Semitic vandalism. Vyacheslav Likhachev, the head of the congress’s monitoring group, said that most vandalism targets Holocaust memorials and synagogues. In each of the past two years, there have been more than 20 anti-Semitic acts of vandalism in Ukraine, compared to fewer than 10 such incidents recorded in each year from 2011 to 2013.
Likhachev believes this is a direct result of Russia’s war with Ukraine. Likhachev said the past two years of unrest have made acts of vandalism more normal. But more than that, he believes that pro-Russian separatists have stoked anti-Semitism by using anti-Jewish conspiracy theories in their propaganda battle with Kiev.
Indeed, one quirk of the lack of anti-Semitism directed at Groysman is the fact that many anti-Semitic tropes in Ukraine today involve rumors that Ukraine is being run by a Jewish cabal. Referring to their alleged Jewish roots, far right groups refer to Poroshenko, as “Valtsman” and to opposition leader Yuliya Timoshenko, as “Kapitelman.”
According to Mikhail Krutikov, a Jewish Studies professor at the University of Michigan who closely follows Ukraine, there are even rumors that the country’s former prime minister Yatsenyuk might be Jewish because he wears glasses and was born in Chernivtsi, a city historically associated with a large Jewish population.
“When you come to someone like Groysman, who is openly Jewish, it’s not interesting because clearly he is Jewish,” Krutikov said.
Groysman began his career during the mid 1990s as the commercial director of a private Ukrainian company. He entered politics in 2002 as a councilor in the city of Vinnitsa, in west central Ukraine. Four years later, according to his biography on the city’s website, he became Vinnitsa’s youngest ever mayor at the age of 28.
In Ukraine, where governors are hand-picked by the president and where many members of parliament are elected according to a party list system, the post of mayor is one of the country’s few directly-elected political positions. Krutikov said that he first heard of Groysman when he was elected to lead Vinnitsa. “When he was in Vinnitsa people spoke very well of him,” Krutikov said. “He was very young, which was unusual. It was also unusual because he was Jewish.”
Olena Bagno-Moldavsky, who completed research last year into anti-Semitism stoked by the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, said it’s possible to find evidence that anti-Semitism is both on the rise and on the wane in Ukraine.
“I think the truth is, as usual, somewhere in between,” said Bagno-Moldavsky, a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “Clearly, we do not see signs of state-sponsored anti-Semitism in Ukraine in the last period. But, I do not think that Jewish roots is something that can help a politician to advance his career.”
Groysman’s critics have focused not on his Jewishness, but on his ties to Poroshenko, who is increasingly seen as part of the problem rather than the solution to Ukraine’s rampant corruption.
For Ukraine, the stakes could not be higher. The country’s governing coalition has been under intense pressure since three small parties resigned earlier this year, imperiling stalled payments from a $17.5 billion IMF bailout.
Natalie Jaresko, the country’s US-born finance minister put herself forward as a possible candidate for prime minister, emphasizing her technocratic credentials and her lack of ties to Ukraine’s tangled political and business interests. Poroshenko, a chocolate magnate with an estimated net worth of $730 million, wanted Groysman.
Groysman was elected to parliament in 2014 as a member of Poroshenko’s party, where he is viewed a competent and reliable loyalist.
“Nobody has said anything about being offended or angry that a Jew could become prime minister, which is pretty striking,” said David Fishman, a professor of Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. “People don’t like Groysman because he just represents Poroshenko and business as usual.”
On Tuesday, Ukraine’s MPs will decide whether that business should continue.
This story "Will Volodymr Groysman Be the First Jewish Premier of Ukraine?" was written by Paul Berger.Hi everyone,
For this week's dev update I'm going to talk about story in the game, and some of the changes coming in the CQC update relating to story. But before that I'd like to congratulate all the players who succeeded in stopping the Cerberus outbreak - it was looking quite serious there for a while and could potentially have been quite devastating, so good job!
I mention the Cerberus plague as it's an example of some of the story elements we weave into the game. Generally speaking we have three types of story: The first are the big story arcs like the Imperial Succession thread. This is currently bubbling away quite nicely and there's some big events based around that. There's a similar one for the Federation which will resume during the CQC update and will continue well into next year.
There are other big story arcs, some of which have been foreshadowed in GalNet and others that haven't. I won't spoil the surprises!
With the major story arcs we put community goals into the plot and that allows players the opportunity to determine where the story goes next. Community Goals are a useful component and they are good for massed action, but some of the storylines need something a bit more subtle. One of the changes in the CQC update allows us to place items for collection as part of scenarios in specific locations. As well as supporting new story options it allows us to create treasure hunts and similar activities. These won't necessarily be telegraphed and I'm quite looking forward to seeing how these evolve.
As well as the big story arcs we're supporting stories created by player groups and where appropriate supporting them with gameplay elements like community goals. A word of caution on this though: we won't allow community goals that provide an unfair advantage over other groups. This is also the case with player submitted stories. When these are used in GalNet they will have the commander's name at the bottom of the story.
The third type of story is a bit more adhoc. These tend to be more local in focus and are used to fill in the gaps in the main story beats.
The changes coming for supporting the stories also have benefits elsewhere. One example of this is that there are new things for explorers to find while they are out in deep space. They won't pop up on the navigation system unless you're close enough.
And of course, I can't talk about story without also mentioning the Unknown Artefacts - the mystery for these is about to get deeper. :)
The CQC update progresses the tools we have to express story in the game, but it won't end there. We have some exciting plans for how we can expand the story further as we enter Season Two.
Progress on the beta release for the CQC update is continuing. It is due to have the internal candidate QA pass next week, this should be about a week in duration so all being well, the beta will be available for those with access on the week of August 31st.
Thanks
Michael
You can discuss this dev update by clicking here.TORONTO — Don Cherry’s status as an icon of Canadian TV hockey may prove to be his downfall as the groundbreaking deal between Rogers Communications and CBC ushers in a new era of "Hockey Night in Canada," marketing experts said.
The 12-year, $5.2-billion agreement announced this week gives Rogers national rights to all NHL games and will see the beloved broadcast shift to the telecommunication giant’s multiple platforms, including City and Sportsnet.
Such a radical transformation — from must-see "appointment" viewing to "hockey a la carte" — could call for a shake-up when it comes to on-air talent, including the man many consider the face of "Hockey Night in Canada," said David Kincaid, managing partner and CEO of the Toronto-based Level 5 Strategy Group.
No company invests billions of dollars in a brand only to leave it as it is, said Kincaid, who helped Labatt Breweries wrest sponsorship rights to the NHL from Molson-Coors in the 1990s.
"If they want to say it’s the fresh new face of hockey, available across all these different mediums and all this different type of integrated content, if a certain personality is seen as an on-air television commentator, it’s off strategy," he said.
"If the equity of their brand is only television, and you’re creating content to go across multiple platforms, I kind of want a new spokesperson that travels across all the platforms or a whole range of spokespeople."
Cherry’s place in Canada’s new TV hockey landscape remains unclear but Rogers denies it is distancing itself from the notoriously outspoken sportscaster.
"I’m a big fan of Don Cherry; I’ve worked with him and have a great respect for him," Scott Moore, broadcast president for Rogers Media, said in an email.
"I’ve already spoken to him, in fact. I look forward to sitting down with him to discuss if he wants to be part of the new arrangement."
While it’s too early to nail down who will headline the flagship Saturday night show, Moore said CBC and Sportsnet have "some of the best talent in the business" and he looks forward to bringing the two teams together.
Cherry has so far held off weighing in on the deal or his possible involvement, saying he’s been left out of any behind-the-scenes discussions and doesn’t know "what’s going on."
He is expected to address the matter in his Coach’s Corner segment Saturday.
In an interview with CBC on Thursday, however, the high-profile hockey commentator brushed off rumours predicting his retirement.
"They’ve been saying that for 30 years," he said. "I know I’m No. 1 and Coach’s Corner is No. 1 and what are you going to do?"
That Cherry was kept in the dark regarding the show he’s largely defined for a generation of Canadians suggests his time in the spotlight may be running out, said Edgar Baum, general manager of Brand Finance.
"The abruptness of how this happened was a surprise. It appears to me on the surface… that they don’t wish to continue with Don," he said.
"Maybe something’s going to get negotiated or… maybe they would like to discontinue that era and find somebody new," he said.
"It’s up to Rogers to figure out how they want to create that identity, but I definitely think an icon of Canadian hockey broadcasting may be seeing his last season."
Whether the company can oust a fan favourite without alienating viewers hinges on how it orchestrates the transition — and who it puts forth in his place, Baum said.
"I would definitely be looking for a larger-than-life personality to be able to replace Don if that’s what Rogers chooses to do," he said.
"Because I’ll be frank, if there’s just some guy who speaks in a monotone about how the first period went… I probably wouldn’t be tuning in as much."
Having Cherry endorse and mould his successor would also help viewers adjust to the change, Baum said.
When push comes to shove, however, the "Hockey Night in Canada" brand trumps Cherry’s personal cachet, Kincaid argued.
"Would Canadians be sad to see the icon disappear? I can pretty well bet your bottom dollar to that," he said.
"Would they have long-lasting rejection of the ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ brand if he wasn’t there five years later? I don’t think so."
Both marketers agreed Rogers should be planning for a post-Cherry program in any case, noting the 79-year-old sportscaster will likely retire in the next few years.
Cherry joined "Hockey Night in Canada" full-time in 1981 and CBC started the "Coach’s Corner" segment shortly after his arrival.
A sub-licensing agreement with CBC allows the public broadcaster to continue airing "Hockey Night in Canada" on Saturday nights for four years, while TVA in Quebec earned all of the Canadian French-language multi-media rights.Donald Trump listens to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton during the presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., on Sept. 26. (Patrick Semansky/AP)
After the third presidential debate, most of the conversation focused on Donald Trump's disinterest in affirming that he would accept the results of the election. Given the outcome of the race, though, the more important exchange may have been this one:
TRUMP: [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, from everything I see, has no respect for this person. HILLARY CLINTON: Well, that's because he'd rather have a puppet as president of the United States. TRUMP: No puppet. No puppet. CLINTON: And it's pretty clear … TRUMP: You're the puppet! CLINTON: It's pretty clear you won't admit … TRUMP: No, you're the puppet. CLINTON: … that the Russians have engaged in cyberattacks against the United States of America, that you encouraged espionage against our people, that you are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish list, break up NATO, do whatever he wants to do, and that you continue to get help from him, because he has a very clear favorite in this race.
Well, before Election Day, Clinton and her allies seized on reports that the Russian government was trying to disrupt the presidential election, including by hacking the Democratic National Committee and the email of Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta. They argued that Russia was doing so specifically to bolster Trump's chances. On Friday, The Washington Post reported that U.S. intelligence agencies came to the same conclusion about Russia's motive before the election.
Trump and his allies spent the weekend undermining that report. On Monday morning, Trump himself tweeted a response.
Unless you catch "hackers" in the act, it is very hard to determine who was doing the hacking. Why wasn't this brought up before election? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2016
It was brought up before the election, of course.
It was brought up in that third debate. It was brought up in the second debate, too, when Clinton raised the subject. “We have never in the history of our country been in a situation where an adversary, a foreign power, is working so hard to influence the outcome of the election,” she said. “And believe me, they're not doing it to get me elected. They're doing it to try to influence the election for Donald Trump.”
Trump responded to that, saying that “maybe there is no hacking. But they always blame Russia. And the reason they blame Russia because they think they're trying to tarnish me with Russia. I know nothing about Russia. I know — I know about Russia, but I know nothing about the inner workings of Russia.”
It also came up in the first debate. Clinton raised the subject of Russian hacking, prompting Trump's soon-infamous reply: “I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, okay?”
Clinton raised it then because Trump had been asked about Russian hacking at a news conference July 27. “It's just a total deflection, this whole thing with Russia,” Trump said then. This was also when he called for Russia to release emails that it may have stolen from Clinton: “By the way, they hacked — they probably have her 33,000 emails. I hope they do. They probably have her 33,000 emails that she lost and deleted because you'd see some beauties there. So let's see.”
The question of Russian hacking began in June, in fact. Documents from the breach were posted online shortly before the Democratic National Convention, prompting the resignation of the party's chairwoman, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.).
Other members of Trump's party accepted the idea that Russian hacking was playing a role in the election. Politico compiled quotes from a number of Republicans in October arguing that it was likely that Russia was trying to steal information from political actors. A few weeks before the election, House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) said that he had told Trump that U.S. intelligence agencies thought that Russia was behind the hacks — but that Trump dismissed the idea.
Among the Republicans who didn't? Trump's running mate, Mike Pence. “I think there's more and more evidence that implicates Russia,” Pence said on “Meet the Press” three weeks before the election.
One of the challenges with Trump's relying on Twitter as his primary means of communicating publicly is that he is constrained by its character limit. For example, perhaps Trump's question about the subject of hacking not coming up before the election was meant specifically to ask why there was no public acknowledgment of Russia's goal before the election. The Post report included a description of a meeting between President Obama and congressional leaders aimed at reaching consensus on whether to release more information about Russia's goal; without that consensus, no announcement was made.
Why was there no consensus? From our report:
[Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics. Some of the Republicans in the briefing also seemed opposed to the idea of going public with such explosive allegations in the final stages of an election, a move that they argued would only rattle public confidence and play into Moscow’s hands.
In other words, part of the rationale may have been to prevent the information from swaying the election — a reason that surely Trump would embrace.
The question is less why the subject did not come up before Election Day, because it |
new testing procedure will be done in "real driving conditions", it said.
Fuel usage data will be ready by spring next year, with emissions figures ready by spring 2017, Peugeot said.
The move comes in the wake of the Volkswagen emissions-cheating scandal.
"In these troubled times for the industry, we must keep the trust of our consumers," said chief executive Carlos Tavares.
The carmaker said all the data would be audited and checked by an external third party.
Volkswagen's admission that it installed software to cheat emissions tests in 11 million of its diesel cars worldwide, has put the spotlight on cars' NOx (nitrogen oxide) emissions, as well as criticism of the tests themselves.
Peugeot said its new tests would include "urban, extra-urban and highway driving".
The carmaker, which almost collapsed during the car industry's global recession, reported a first-half profit for the first time since 2011 earlier this year.
Under Mr Tavares, who took the helm last year, the firm has cut the number of models it makes and increased prices.You know the way to go: it's cut in the dirt at your feet
Finding the shortest distance from point A to point B is a problem we’re always solving. Whether it’s the way to work, or the way through the grocery store, we try to optimize our route.
When we walk the same ground enough we wear down the low-lying vegetation — the grass — and we create a visible path in the dirt. A trail where there was none before.
No authority planned it. No one designed it. Yet there it is as clear as day — a path to follow that sorta just makes sense.
A path was desired
Photo via u/the-amen-break, a worn path over the course of a semester.
It’s the result of individual choices aggregating together and creating something meaningful. Spontaneous, emergent order.
There’s a name for these worn paths — “desire paths.” Wikipedia tells us that desire paths are also known as game trails, social trails, herd paths, cow paths, goat tracks, pig trails, or bootleg trails. They’re also sometimes referred to as desire lines. Extremely worn desire paths might even take on the shape of tunnels that are known as sunken lanes or hollow ways (“holloways,” too).
But there’s no official name for desire paths, really, and that makes a lot of sense.
Desire paths could also be called “cat trails.” Photos via r/DesirePath — Left: u/NaNtastic; Middle: u/OurMisterBrooks; Right: u/meatballporkchop
Desire paths are the physical manifestation of an intangible truth: life finds a way. There is an innate, instinctual drive to take advantage of every opportunity and bridge every gap. A drive to take the shortest cut and blaze a trail.
Because desire paths are born from life, where ever you find life, you find desire paths. So what do we do with them?
Stop them — desire paths are a nuisance!
Are desire paths bad? Is taking them wrong?
The paved sidewalks and chained-in grassy areas on college campuses and public parks suggest they are a problem to be solved.
A sign at the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare, Ireland asks tourists to STOP. No one pays any heed. With an incredible view beyond, would you?
“Please stay off the grass!”
Desire paths should be stopped — they’re a nuisance. Taking a shortcut through the landscaped common area in lieu of a paved route is not the way things were designed. You’re supposed to follow the marked sidewalk.
A fence is erected to block a well-trafficked desire path at a school. The old path stands and a new path emerges. Photo via u/zorflax.
Does anyone believe this?
There’s research that suggests we make choices based on perceived effort — preferring the apparent “path of least resistance.”
Really, it’s human nature to question the rules — particularly those rules that feel arbitrary. Adhering to rules that cost us dearly (And what’s more expensive than our time?) are especially unlikely to be followed.
So while desire paths may scar a meticulously designed and beautifully maintained landscape, objecting to or trying to stop their use is a Sisyphean task.
If stopping desire paths is a waste of time, what are we to do with them?
The opportunity in plain-sight — pave the desire paths
When Walt Disney created Disneyland, he didn’t fence in the grassy areas until he saw where people walked. The most frequently used walkways — as indicated by desire paths — got codified into official sidewalks. Frank Lloyd Wright was said to apply the same tactic.
Or take universities. Instead of trying to predict, in advance, where students will walk the most, some campus planners plant the grass and just sit back and wait — the paths present themselves in short order once school is in session. From there, they need only pave them.
Student lore at Michigan State University (seen below), Ohio State University, and Reed College all talks of how this was the process that drove their campus sidewalk layouts.
An aerial photo of Michigan State University. Note the “official paths” paved by the University have a certain directness to them. Meanwhile, even with all the paved routes above, new desire paths continue to emerge. A close inspection of the above image reveals two or three emerging desire paths (Hint: bottom right quadrant). Source: Google Maps.
There’s a power in desire paths that simply requires a change of frame — desire paths aren’t a problem to be a solved so much as a solution that has been rendered.
See the desire path and make it better
As you’ve likely realized, desire paths aren’t limited to dirt. Desire paths are symbolic of how people figure out new and easier ways to get some job done. If you see a desire path, you’ve got a blinking light of opportunity:
Take the rough-hewn path and make it better.
The Internet is a great green grassy space
The Internet is a frontier for creation — new sites, services, platforms, apps, whatever. Within these creations users have immense freedom to go their own way. Desire paths are a natural outcome.
2005 “Map of the Internet” by Mike Lee, made monochrome. CC 2.0.
Even within this frontier space there are limitations and constraints.
Connectivity to the Internet leaves users feeling time-constrained — there are so many possibilities it can be overwhelming. Thanks to our always-on, always-available status, not a moment goes by when we aren’t able to pursue something. We’re left distracted, anxious, and irritated in the event that our changing whims can’t be satisfied.
Yet these constraints drive innovation: create a better way to get from point A to B — desire paths and the Internet go hand-in-hand.
Let’s consider a few examples.
Messaging services — AIM to WhatsApp to WeChat
Messaging has been around for awhile and it’s gone through a number of iterations — messaging desire paths get paved, things change, and then they’re replaced by better solutions.
At the most basic level, messaging emerged as a direct, instant way to communicate by text with other people. It came about in the 1990’s through ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and sidestepped email by being a faster, less formal way to communicate asychronously.
We’ve come a long way since then, but the evolution of messaging is far from over. Paint a broad stroke and you see how SMS and MMS limits — in number of messages or the expense of one-off messages — led to users taking the desire path of using over-the-air services like iMessage, Google Hangouts, WhatsApp, or Facebook Messenger.
While it’s not taken off in the U.S. as much as abroad, the simplicity of chat as an instant interface to transact has led to an explosion of chat functionality in apps like WeChat in China (which all sorts of e-commerce can take place within the app, itself).
Shopping within WeChat.
While the idea of shopping by chat may feel foreign to many in the U.S., it’s native behavior to many in China.
Separately, there’s the trend to “chatbot all the things.” Here, messaging can be seen as a way for users to interact with a business however they choose, and if the chatbot works, users build their desire path on-the-fly.
And a third messaging-related example is chat-based customer support services (like Intercom). When users feel the marked paths leave them feeling lost with no clear way to go, these services give them a paved path toward getting answers.
Smartphones — desire path engines
Smartphones exploded in popularity because they paved the path that previous connected devices were only lightly facilitating — that is, browsing the Internet.
Before the iPhone, using OTA messaging services, taking and sharing photos, etc., in feature phones like the Blackberry Curve, while possible, was clunky and painful. The experience for users felt bolted-on instead of native.
The iPhone (and Android) paved the desire path for using mobile Internet by making it the prime function of the phone.
Once that path was paved — access and functionality on mobile — smartphone platforms became the wide open greens that facilitate a near limitless potential for desire paths.
Taking it even further, you can see apps as paved desire paths for what users would otherwise do on a browser. And today, as smartphones get more sensors, faster connections, and more processing power, the frontier of mobile grows.
Twitter and Instagram — social streams of constraints and desire
Twitter is a study in constraints and desire
Hashtags and at replies were early desire paths that users carved into the Twittersphere that Twitter ultimately made native to the platform.
Image-sharing is another example. Twitter didn’t build in this functionality so users created the desire paths — sharing links to image-sharing services to work around the problem. That desire path got paved when Twitter brought the functionality in-house but it arguably happened too late — a separate image sharing service had paved it better.
Meet Instagram.
Or look at Twitter’s character limit. While it’s not going away, Twitter users can easily circumvent the character limits using images. If you want to share more than 140 characters — say you want to share a quote from an article or a book or you wrote a note on your phone — simply do a screenshot on your phone and share that.
Reading @JeffBezos Day 2 shareholder letter—so packed with wisdom. Saw a bit of Day 2 happening at the big G. Particularly process as proxy. pic.twitter.com/SBtaPsd51d — Justin Owings (@justinowings) April 14, 2017
Shifting to Instagram. Here’s a platform where image sharing is primary. Smartphones exploded in popularity because they paved the path that earlier devices were only lightly facilitating — that is, browsing the Internet.and text secondary. Many social media influencers (e.g. celebrities) have amassed huge Instagram followings and use Instagram as their primary channel.
So what do these influencers do when they have something to say on Instagram? Like on Twitter, they screenshot their phones — either a written note or whatever — and share that.
Benedict Evans has pointed to screenshots on phones as desire paths to fill unmet needs within apps.
Smartphone screenshots are a desire path. Filling unmet needs within apps. Often for messaging. http://t.co/3VZF07m4XF — Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans) December 18, 2014
Other examples of Instagram paving desire paths abound — from collages to carousels to (arguably) co-opting Snapchat’s story functionality.
Google.
Google is a desire path paving machine. Where do you want to go? Google takes you there — “10 blue links” that get you from Point A to B in milliseconds.
Google is well-known for paving desire paths.
For example, Google has started surfacing the answers right in the search engine results page requiring no further work on the part of users — as is the case with Knowledge Graph cards.
In some cases, Google surfacing quotes from top results for a query has dramatically impacted the downstream websites from which the answers came.
Another example of Google paving a desire path is when the answer to a query surfaces right there in the auto-suggest box — before you even execute the search!
The Internet is a massive green space across which desire paths are being cut all the time, in apps, devices, and websites.
What other examples can you think of?
Desire paths and web design
To build a successful website—or SAAS—you have to drive users to sign-up, successfully onboard them, and do the job promised well.
Ddevelopers have struggled to see how users engage with their websites, apps, and products. Outcomes could be measured using analytical services (e.g. Google Analytics), but actually seeing where users are going and intuiting what they’re trying to do in any given situation was near impossible.
That’s why FullStory session replay is so powerful—it reveals where the “paved sidewalk” (a web site’s layout, app UX/UI, whatever) isn’t working as intended as well as visualizing, literally where the users are trying to go. Using session replay to see user flows helps developers and designers improve them.
It’s a little known fact that the original code name for FullStory was CowPaths.
Separately from surfacing user desire paths, FullStory also helps with the desire paths of designers, product managers, and engineers — by allowing them to search user interactions for whatever behavior they need to understand. What users click a certain button? Use a certain feature? Abandon their cart or get lost in your knowledge base? Just search it.
Just as much Google search is a desire path paving engine for bringing users to the world’s information, FullStory provides that power for an organizations’ user interactions on their web app.
With or without a service like FullStory, understanding a user’s desire paths on your site can make the difference between success and failure. No business is immune to the constraints on time and attention for users — getting them from point A to point B on your site so they can do whatever it is they’re trying to do — well, that’s our job as builders of products and services.
And it helps to mind the desire paths.
What desire path is your life on?
Hope is like a path in the countryside. Originally, there is nothing — but as people walk this way again and again, a path appears. — LU XUN, CHINESE ESSAYIST, 1921
We all make plans, but life happens, anyway. Desire paths result.
Instead of relegating ourselves to plodding down the same desire paths we’ve walked countless times before, perhaps it’s time to make them better — whether in business, in design, or in life.
What desire paths do you take? What paths have you paved? Where is the path now on taking you?Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick speaks during a news conference before the Pinstripe Bowl NCAA college football game between the Rutgers and Notre Dame Saturday, Dec. 28, 2013, at Yankee Stadium in New York. (Photo: Frank Franklin II / Associated Press)
WASHINGTON — Notre Dame's athletic director and Northwestern's president emeritus said Tuesday that if college athletes ultimately are ruled to be employees of their respective schools, they foresee their universities withdrawing from the current setup of big-time sports.
Their comments come as the full National Labor Relations Board continues to deliberate about an effort to unionize scholarship football players at Northwestern. In addition, there are a range of pending federal court cases concerning athlete compensation, including one alleging that the NCAA and schools are violating the wage-and-hour provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act by not allowing athletes to be paid at least the federal minimum wage.
"Notre Dame's just not prepared to participate in any model where the athlete isn't a student first and foremost — that's the hallmark for us," Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick told USA TODAY Sports after a Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics meeting here during which he appeared as a panelist. "If the entire model were to move toward athletes as employees, we'd head in a different direction. Our president has been clear about that. I'm not articulating a unique position."
Northwestern president emeritus Henry Bienen, a member of the Knight Commission, indicated during the meeting that he hopes Northwestern will leave the current form of big-time college sports if athletes are determined to be employees. The session was aimed at examining the implications of the Ed O'Bannon anti-trust lawsuit and related issues, as well as alternative regulatory systems for college sports. Afterward, in remarks he prefaced by saying he does not speak for the university, Bienen elaborated.
"If tomorrow you waved a magic wand and all football players and basketball players were unionized, and privates were paying them, that's not where the universities would be — or should be, in my mind," he said.
This is "not hooked to the NLRB case, per se," he said. "That's the opening salvo. But there's a lot of other things floating around. … If we wound up with a business where you wound up paying the players to play, I think alumni would have a different view (of college sports). I think the faculty would be unaccepting of it, at least at universities like Northwestern and Stanford and maybe Notre Dame, Rice, Duke. … We haven't gotten there by a long shot. Will we? I don't know. I hope not."
Swarbrick's and Bienen's comments parallel those Stanford AD Bernard Muir made to USA TODAY Sports last May after appearing before a Congressional hearing on the Northwestern unionization effort. "If (Stanford's athletes) are deemed employees, we will opt for a different model," Muir said at the time.
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NLRB regional director Peter Sung Ohr ruled in March 2014 that Northwestern's scholarship football players are employees of the university, and he ordered a player vote on whether to form a union. The NLRB subsequently granted a request by the university for a full-board review of Ohr's decision, but players cast ballots in April 2014 on whether to unionize. Because of Northwestern's challenge, the ballots were impounded by the NLRB and presumably have not been counted.
Even if the full NLRB upholds Ohr's ruling, there likely would be many steps before a final resolution.
Because of that, Southern Methodist President Gerald Turner — a Knight Commission co-chair — said his school has made no determination of the course it would take if athletes are found to be employees.
"It's too quick to say whether we wouldn't play anymore or anything like that," he said, adding that his school also would have to weigh the implications of Texas being a right-to-work state. "That would only occur after a very long review of the implications in both directions. … I think (if athletes were deemed employees), you would see the private schools in (the) FBS would be having a meeting together pretty quickly to try to talk through what the implications of it would be. But we are optimistic that we won't have to do that."A photo of the author with her son Ronan, who died in February 2013. My son is not the poster child for the Right to Life movement I will not let the memory of my beloved boy, now dead, get roped into the anti-abortion worldview
I’ve been writing about my son Ronan, who died of Tay-Sachs disease in February 2013, since the day of his diagnosis. This has included a discussion of parenting strategies that must accommodate a child’s inevitable death. These have recently been determined by one writer speaking on behalf of the Right to Life organization as “inspirational.”
Although the writer qualifies the use of this sentimentally descriptive word, he goes on to explain that although he has no special-needs children of his own, he has much to say about how other people with terminally ill children should parent. I have an equally sentimental word for that which I will mention here without qualification: gross.
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What he fails to mention at the beginning of this reprinted article, which itself was a response to an op-ed piece I wrote in 2011 that appeared in The New York Times, “Notes from a Dragon Mom,” is that my son is now dead.
Although I’m sure the writer would extend sympathy for my loss, that he should reprint this article almost eight months to the day when my child died seems like an opportunity to clear up my thoughts about this issue. I’ve been the poster child for the March of Dimes once in my life; I am not prepared to be so for the Right to Life movement. And I will not let the memory of the beloved child I will never see again be roped into this worldview as well.
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The pro-choice versus pro-life debate has always been reductive. It's an issue I have already weighed in on for a piece I wrote for Slate in 2012, which generated some fantastically fascinating hate mail, the most notable condemnation being that I (and Ronan, as well, by virtue of my immoral, twisted mind) would be going to hell as a result of my beliefs.
Here’s the thing: I don’t have beliefs about abortion. Although I have always felt that not supporting a woman’s right to choose is a human rights violation (and is a clear stand against poor women), I would not classify this opinion as a belief. Having belief in anything is a faith statement; it implies a sense of mystery and wonder, and discussions about rights are based on empirically proven facts applied to particular situations.
So I don’t believe in abortion. I instead am of the opinion that it is a fundamental right that women should be afforded. (And here I am obviously making the case that the words “religion” and “Jesus” be left out of the abortion debate entirely, and not just for the reason that the mention of either makes people’s eyes glaze over and halts conversation, although that’s a large part of it.)
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Now, is this opinion entirely unclassified? No. And here’s where the life/choice debate has truly suffered. Nobody is prepared to have a both/and conversation about abortion; we only want to speak in binaries: yes or no; this or that; for or against; mine or yours. This would be like a judge passing a verdict before hearing the details of a case.
In the abortion debate, it’s easy to imagine cases that test opinions on both sides. Is it my opinion that a woman with no resources, who cannot care for herself or her child be forced to have that child if she does not wish to and be shamed and attacked if she does not have the child? No.
Is it my opinion that the social and economic structures of our society should support her if she chooses to have that child? Yes.
Do I believe a woman in a committed, healthy relationship should make unilateral decisions about abortion if a partner disagrees with her choice? No.
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It is my opinion that women cannot expect men to be equal partners in child rearing or other relationship matters if they are not willing to have conversations about consequences and equal sharing of whatever responsibilities might present themselves. This includes the decision to bring a human person into the world who will require their love, attention and lifelong care. None of these cases presents easy solutions, because there are no solutions. There are only conversations, nuanced and complex.
The problem with the current debate is that it presumes that women are standing alone out in the field of decision-making around the issue of reproductive rights, and it’s no surprise that we feel this way. I can’t think of a scenario where a person—in this case, a woman—is considered more deeply second-class. It is the infrastructure of our social support systems that needs to change. All this barking around about who is "right" or "moral" when it comes to abortion is merely obfuscating this fact.
*****
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The write-up about Ronan and me, complete with an endearing photograph, does not reflect reality. Yes, I loved my son. Yes, he was beautiful and sweet and wildly adored. I had resources to care for him (which many parents of special-needs children lack), and I did so to the best of my ability, which included making choices not to extend his life beyond palliative measures. But watching him deteriorate gradually—that slow and terrible fade—was torturous and mind-blowingly stressful.
Even more than that, Ronan suffered. His brain was epically compromised, and his body was doomed. His life became one primarily of suffering shortly after he was born, and it continued until the day of his death. Peaceful, yes, by some accounts (no tubes, no panic or chaos of a hospital, no gasping for breath), but he still died. Anyone who has witnessed the death of a suffering, terminally ill person knows that the body, in the end, is reduced to ugly and terrifying chaos. Angels don't flit about the room, and souls don’t depart without struggle.
When Ronan died he was nearly 3 and he weighed 11 pounds. He was so emaciated that we had to be careful when we moved him that we did not dislocate his shoulders or hips. His eyes were fixed, every bone on his face visible. He died in the middle of the darkest, coldest night of mid-winter. The fact that the sun rose and birds started twittering hours later seemed to me a stunning and singular cruelty.
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I don’t write about my son’s death to contribute or even respond in kind to the sensationalist bent of some Right to Life images or publications. I do so to be clear, and so that Ronan’s memory does not have to bear attitudes with which I do not agree. Also, he did not deserve to live or die in the way he did, and had I known his fate through the appropriate prenatal test while I was carrying him, I would have terminated my pregnancy. Would this have been another loss to mourn? Yes. Very much so. That decision never would have been made without careful and agonizing thoughtfulness. No parent can make that decision for any other parent.
To sentimentalize an experience that sent me, my family and many others over the edge of madness and then back again is to view children as conduits through which to “get spiritual,” a notion just as contrary to the true nature of parenting as asking them to be vehicles through which parents live out or attempt to fulfill their own failed dreams. Children do not exist to make their parents feel good about bringing them into the world no matter what their quality of life might be. The idea of this, or that anyone might think of it, prompts me again to use this word without equivocation: gross.
The face of my child is not a billboard for the spiritual quests of parents who must face these hideous choices about whether to let a child live or die and in what manner. Ronan was singular and only and he died miserably. To have seizures, go blind, experience dementia, lose the ability to move and then finally die when the body can no longer process food or liquids—all in the span of less than three years—is not a fate I would wish on any person, least of all the person I was charged with caring for, and whom I loved furiously and intensely.
Yes, Ronan transformed my life in every significant way, and for that I am grateful every day, just as I miss him every second of every day, and just as I am glad he is no longer here, no longer suffering, every second of every day. These feelings and realities exist simultaneously and are not mutually exclusive. Is this reality emotionally comfortable or a situation that might be summed up by a sweet sympathy card with dark birds flying into a fading sunset? No. But it is the truth about life. It’s complicated—too bad this particular debate has not caught up to a reality that is as old as the world.
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I can still be grateful for what I learned from my son and from the experience of parenting him, while also saying that not a single moment of that journey is worth salvaging or sentimentalizing if it could, simply, have saved him from any suffering. There’s a scene in "The Brothers Karamazov" in which a character states that nothing—no moral victory, no spiritual enlightenment—is worth the suffering of a single child. Exactly.
My point to those who might read the Right to Life piece—written, I believe, out of the author’s own ardent opinions—is not to mistake what is going on. Do not see the photogenic face of my child before the period of his sharpest decline and the smile of his adoring mother without also seeing the reality that came later: death, devastation, grief, (sometimes shaky) survival.
The parenting strategy I employed, and that this writer correctly quotes, is based on loving and letting go. What he got wrong is that I would have done the letting go—that howling, terrible task—long before the agony that ensued, for me and for my son, and long before the portrait-capturing cameras turned away.Good news overpowered the bad at the weekend when — the day after being vandalised — Kalgoorlie-Boulder Pistol Club members trialled their newly approved outdoor shooting range.
The club has been running since 1961 but this is the first time since 2008 the outdoor range has been in operation.
Back then, changes to the airport meant there was no longer the 800m of clear space required legally to be able to shoot.
Owner Bob Munro said for the past nine years he and wife Michelle had worked to make sure the outdoor range was acceptable according to the regulations.
Last Wednesday, he said they received an email from police with the certificate giving them the clearance to operate.
“We wanted to start shooting right then on Wednesday morning,” Mr Munro said.
He said they needed a bullet trap that would stop bullets from going past a certain point, funding for which — as for much of the rest of the club — came out of their own pockets.
About 10pm on Saturday, Kalgoorlie police arrested two youths at the club for allegedly breaking in and causing a substantial amount of damage to the bathrooms.
Mr Munro said there was damage from an axe on the doors and windows, with some of the walls bashed in.
He said nothing was missing from the club.
The pair were charged with aggravated burglary, criminal damage and possession of house breaking implements and they will appear in Kalgoorlie Children’s Court on September 26.
Last July, the club was also broken into and severely van-dalised, with paint all over the floor, walls smashed in, the power box pried open and the burglar alarm cord pulled out, spray-can tags on just about every surface, windows smashed and the floor covered with human faeces.
The walls of the indoor shooting range are still destroyed and the air-conditioner wrecked.
“But we’ll rebuild it,” Mr Munro said.
Mr Munro said now the outdoor range was in operation, he anticipated member numbers would go up — from about 10 to 40 and 50 in the next few months.
“We’re also working on opening it up to the whole town, from next weekend hopefully, so everyone can have a go,” he said.• Wigan chairman Dave Whelan annoyed by £4m bid for winger • 'Chelsea would need to get realistic before we'd even listen'
Wigan's chairman, Dave Whelan, has accused Chelsea of "taking the mickey" with their bid for the winger Victor Moses.
Whelan confirmed that the Champions League winners had made an offer, reported to be £4m, on Monday night. It was immediately rejected.
The Nigeria international has only 12 months of his contract remaining and, while talks have stalled on a new deal, Whelan is not prepared to allow the 21-year-old to leave on the cheap.
"Chelsea would need to get realistic before we would even listen to them," he told ESPN. "They made a bid at 6pm last night and we turned it down flat.
"Roberto Martínez has brought this player on and he needs at least another year with Roberto to become a top player. We have offered him a new contract but it seems the agent, more than the player, wants to move him on – at least that is the impression we are getting.
"It cannot be for the player's good. Victor Moses needs another year or two before moving to a club like Chelsea. He needs games and he won't be first choice at Chelsea, I wouldn't have thought.
"We don't need to sell him with 12 months to go on his contract because he is under 24 so wouldn't be going on a free transfer. Ideally we would like him to sign a new contract, or a club like Chelsea would have to be realistic.
"At the moment, they are taking the mickey with the bid they've made."Chui Sai On takes oath as Chief Executive of MSAR for a second term
Chinese President Xi Jinping today urged the semiautonomous former Portuguese colony of Macau to guard against interference by what he called hostile external forces, following the prolonged pro-democracy protests in nearby Hong Kong.
Beijing had accused foreign forces of fostering the pro-democracy Occupy Central movement in Hong Kong, where protesters demanded a right to nominate candidates for the territory’s next leader. The 79-day demonstration ended in mid-December with both Beijing and Hong Kong’s leaders refusing to bow to the protesters’ demands.
Xi was visiting Macau, a major gambling center, to mark the 15th anniversary of its return to Beijing and to host the swearing-in ceremony of Macau’s newest chief, Chui Sai On. Chui was the only nominee for the position and was elected by a 400-person panel believed to be pro-Beijing.
Both Hong Kong and Macau are special administrative regions where Beijing allows greater autonomy under a “one country, two systems” arrangement. However, Beijing does not want to the more liberal regions to become hotbeds of democracy movements that may threaten the ruling Communist Party’s grip on power.
In a message apparently aimed at Hong Kong, Xi said Macau has properly obeyed the “one country, two systems” policy and the Basic Law governing the special administrative region.
Beijing has repeatedly denounced Hong Kong’s pro-democracy demonstration as illegal assemblies that had not only disrupted the territory’s social order but also flaunted Beijing’s authority.Xi said Macau should combine Beijing’s authority with its own autonomy to ensure it walks on the “right path.”
“Otherwise, it will be the left foot wearing a right-foot shoe, and the mistake will breed wrongs,” Xi said.
Since Xi took power about two years ago, Beijing has ratcheted up rhetoric against foreign interference, even though China is becoming more intertwined with the world than ever.
Observers say Beijing is vilifying foreign powers and fostering anti-American sentiments to divert public anger at domestic issues and deflect criticism at the ruling Communist Party.
MDT/AP
Share this: TweetThe president's top adviser also revealed that she has the nickname 'blueberry' in the White House, as she is one of few officials to have secret service protection
A fiery Kellyanne Conway lashed out at her critics in a new interview published on Saturday, calling them 'f***ing miserable' people.
Defending her now infamous reference to the non-existent Bowling Green Massacre and spurious spin of 'alternative facts', the White House senior counselor let rip to the New York Magazine.
A defiant flip-off to her many detractors, Conway uses the chat to quell speculation she wants the job of equally embattled Press Secretary Sean Spicer, saying she would rather'slit her wrists'.
She also reveals she has the rather coquettish Secret Service codename of Blueberry and turning serious, shares that despite being pro life, she knows friends who have had abortions, and even helped them pay as a teenager.
Giving the interview from her third floor of the West Wing, the lady the magazine dubs the True First Lady of Trump's America has only one volume in her officer bookshelf, The Art of the Deal.
Over the course of the interview, Conway, who reveals she ate burgers with Trump after his Joint Address to Congress last month, produced a more expansive definition of 'alternative facts' and the made-up Bowling Green massacre.
She got particularly angry when speaking about the people who have viciously mocked all of her slip ups online.
'Anybody who pretends I'm not smart or not credible, it's like 'Excuse me, I've spoken 1.2million words on TV, OK?'
Senior advisors Stephen Miller and Kellyanne Conway watch as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. President Donald Trump hold a joint news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington on Friday
In detailing her working relationship with the President, she said that it is very casual, and that: 'When I want to talk to him, I go talk to him'. She is picture with the President on his election night
'You wanna focus on two here and there, it's on you, you're f***ing miserable person,' she said, adding, 'P.S., just whoever you are.'
The president's top adviser revealed that she has a White House codename, 'Blueberry', and that she is the only member of the administration apart from the president and vice-president to have on.
This was afforded to her after a number of online threats and a package that contained a'mysterious white substance'.
She chose the nickname Blueberry because she grew up picking berries in southern Jersey, and was even crowned Miss New Jersey Blueberry Princess when she was 16.
Controversial moment that Kellyanne Conway appeared to make herself at home on one of the Oval Office sofas
New York Mag referred to her as the 'functional First Lady,' and she doubled down on those who have attacked her for perceived inaccuracies in her public statements.
Almost ubiquitous on television screens in the nine-months she has been part of the Trump campaign and then administration, Kellyanne claimed she has special 'walk-in' privileges to the Oval Office.
This means that she can enter whenever she pleases and usually is an honor only bestowed upon the First Lady or the Chief of Staff, although of course access is at the discretion of the president.
'When I want to talk to him, I go talk to him,' she said to the New York Magazine.
And in another display of her power within the West Wing, the reporter describes how Conway told her she was going to ask Trump to follow her on Twitter and then watched in real time as the president did it.
Conway also defended her use of the notion 'alternative facts'. She first used the phrase in January in defense of Sean Spicer who lashed out at press for reporting on the size of inaugural crowds. She is pictured on the day of the inauguration ceremony
She discussed her bowling green massacre blunder, which was a reference to a supposed terrorist attack on the Kentucky city that never took place, and said it was a simple slip of the tongue.
Instead of the word massacre, she said that she meant to |
she got out of the car again at traffic lights and told him: “Take a picture of my car again and I’ll knock you out.”
The appeal will be heard at Isleworth crown court on 18 April.PROBLEM: At a school disco almost three decades ago, I met my life partner and the amazing mother of our two children. Three years later we welcomed our son, and 12 years ago our daughter.
Throughout our time together we have experienced bereavement, sickness and financial struggles, but in the main we have both worked hard and built what I have always thought was a decent life. Recently our small business has gone from strength to strength and we have managed to buy a really nice home.
However, about one year ago my partner started to go on frequent nights out with two of our female neighbours, both of whom were recently separated. Both these women have developed a reputation in the area and on social media for outrageous behaviour.
My partner’s friendship with this pair never bothered me, and I encouraged her to go and enjoy herself.
But two months ago she announced that she wanted to separate. She denied any affair but said that she missed out on nightclubs and romance and wanted that in her life. She rejected my pleas to give her all that.
Our young daughter became distraught on hearing of the separation. I moved out of the family home, as neither of us wanted her to overhear arguments.
I am now back living in the box room in my parents’ house. I miss the life we had.
I do not feel angry towards my partner, but I blame these two friends for leading her into a life that I think may destroy our family. How can we resolve this and get back the life that we had?
ADVICE: It sounds as though you are a successful person in that you have a business that is doing well and you have a capacity for seeing the bigger picture, for example putting your daughter’s needs before your own.
However, it might be that you have an overly simplistic approach to your break-up by putting it down to the influence of two “outrageous” neighbours. The breakdown of a serious relationship is usually complex, and the signs are often there (perhaps unseen) for quite a while before the actual event that brings the relationship to an end.
It would be good to take time to reflect on what the relationship was like before its demise; your partner seems to suggest that there was a lack of romance and excitement. She may well be trying to relive her youth where she settled down early and did not have the experiences of many relationships, and is now seeing, through her new friends, the fun side of this life.
However, most people do not give up on their primary relationship of almost 30 years without serious consideration, and it seems to me that you do not have the full story. It could be argued that you deserve to know how and why this has happened and if there is any possibility of reuniting.
I wonder if you have been fully heard on your argument for staying in the relationship. Or maybe you need to take some time out to look at what your life needs, too?
It is true that people can outgrow each other and that a couple can get into a routine with each other that is staid and boring. We need some mystery to keep romance and interest alive, and this requires that we have separate interests or self-development that stretches the relationship and keeps it vibrant.
It might be that you now need to look at your own life and check if development has only happened in limited directions (for example, the business) and how you might expand yourself in other ways, including intellectually, socially and emotionally. This would increase your attractiveness and might pique your partner’s interest should she be open to this at some stage in the future. This assumes that you are going to fight for the return of your relationship, but it is not a simple task.
First, you would need to understand fully where the relationship failed and then take the time to understand each other, which might involve some couple counselling to.
In the meantime you are going through grief and loss, and this can be a long, tough process. Living like a child in your parents’ house might contribute to your sense of helplessness, and this will not assist in your attempt to be a strong suitor for your partner. Your current living situation assumes that your separation will be short term, but it might also contribute to what has created this situation: your sense of hopelessness.
It is time to re-evaluate your life and take charge of what it needs. When you are feeling in a stronger place, you might find you are in a better position to make decisions based on what is best for you rather than just going back to the status quo.Uber, WA taxi industry to come under single licence system in proposed sweeping reforms
Updated
A price war on taxi fares is expected under sweeping changes proposed in a government green paper that folds the established West Australian taxi industry and ride-sharing apps into a single licensing system.
The ABC understands the much-anticipated green paper, which is yet to go to Cabinet for approval, proposes more competition and a much less prescriptive and more flexible licensing environment.
There would be one licensing regime applied to all drivers of taxis, Uber vehicles and other new technology-based services arriving in the WA market.
The green paper also proposes that, with the exception of taxi rank and "hail", the current metered system used by taxis would be replaced with a model where customers are quoted a pre-agreed fare at the time of booking and payment is secured before travel.
It also proposes the Government would move away from regulating fares and instead allow operators to set and administer fares themselves.
It is anticipated this would do away with common problems of taxi drivers overcharging, fights between drivers and passengers over fares, fare runners and patron uncertainty about costs.
The green paper comes after hundreds of taxi drivers protested at Parliament in April over State Government inaction over the popular discount ride-sharing service Uber.
Uber has created uneven playing field: taxi drivers
Taxi drivers in WA currently operate in a heavily regulated environment and have long complained about an uneven playing field because of new services such as Uber, which remain unregulated.
Green paper - key points More flexible and less prescriptive licensing environment
More competition and transition towards level playing field
One licensing regime applied to all drivers and vehicles - minimum standards enforced to ensure safety
Move away from metered system to pre-agreed fares and payment before travel
Potential scrapping or reduction of annual government fees for plate owners and those who lease government plates
No compensation for existing plate owners
Department of Transport focus on compliance; be given greater powers
Taxi drivers not forced to affiliate with a particular dispatch service, such as Swan Taxis
Regulate industry under a single act
Industry take on greater responsibility for training drivers
The Green Paper is likely to provoke a backlash from taxi plate owners who are unlikely to be offered compensation for their expensive plates and from dispatch companies such as Swan Taxis, which currently have a stranglehold on the regulated parts of the market.
Under the proposed changes, a single piece of legislation would govern the licensing of all on-demand vehicles in a bid to create a more even playing field.
The licensing regime would set reduced minimum standards for drivers of all services, including a national police certificate, but individual businesses would be responsible for setting their own additional training standards.
It is hoped that this approach would create an environment where service and safety improves as customers vote with their feet.
The Department of Transport would remain the industry regulator, but would get beefed up powers and more effective penalty provisions.
Its role would be re-focused to only set minimum standards and monitor compliance and it would no longer have a training or testing role.
While licence conditions would be less prescriptive, the department would continue to set minimum vehicle safety standards, including those relating to the age of a vehicle.
All licensed vehicles would be required to be easily identifiable either through a licence plate or some other means to ensure public confidence in the industry.
The department would have a mechanism to remove "undesirable" drivers from the industry.
The more relaxed regulatory environment would include fewer restrictions on the types of services that could be provided and the types of vehicles that could be used.
It is envisaged operators would be able to provide different types of services at different price points to increase the choice for customers.
Green paper proposes waiving taxi plate fees
There are more than 2,500 privately owned and government-leased taxi plates in WA.
The licence fee for a government-leased taxi plate is currently about $13,000 a year.
It is understood changes to this fee are contemplated because of the disadvantage it places on metropolitan taxi drivers. Taxi plate owners also remain subject to ongoing fees.
The ABC understands the paper proposes waiving these fees and charges either permanently or for a period of up to 20 years as a way of helping plate owners transition to the new regime.
It is understood the paper makes no mention of compensation to taxi plate holders as the Government moves towards a deregulated system.
Premier Colin Barnett has previously ruled out compensation.
The Government also hopes to create more competition in the industry by removing a requirement that taxi drivers be affiliated with a particular dispatch service, such as Swan Taxis.
It is hoped that this would encourage more dispatchers to enter the market and improve competition.
The green paper is designed to pave a way forward to reform the industry and prompt debate.
It is expected to go to Cabinet next week for approval, before it is publicly released.
A spokeswoman for Transport Minister Dean Nalder said he could not comment before the paper went to Cabinet.
It will then go out for public consultation for 12 weeks before a final report is prepared to go back to Cabinet.
Topics: road-transport, state-parliament, wa
First postedHow are our daughters supposed to grow up to be ‘Lean In’–worthy execs if most of the play mops and stoves are labeled for girls?
Eri Morita / Getty Images
Three generations of women walk into a toy shop. The older woman’s goal is simple: to find a fabulous toy for a little girl. It aligns exactly with the goals of the child, recently turned 3 and freshly aware of the thrill of buying stuff.
But alas, the woman (me) in the middle of the generational sandwich has more complex goals. The toy must be fabulous, of course, but it must also do nothing to discourage the child (my daughter) from becoming a smart, ambitious citizen who can bust through glass ceilings to become a Sheryl Sandberg–like superwoman (ahem, if that’s what she wants).
Lofty and unachievable goals for a Tuesday? Surely not.
Thus I march my family through aisles of pink plastic to find educational toys in the bowels of the warehouse. It’s dark and dingy back there. “How about a floor puzzle?” I say optimistically. My mom’s face twists in doubt. “Construction blocks? This fractions game, perhaps?”
(WATCH: Don’t Try to Buy This Girl a Princess Doll)
Luckily, intergenerational warfare is postponed by the disappearance of my daughter. A frantic search finds her in the pink toy aisle, sitting inside a miniature car. The motorcar is plastic, it is pink, and it is branded by a well-known doll whose breasts are bigger than her feet.
I’ve never seen my child so happy.
Naturally I’m horrified. This busty doll, in whose brand my daughter has taken a sudden, zesty interest, is at the epicenter of feminist critique. After all, she glorifies superficiality and the kind of oversize homes last seen before the housing crash. Worse, she touts glittery pink products named Glam Vacuum Set! and Glam Laundry!
As anyone with a mop knows, domestic duties are not Glam!
Furthermore, the pinkness of the products bolsters the lie that housework is girls’ work. A vision of Sandberg’s book, Lean In — a feminist manifesto still fueling debate about women’s internal barriers to leadership — hovers before me. Sandberg argues that progress toward gender equality has stalled when it comes to heterosexual couples sharing housework. She cites research to show that women who bear the brunt of domestic duties are less likely to have happy relationships. Tellingly, a separate 2011 survey from the Working Mother Research Institute finds that mothers — both those who work in the house and those outside — feel guilty about the cleanliness of their homes.
I’m afraid it’s true. My abiding fantasy is to have a less grimy kitchen floor.
This Tuesday suddenly got complicated. Here’s my daughter in this beastly pink car with her imaginary baby in the backseat and her pretend groceries in the trunk. Plastic stoves, brooms and shopping carts surround her. Each is gussied up in pink packaging, and all have photos of ecstatic little girls who’ve plainly reached the peak of childhood delight.
(MORE: One Girl’s Quest to Make the Easy-Bake Oven More Boy-Friendly)
I don’t see exultant, vacuuming boys on these wrappers. In fact, here in this mass-market toy store, Sandberg’s vision of a world where men run half the homes is looking a little naive. (Though we do have to thank Hasbro for coming out with an Easy Bake Oven last year that isn’t girlish pink, but it took a 13-year-old girl to suggest it.)
Just to be sure, I peek into the boys’ aisle to see what sort of fantasies they’re engaged in while my daughter scrubs the floor. It’s all blue and camo brown in there. Alongside guns, swords and wrestling belts, I see a lawnmower, a carpentry bench and a grim-looking toy that simulates bug extermination. In mimicking traditional (read: manly) roles at home, the little boys on the wrappers have clearly reached the summit of childhood delight.
These are the boys who’ll leapfrog over my daughter in the workplace, I think, sweat prickling my wretched brow.
It gets worse. Back in the girls’ aisle, I spy a pink doll stroller and even pinker microwave. My feminist heart sinks for I just know that of all the toys in this massive store, these are the ones to make my child squeal with delight. I draw closer. A vision of Sandberg’s face leans toward me, but I swat it away as I look around for gender-neutral versions of these toys. Nope, the only option is pink.
(MORE: Why Are Parents Less Likely to Take Little Girls Outside to Play?)
Sandberg’s face reappears (she is after all the emblem of tenacity). “Do you want your daughter to suffer unequal pay and a lopsided marriage?” she asks with a penetrating California smile. “You’re encouraging toys that glamorize domestic toil,” Sandberg warns. “We all know what research says about that.”
I’m seized with motherly self-doubt. Thanks to an unimaginative toy industry that continues to typecast our kids by gender, I’ve turned a family outing into an obstacle course I can’t win without being a killjoy. To make matters worse, my daughter doesn’t even like gender-neutral toys. Her happiest fantasyland is one sparked by her pink broom, her pink cookware and her pink collection of dolls. Maybe, I think hopefully, that’s because she hasn’t seen any toys more appealing? What’s a feminist mom to do?
As if party to my tortured tête-à-tête, my daughter says helpfully from within her fuchsia car: “My favorite color is pink.” With a sigh, I curse the mass-market toy industry for hindering the progress of her emerging Lean In generation. Defeated, I guide my mother and her checkbook toward the pink stroller and even pinker microwave oven.
(MORE: Kids Who Don’t Gender Conform Are at Higher Risk of Abuse)
But surely, I ask, buying toys for little girls ought not become an existential battle. As things stand, I see my daughter’s girlhood scrolling before her, spooling from pink ovens to blond dolls teetering on high heels, to neon thongs for preteen Lolitas who’ll grow up to do most of the housework. That doesn’t seem rosy at all. For Mother’s Day, perhaps the mass-market toy industry can challenge designers to get more creative about what little girls want?
After all, I bet I’m not the only parent for whom the finest gift would be the end of all this pigeonholing pink.Heads of the corporation have previously refused to allow unbelievers to speak in the prestigious "God slot" on Radio 4's Today programme, restricting contributors to figures from established faiths.
However after the publicity surrounding the Atheist Bus Campaign, which has raised £140,000 to place adverts on 800 buses around Britain and 1,000 posters on Tube trains, its founder is being given the opportunity to talk on a special version of Thought for the Day, on another show on the radio channel.
Ariane Sherine will give an atheist Thought for the Afternoon on Radio 4's iPM programme, which will be broadcast at 5.30pm on Saturday.
The writer said: "I'm really pleased and excited to be asked to give the first humanist 'Thought for the Afternoon'.
"I hope this is just the first of many from different humanist speakers, and that the Today programme will let humanists on very soon."
It comes after 1,660 people emailed the state-run broadcaster to call on it to allow atheist speakers to give one of the three-minute reports on Thought for the Day.
Gavin Orland, who organised that campaign, said: "The fact that humanist, non-religious contributors are excluded from the slot gives the impression the BBC believes morality is the exclusive remit of religious people, which is offensive, unrepresentative and untrue.
"It's great that there will be a non-religious thought allowed on iPM: let it be an example to the Today programme."
Earlier this week Mark Damazer, the controller of Radio 4, defended the ban on atheist contributors to Thought for the Day.
He admitted it was a "genuinely difficult question" but added: "In the midst of the three-hour Today programme devoted to overwhelmingly secular concerns - national and international news and features, searching interviews etc - the slot offers a brief, uninterrupted interlude of spiritual reflection. We believe that broadening the brief would detract from the distinctiveness of the slot."
The atheist bus advert campaign was started as an antidote to posters placed on public transport by religious groups that "threaten eternal damnation to non-believers".
Its creators chose what they believe is a positive and slightly vague slogan – "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" – both to comply with advertising guidelines and to provide reassurance to non-believers instead of criticising the devout.
However at least 101 people have complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about the posters this week – both on the grounds that they are offensive and that their claim cannot be substantiated.
If the industry regulator decides to investigate, it could end up effectively ruling on the likelihood of God's existence.President Barack Obama made a new appeal Tuesday to U.S. lawmakers to approve a 12-nation Pacific Rim trade deal, saying the United States, not China, should set the rules for economic engagement in the Asia-Pacific region.
In an opinion piece in The Washington Post, Obama played down an effort by Beijing and 15 other countries to create a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership in Asia to compete with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that the U.S. reached with 11 other countries with shorelines along the Pacific Ocean.
The U.S. leader said the prospective Chinese-led accord "won't prevent unfair competition among government-subsidized, state-subsidized enterprises," ensure a free internet, protect intellectual rights of artists and writers, or enforce high standards for workers or the environment.
He said, however, the agreement the U.S. helped broker would achieve such protections and lead to the elimination of more than 18,000 taxes that other countries have imposed on U.S. products.
Obama said that once the TPP was in place, "American businesses will export more of what they make. And that means supporting more higher-paying jobs."
Obama has encountered resistance in winning support for the trade deal, with many in his own Democratic Party opposed to it, including the leading Democrat looking to replace him when he leaves office next January, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The front-running Republican presidential candidate, billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump, also opposes it.
In the midst of the contentious presidential and congressional election campaigns, lawmakers have set no date for a vote on the trade pact, but possibly could consider it at the end of the year, after the November election to pick Obama's successor.
"I understand the skepticism people have about trade agreements, particularly in communities where the effects of automation and globalization have hit workers and families the hardest," Obama said in the opinion piece. "But building walls to isolate ourselves from the global economy would only isolate us from the incredible opportunities it provides. Instead, America should write the rules. America should call the shots. Other countries should play by the rules that America and our partners set, and not the other way around."
Obama said, "The United States, not countries like China, should write" trade rules.
He said Congress should "seize this opportunity, pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership and make sure America isn’t holding the bag, but holding the pen."Those San Francisco hills suddenly look a lot steeper to Hunter Pence.
The Giants right fielder had his motorized scooter stolen from a restaurant parking lot Sunday night, but instead of bringing a report to the police, Pence is taking matters into his own hands and offering a reward -- a signed bobblehead that shows him riding the scooter -- with no questions asked.
"I try not to be too attached to things, even though I have a bobblehead with it," Pence said Monday, according to CSNBayArea.com. "I felt it was an extension of me."
Pence doesn't lock the scooter because of its unique charger.
"It won't last very long," Pence said. "I try to trust people. Apparently somebody needed it more than I do."
Pence lamented the scooter's loss on Twitter.
Ahhhh someone stole my scooter! :( - Hunter Pence (@hunterpence) May 26, 2014
After receiving support and numerous comments from the online community, Pence followed up with a tweet that included a picture of his ride.
Thanks for the support everyone! If you're keeping an eye out here's what it looks like. #stolemyscooter pic.twitter.com/kw2NccqrpR - Hunter Pence (@hunterpence) May 26, 2014
Still, the incident hasn't made Pence think any less of the California city.
"No, I'm not mad at the city," he said. "The support and comments on Twitter were more uplifting than anything. It made the gut shot better. It made it fun.... I found a way to get some joy out of it."
Pence received the scooter, which has custom stickers with his name and No. 8, three weeks after his July 2012 trade to San Francisco.
Pence, who is often smiling and joking with teammates in the clubhouse, rode a backup scooter to the game against the Cubs on Monday.
"He had a sad face on this morning,'' Giants manager Bruce Bochy said. "I've never seen that.''
Pence said he's already working to upgrade the backup scooter's battery power because it won't carry him all the way to the ballpark. He said he won't use a car.
"I can't fathom driving for some reason,'' he said.
Pence still has hope he will get his favorite scooter back. He said he even had a dream Sunday night that he saw a man riding it down the street.
"And I tackled him,'' Pence said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.Welcome to Brewhouse Mountain and the World's Largest Collection of Beer Cans Meet Jeff Lebo, owner of the world's largest collection of vintage beer cans. Jeff is always looking for old beer cans to buy, and he pays cash for cans he needs. If you have good cans to sell, it is likely that he will buy them from you. He has purchased collections all over the world during his 40+ years in the hobby. Contact Jeff now by emailing him at jefflebo@aol.com. Below are a few photos of Jeff's world famous Brewhouse Mountain, which is likely to be the most unusual vacation rental you've ever seen. Nearly every inch of wall space is covered with vintage beer cans, antique bottles, lithos, neons, porcelain signs, trays, general store items, and every imaginable type of antique advertising and breweriana from days gone by. Pictures don't do it justice...you just have to see it in person to take it all in. The 6,000 square foot house is located on 4 acres of mixed hardwood forest in the Conewago Mountains of south-central Pennsylvania, midway between the cities of Harrisburg and York. The Inn caters to outdoor enthusiasts and nature lovers, with skiing, snowboarding, zip lines, kayaking, birdwatching, hiking trails, mountain biking, fishing and golf just minutes away. There is great kayaking on many nearby waterways, including the Conewago Creek, Yellow Breeches Creek, Susquehanna River, Conodoguinet Creek, Bennett Run, Muddy Creek Gorge, Swatara Creek, Bermudian Creek, Juniata River, Donegal Creek, Chickies Creek, Sherman Creek, Tuscarora Creek, Pequea Creek, Conestoga Creek, Mill Creek and Codorus Creek. At the Susquehanna River's Lake Frederic, just eight minutes away, it is possible to explore many of the islands which were once inhabited by the Susquehanna Indians centuries ago. There are even petroglyphs which are visible on boulders in the river, a few miles further south, near Indian Steps. Brewhouse Mountain is conveniently located in the center of many of Pennsylvania's top attractions: Gettysburg Civil War Battlefield, Hersheypark, Indian Echo Caverns, the Mason-Dixon Trail, the Pennsylvania State Museum, Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts, York's Factory tours, Lake Tobias Wildlife Park, Dutch Wonderland, Pride of the Susquehanna Riverboat and City Island, the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum, Lancaster County's PA Dutch and Amish country, Gifford Pinchot State Park, the Appalachian Trail, Roundtop Mountain Resort, the beautiful Susquehanna River, Carlisle with its famous Auto Show, Harrisburg's Civil War Museum and great night life and restaurants, and many more attractions. We are about one hour north of Baltimore and one and one half hours west of Philadelphia, one mile from Interstate 83 and seven miles south of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. If you would like more information on staying at the Brewhouse Mountain, simply click on one of the images below or email Jeff at jefflebo@aol.com. The house and displays were constructed between 1998 and 2001 with the help of Jeff's father Fred, friends and other family members. The collection, which numbers in excess of 96,000 different cans, is the largest of it's kind in the world. The collection is divided into geographic regions, with separate rooms for each region. Visitors have come from as far away as the Netherlands, Italy, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa to experience this unusual house and collection. The house and collection have been featured in Playboy Magazine, FHM (Germany), Loaded (UK), Beer Advocate (US), Fly Magazine (US), The Travel Channel (Extreme Collections), The Home and Garden Channel (Extreme Homes), Country Music Television - CMT (Hillbilly Deluxe), Mav TV - Time Warner Cable (Pack Rats) and the History Channel (The History of Beer). We hope you enjoy the photos and we hope to see you soon. Thanks for stopping by...
For more information on staying at Brewhouse Mountain, simply click on any of the photos below. Email Jeff now at jefflebo@aol.com for a booking or if you have beer cans that you want to sell.
Click on the photo at left to take a video tour of the house and collection. The ground floor of the house has a large 18' x 36' common room with a small library, sofas, chairs, and a dining table that seats ten. Also on the lower level, adjoining the kitchen, is a room dedicated to US steel tab tops. A wall of US flat top cans. The German Room. The Scandinavia Room. The Pacific Room. The Dark Continent Room. This large upstairs common room has a bar, tv with dvd player and board games. Located just minutes from great skiing, snowboarding, kayaking and canoeing, ziplines, birding, hiking trails, mountain biking, golfing, fishing, museums, restaurants, live music venues, theatres, amusement parks and other South-Central Pennsylvania attractions, the Brewhouse Mountain Eco-Inn offers something for everyone. Come visit us soon!Cold Storage For Everyone Armory makes Bitcoin security best practices accessible to everyone through its unique interface. And most importantly, it’s available for free. Learn more » Open Source and Extensible Armory was created with developers in mind. Armory is a great base for building Bitcoin apps like exchanges and crowdfunding platforms. Learn more » Enterprise Consulting Available Need help managing large Bitcoin balances? We are experts at helping exchanges, trusts, hedge funds, and other large holders of Bitcoin. Learn more »
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Eisenberger also had in the back of his mind the events in Charlottesville, Va., in August between white supremacists who were opposing the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee and the counterdemonstrators who rallied against them.
But the proposed motion left many politicians uneasy about possible implications.
Central Mountain Coun. Donna Skelly said the motion will unleash “an endless stream of criticism and demand” for the removal of Hamilton’s statues and public art pieces.
“This motion is really political correctness gone amok,” she said. “And I fear it will leave our community divided.”
She said look hard enough at almost every piece of art of statue and there will be flaws. Skelly mentioned Sir John A Macdonald and his involvement with First Nations and the creation of residential schools; Gandhi’s views on other ethnic groups including Africans; Queen Victoria and her role in the spread of colonialism.
Stoney Creek Coun. Maria Pearson, who was opposed to the motion, said politicians would be second guessing everyone, including Augustus Jones, a Stoney Creek surveyor whose statue is located in downtown Stoney Creek, the United Empire Loyalists and Sir William Osler, a Canadian physician described as the father of modern medicine" and one of the four founding professors of Johns Hopkins Hospital.
East Mountain Coun. Tom Jackson said it was counterproductive to start reviewing all past historical statues and public art.
“It will create unnecessary backlash,” said Jackson.
But Ward 3 Coun. Matthew Green said Canada’s history does have flaws and it's time the historical context of the people that made history should be debated.
“Let’s have the conversation,” he said. “Let’s have it with an open heart and open mind. Let’s look to address some of the historical trials.”
Eisenberger, though, seeing that his motion would be defeated, agreed to withdraw it and allow councillors to debate any complaint about a public art piece on a case-by-case basis around the table.
“This is not going to go away,” he said. “And we will have to deal with them in the future.”That India is going to have a welfare system of some sort is obvious--everywhere else does and the Randian fantasies of no government redistribution ever are simply not going to happen. Quite apart from anything else those who are being redistributed to have votes and thus the political power will always lead to at least some. But here we've a lovely example of why the current attempt to change India's welfare state is such an important one. The current system tries to buy up supplies of whatever it is, store them then redistribute to those who need them. As is well known this leads to a certain inefficiency in the system. For some years now there's been a movement toward scrapping this system and replacing it with simple money transfers. Give money to the poor and let them go and buy what they need on the open market.
This particular story needs to be read lightly. For of course we are in election season, the claim is that one particular party has been enabling, even possibly taking part in, near dacoity over those subsidised rations. Given that it is election season read at least some of the accusations as being, hmm, well, not proven shall we say? But the underlying problem is that lovely example of why we'd like to make that shift from goods to money:
Minister for Labour and Employment, and Tea Tribe Welfare, Pallab Lochan Das today told the Assembly that the successive Congress Governments in the past had been hoodwinking the tea garden labourers and the people of the State by supplying subsidized rice and wheat meant for APL families and then using it as a pretext to reduce the labourers’ wage.
The minister, while calling for a high-level inquiry into the alleged large-scale corruption indulged in by the previous Congress Governments and tea garden managements, also warned the tea garden managements of stern action unless they implemented the Plantations Labour Act and the Minimum Wages Act in letter and spirit.
As I say, it's election season and which non-Congress politician would pass up an opportunity to rail at Congress at such a time? But the specific allegations are of large scale diversion, whoever actually did it:
"As per records, there are nine lakh tea garden workers in Assam. But rice was distributed among 19 lakh beneficiaries," he claimed, adding "how could this happen? I demand that an enquiry by a retired judge or CBI be conducted in this matter".
Ghost recipients of the welfare largess are hardly unheard of across India of course. And there're also entirely credible reports of large numbers of people wholly qualified to receive such rations who do not:
Earlier, the minister informed the house that subsidised rice meant for APL categories was diverted to the owners of tea gardens for distribution among workers for Rs 0.50 per kg.
Those on the plantations are of course something of a special case. The plantations themselves are in remote areas, the workforce is usually migrant labour so not anchored in the areas where they work. They're thus ripe of exploitation by anyone unscrupulous enough to do so (which, of course, the people currently running them are not, definitely not) and we end up with something very like the company towns of old. We can thus make entirely righteous arguments that there should be some intervention, that the government might weigh in on the side of the workers.
But these allegations (which is all they are, allegations at election time) do find resonant echoes across rather too much of India. Those subsidised rations are not, always and entirely, distributed to those who should be having them. It is generally assumed that the welfare rolls have many on them who should not be there, possibly don't even exist, and many who should be there aren't--plus a goodly portion of those who are don't get their due.
There is nothing uniquely Indian to such problems. The same events bedevil any and every system of trying to alleviate poverty by the distribution of goods and services rather than just simple money. For, as the first lesson of economics tells us, incentives matter. Those selling the goods into the government system don't have much incentive to provide the best goods, those distributing not a lot to make sure that everything is well stored and properly distributed and those recipients have no particular leverage over what they get.
Replace such a system with the poor having simply money to buy those goods and suddenly they have agency again. And those supplying them have to take care again of delivery, quality and so on, just as any other merchant does. Because money produces choice and it is by being able to bypass shoddy goods and cheating traders that we keep the rest of them honest. To use an example from my home country, it's not because Tesco loves me that I get full weight of clean and healthy rice in exchange for my cash. It's because Aldi, Lidl, Morrisons, Waitrose and all the rest are mere miles away and they'd love to have my cash in exchange for a few kilos of their rice.
All of which is what the Direct Benefit Transfer scheme is about. Let's cut through the Gordian Knot of the state food distribution system (and let us be honest here, there is no Indian at all who would claim that system is just an efficient--at least no one without crossed fingers as they say it) and simply parcel out cash to the poor. Once said poor have money they have market influence and also effective demand. The supply system will adapt to that and it will adapt very quickly indeed--I've seen this first hand in Russia at the end of food rationing and price controls. Took a |
than what [one is] currently doing” (1). In other words, the meditator's task is to remain aware from moment to moment, and self-identification is included in the off-task category of mind-wandering. Importantly, this information-processing task, common to all three of these meditation techniques, is a training of attention away from self-reference and mind-wandering, and potentially away from default-mode processing.
Clinically, mindfulness training has shown benefit for the treatment of pain (13), substance-use disorders (15, 17), anxiety disorders (18), and depression (14), and also helps to increase psychological well-being in nonclinical populations (19). These outcomes have been associated with changes in basic psychological processes, such as improved attentional focus (20, 21), improved cognitive flexibility (22), reduced affective reactivity (23, 24), and modification or shifts away from a distorted or exaggerated view of oneself (18, 25). However, direct links between the meditative practices that are part of mindfulness training and changes in neurobiology remain elusive. Investigation of the brain activation patterns during specific meditation practices may help to identify potential neural mechanisms of mindfulness training.
Previous studies have examined individuals using meditation techniques from different traditions (e.g., Tibetan Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Vipassana, MBSR, and so forth), and employed a wide variety of experimental methods, ranging from performance of different types of meditation, to introduction of emotionally charged sounds during meditation, to assessment of functional connectivity (16, 26–30). However, given the methodological differences and, in some cases, difficulty in finding appropriately matched controls, no consensus has emerged as to what the neural correlates of meditation are or how they may underlie the behavioral changes that have been observed after mindfulness training.
We hypothesized that the DMN would be an important locus of change following meditation training, based on recently reported links between mind-wandering and increased activation in regions of the DMN (2, 8), and the observation that the task of mindfulness meditation is to maintain attention on an object of awareness and to redirect one's attention to this object when it has strayed (requiring both attention and cognitive control). Specifically, we predicted that brain activation during mindfulness meditation in experienced meditators compared with their matched controls would involve: (i) relatively reduced recruitment of the DMN, and (ii) relatively increased connectivity between DMN and brain structures that are implicated in monitoring for conflict, as well as cognitive control, such as the dorsal anterior cingulate (dACC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices (dlPFC), respectively (31, 32). To test these predictions, we used functional MRI to assess brain activation during both a resting state and a meditation period in experienced mindfulness meditation practitioners and controls. To determine common neural activation patterns across meditations, we scanned participants during periods of Concentration, Loving-Kindness, and Choiceless Awareness meditation.
Discussion As predicted, across all mindfulness meditation conditions, the two primary nodes of the DMN (the PCC and mPFC) were less active in meditators than controls. We also observed meditation-specific regional differences in activation patterns, such as deactivation in the amygdala during Loving-Kindness. Finally, using DMN seed regions, we observed distinct functional connectivity patterns in meditators that differed from controls, and which were consistent across resting-state baseline and meditation conditions. These results suggest that the neural mechanisms underlying mindfulness training are associated with differential activation and connectivity of the DMN. As meditators also reported significantly less mind-wandering, which has been previously associated with activity in the DMN, these results support the hypothesis that alterations in the DMN are related to reduction in mind-wandering. Finally, the consistency of connectivity across both meditation and baseline periods suggests that meditation practice may transform the resting-state experience into one that resembles a meditative state, and as such, is a more present-centered default mode. We deliberately restricted our meditation sample to very experienced meditators from a single practice tradition (mindfulness/insight meditation). This approach was intended to reduce heterogeneity in meditation practices. Additional strengths of the study include the use of three standardized meditation techniques that are taught within this tradition, and the utilization of control subjects that were case-matched for a number of demographic parameters. This kind of matching increases the likelihood of yielding results that are both valid and generalizable to individuals in the Western hemisphere. Furthermore, because experienced meditators train to be mindfully aware all of the time, and thus may be activating similar brain regions during both resting-state and meditation, general linear modeling (GLM) analyses may be limited because of their dependence upon a relative change from baseline. Therefore, we employed functional connectivity as a complementary analytic technique within a single dataset. This convergent analysis directly addresses the limitations of baseline conditions in previous studies. This study has several limitations. Most importantly, the sample size is moderately small, which typically limits the ability to detect small differences between conditions but increases the chances of false or inflated positive findings. Notwithstanding, we found whole-brain corrected, between-group differences, although these warrant replication before definitive conclusions may be drawn. Additionally, the use of meditation periods that were several minutes in length provides ecological validity to the meditation tasks as it approximates meditators’ usual practice more than shorter blocks and allows them to “sink into” deeper states of meditation, and at the same time optimizes functional connectivity analysis. However, this process de-optimizes GLM analysis. Finally, postrun recall of behavioral performance is limited by reporting bias. In addition, meditators may have differential awareness of the degree to which their minds wandered. Further studies are required to better correlate temporal patterns of neural activation with first-person reports. From a theoretical perspective, the view of meditation as consisting of training away from mind-wandering and self-identification gave rise to several predictions that were confirmed by our data. First, given the primacy of the DMN in self-referential processing (33) and mind-wandering (2, 8), our primary prediction was that the DMN would be the main “target” of meditation practice, and that alterations in classic DMN activity would be found in experienced meditators relative to controls. Indeed, although not consistently, prior work has suggested alterations in DMN following brief meditation training and in experienced meditators (18, 25, 34). For example, consistent with previous reports of PCC activation during “selfing” tasks (33), Pagnoni et al. showed relative activation in the PCC in Zen meditators plus controls when viewing words vs. scrambled nonword letters when meditating, although no between-group differences were found (34). Furthermore, Farb et al. reported that individuals who had received 8 wk of MBSR demonstrated relative deactivation of the PCC when performing a task in which they engaged in awareness of thoughts, feelings, and body sensations when reading personality trait adjectives, compared with determining what the words meant to them personally (25). However, to date no studies have reported alterations in DMN activation or functional connectivity during meditation itself. Clarifying this prior work, our data are unique in that they provide direct evidence for this prediction, as meditators showed relatively decreased activation in the mPFC and PCC, the two primary nodes of the DMN during meditation. This finding is especially salient as meditators reported significantly less mind-wandering during meditation periods relative to controls. Taken together, and inasmuch as activity in DMN regions reflects self-referential processing and mind-wandering, the current data suggest that meditators are engaged in these processes less than their control counterparts. A second prediction that emerged from the view of mindfulness as a task of monitoring and letting go of self-referential thought to keep present-focused attention, was that experienced meditators would be more likely to activate “task-positive” brain regions, such as those implicated in conflict monitoring, working memory, and cognitive control (8, 35–37). However, as noted above, we believe that this may be because of the dependence of GLM analysis on activity during baseline. Our baseline-independent functional connectivity analyses directly addressed this confound. We found that relative to controls, meditators showed increased connectivity between PCC and task-positive regions, during resting-state baseline and all meditation conditions, including those involved in conflict monitoring, cognitive control, and working memory (dACC and dlPFC) (8, 32, 35, 38). These findings suggest that meditators may be on-task regardless of condition, which also provides a possible explanation for the relative paucity of between-group differences that were observed with GLM analyses. Importantly, this increased connectivity with the dACC and dlPFC was not seen using the mPFC as the seed region, which is consistent with the purported role of the mPFC in integrating information gathered from the internal and external environment and relaying it to the PCC, rather than being directly involved in self-related processing (33, 39, 40). Interestingly, a study using independent component analysis to assess functional connectivity during a “mindful awareness” scan after an 8-wk MBSR course was recently reported (41). Similar to our mPFC seed-region results, the authors found increased connectivity between the mPFC and primary interoceptive awareness regions, including the posterior insula. However, the authors did not find increased connectivity with other DMN regions, such as the PCC. Several possible explanations for this difference include: (i) the use of different analytic tools (independent component analysis vs. a PCC seed region for connectivity analysis); (ii) the brief duration of meditation training (8 wk); and (iii) the specific emphasis on mindful awareness of sounds in the task instructions, among others. Although direct links between white-matter tract integrity (e.g., diffusion tensor imaging), brain volume, and functional connectivity are just beginning to be established, several recent studies of meditation using these measures may support our findings. For example, Tang et al. showed improved white-matter tract integrity in the ventral anterior cingulate and dACC after just 11 h of Integrative Body-Mind Training meditation (42). In addition, Luders et al. found increased white-matter integrity in the dACC, among others in experienced meditators compared with controls (43). Regarding gray-matter density, in an exploratory analysis of individuals who had received MBSR, Holzel et al. found increased gray-matter concentration in the PCC (44). Furthermore, Luders et al. found increased gray-matter concentration in the inferior temporal gyrus in experienced meditators (45). Taken together, these studies of neuronal integrity and brain concentration may corroborate our findings, as these regions were shown to have increased connectivity in the present study. The findings from this study support the default-mode interference hypothesis, which states that the DMN can persist or reemerge during goal-directed tasks “to such an extent that it competes with task-specific neural processing and creates the context for periodic attentional intrusions/lapses and cyclical deficits in performance” (46). This hypothesis has been built from observations of decreased activity in the task-positive network and increased activity in the DMN during mindlessness (2, 8), and has been further supported by the demonstration that stimulant (nicotine) administration enhances attention by deactivating areas of the DMN, such as the PCC (47). More importantly, pathological states have shown altered DMN connectivity and anticorrelations with the task-positive network (48). However, to our knowledge, no studies have shown convergence of the two networks, in states of well-being or otherwise. With reduced self-reported mind wandering, decreased mPFC and PCC activation during meditation, and increased connectivity patterns between DMN and self-control regions of the brain, our data provide corollary support for the interference hypothesis. Moreover, our functional connectivity data speculatively suggest that meditation practice may couple primary nodes of these networks in a potentially beneficial way. One possibility is that PCC is temporally linked to self-control regions such that when regions of the DMN emerge to “interfere” with a task, control regions may coactivate to monitor and dampen this process. This coactivation of monitoring/control regions along with nodes of the DMN may, over time, become a new “default mode” that can be observed during meditation as well as during the resting state. Finally, the findings from this study have several clinical implications, as a number of pathological conditions have been linked to dysfunction within areas of the DMN (for a review see ref. 6). For example, ADHD is characterized by attentional lapses. The majority of research on the pathophysiology of ADHD has centered on frontal-striatal circuitry (49), but recent studies have begun to explore other mechanisms, including activity in and connectivity with nodes of the DMN (9). In particular, Castellanos et al. found decreases in correlations between the PCC and dACC in individuals with ADHD (9). Individuals who have undergone mindfulness training, during which they try to minimize attentional lapses, may be an interesting contrast to those with ADHD. Indeed, mindfulness training has shown preliminary efficacy in treating this disorder, but how it affects brain function in individuals with ADHD remains unknown (50). Our data raise the intriguing possibility that mindfulness may help to enhance PCC–dACC connectivity in individuals with ADHD, which may correlate with reduced attentional lapses. Another pathological condition that has been connected to DMN activity is Alzheimer's disease. Sustained neuronal activity has recently been linked to increased amyloid-β deposition (51). Results from our study suggest that meditation may decrease DMN activity in a relatively specific manner, using simple instructions and at low cost. As such, meditation may also bring with it the advantage of being accessible to many individuals, regardless of educational and economic background. Of course, prospective studies will be crucial in demonstrating this effect experimentally, and determining if meditation can delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease. Regardless of potential clinical implications, our findings demonstrate group differences in the DMN that are consistent with a decrease in mind-wandering in experienced meditators, and provide a basis for a new understanding of the neural bases of mindfulness meditation practice.
Methods Subjects. Twelve right-handed individuals with > 10 y and an average of 10,565 ± 5,148 h of mindfulness meditation experience, and 13 healthy volunteers were recruited to participate. Right-handed meditation-naive controls were case-control matched for country of origin (United States), primary language (English), sex, age, race, education, and employment status. One control participant did not follow directions and was removed before any analyses were performed. With the exception of a single mismatch in sex and age, respectively, all participants were well-matched (e.g., within 3 y of age of their match; see Table S4). All participants gave informed consent in accordance with the procedures of the Yale University Human Investigation Committee. Task. Just before scanning, all participants were introduced to three standard mindfulness meditation instructions: (i) Concentration: “Please pay attention to the physical sensation of the breath wherever you feel it most strongly in the body. Follow the natural and spontaneous movement of the breath, not trying to change it in any way. Just pay attention to it. If you find that your attention has wandered to something else, gently but firmly bring it back to the physical sensation of the breath.” (ii) Loving-Kindness: “Please think of a time when you genuinely wished someone well (pause). Using this feeling as a focus, silently wish all beings well, by repeating a few short phrases of your choosing over and over. For example: May all beings be happy, may all beings be healthy, may all beings be safe from harm.” (iii) Choiceless Awareness: “Please pay attention to whatever comes into your awareness, whether it is a thought, emotion, or body sensation. Just follow it until something else comes into your awareness, not trying to hold onto it or change it in any way. When something else comes into your awareness, just pay attention to it until the next thing comes along” (11). Participants practiced each meditation type outside of the scanner and confirmed that they understood and could follow the instructions before proceeding. Each run began with a 2-min resting-state baseline period (“please close your eyes and don't think of anything in particular”), which is consistent with standard resting-state induction procedures (3, 9, 36). This state was followed by a 30-s recorded meditation instruction (as above), and a 4.5-min meditation period. Every subject performed each meditation twice. Meditation conditions were presented in a random order, but the second instance of each meditation was blocked (i.e., AABBCC). After each run, participants were asked to rate how well they were able to follow the instructions and how much their mind wandered during each meditation period on a scale of 0 to 10. Statistical Analysis of Self-Report Data. We performed multivariate ANOVA using SPSS 18 (SPSS, Inc.). All tests of significance are reported as two-tailed and means are reported with ± SD. Imaging Data Acquisition. Functional and structural data were acquired on a 3T TRIO Siemens MRI scanner (Siemens Healthcare) located at Yale's Magnetic Resonance Research Center. A high-resolution, 3D Magnetization Prepared Rapid Acquisition Gradient Echo (MPRAGE) T1-weighted sequence was used to acquire anatomical images [TR = 2,530 ms; echo time (TE) = 3.66 ms; Flip angle = 7°; Field of view = 256 × 256 mm; Matrix = 256 × 256; 176 1-mm slices]. Blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) functional images were acquired with a T2*-sensitive echo-planar image (EPI) gradient-echo pulse sequence (TR = 2,000 ms; TE = 25 ms; Flip angle: 85°; Field of view = 220× 220 mm; Matrix = 64 × 64; and 32 4-mm slices). Each functional run consisted of 210 volumes, including an initial rest period of 10 s (to achieve signal stability) that was removed from the data before preprocessing. Imaging Data Processing. Functional images were subjected to standard preprocessing using SPM5 (Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neurology) following our prior published methods (e.g., ref. 38), which included the following steps: slice scan-time correction to the middle slice of each volume; a two-pass realignment of all functional images, first to the first image of the first functional scan, and then to an interim computed mean image; coregistration of the anatomical image and the average of these realigned functional images; coregistration of all functional images using the parameters obtained from coregistration of the mean image; application of the SPM Unified Segmentation process to the anatomical scan, using prior information from the International Consortium for Brain Mapping Tissue Probabilistic Atlas and estimation of nonlinear warping parameters (52); warping the functional images to the MNI template space, followed by smoothing of functional images using a 6-mm isometric Gaussian kernel. GLM Data Analysis. First-level robust regression was performed on each participant's preprocessed images, using the standard GLM but with iteratively reweighted least squares using the bisquare weighting function for robustness (38, 53), as implemented in MATLAB 7.3 (Mathworks; robust.m), using scripts created by the authors (H.K. and J.W.). Motion parameters and high-pass filter parameters were added as additional regressors of no interest. Activity during each meditation epoch was estimated as percentage of signal change from resting baseline. Next, a second-level, random-effects analysis was performed to estimate group activity during each meditation epoch, and to compare activity between groups, using NeuroElf (NeuroElf.net). Results are familywise error (FWE)-corrected for multiple comparisons at P < 0.05, unless otherwise indicated. Functional Connectivity Analysis: Region-of-Interest Definition. To assess the connectivity of brain regions with the DMN, we defined two regions of interest (ROIs) in the mPFC and PCC (MNI coordinates −6, 52, −2 and −8, −56, 26, respectively), based on DMN coordinates reported previously (e.g., ref. 7). Given that these were located very close to the midplane (x = 0) we combined right and left mPFC and PCC respectively by selecting all voxels within a sphere of 10-mm radius around coordinates projected orthogonally onto the midplane (x = 0) of the brain. Definition of Temporal Segments of Interest. To determine differences in network connectivity, we defined three temporal epochs of 50 volumes/100 s each, as follows: (i) resting-state baseline (“please close your eyes and don't think of anything in particular”; the epoch before the instruction to meditate; volumes 6 through 55); (ii) an initial meditation phase (immediately following the instruction; volumes 76–125); and (iii) a later meditation phase (at the end of each of the meditation sessions; volumes 158–207). For each of these segments, seed-correlations were then computed. ROI Time-Course Preparation. For each of the six meditation sessions (three types with one repetition each), the average time course of the ROIs was extracted for the three different 50-volume/100-s segments. To ensure that maps representing the covariance (correlation) between regions and other brain areas were as unbiased as possible toward spurious positive correlation, the average time course of all white-matter voxels was also extracted. White matter is typically considered to not show any BOLD-related changes, so that any signal variation in these areas is usually attributed to noise components. Therefore, the ROI time courses were orthogonalized against this white-matter time course. Generation of First-Level Seed-Correlation Maps. To assess connectivity and between-group differences, separate multiple linear regression models were computed for each of the segment-by-ROI pairs. The models contained the ROI time course as covariate of interest and the respective white-matter time course as covariate of no interest (to account for fluctuations most likely driven by global signal changes). For each of these models a z-map was computed, reflecting the z-score in each voxel, assessing the likelihood of signal changes being correlated to the seed under the null hypothesis. The two homonymous maps (stemming from the two segments of equal meditation technique; for example, early meditation for the two Loving-Kindness runs) were combined using Stouffer's z-method. The rationale behind this approach is that under the null hypothesis (no effect for simple tests and no differential effect for task-difference tests) this measure is normally distributed around 0, a prerequisite for subsequent second-level analyses. Second-Level Random-Effects Statistical Analysis. Using these correlation maps (the initial nine maps per subject, based on three meditation types and three parts of the time courses—baseline, early, and late meditation—which were condensed into six maps, whereas the early and late correlation maps were combined using the Stouffer z-method), we computed between-group differences for the three meditation types.
Acknowledgments We thank the participants of this study for their interest and willingness to participate; Joseph Goldstein and Ginny Morgan for input regarding meditation instructions and the task paradigm; and Marc Potenza and Kathleen Carroll, the staff of the Yale Therapeutic Neuroscience Clinic, the Clinical and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory, and the MRI technicians in the Yale Magnetic Resonance Research Center for their contributions to this research. This study was funded by Grants K12-DA00167 and P50-DA09241 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the US Veterans Affairs New England Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center.
Footnotes Author contributions: J.A.B., P.D.W., J.R.G., and H.K. designed research; J.A.B. performed research; P.D.W. and H.K. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; J.A.B., P.D.W., J.R.G., Y.-Y.T., J.W., and H.K. analyzed data; and J.A.B., P.D.W., J.R.G., Y.-Y.T., J.W., and H.K. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1112029108/-/DCSupplemental.Public support for legalizing recreational marijuana is at an all-time high (pardon the pun). This November, voters in five more states could choose to join Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington in ending the substance’s prohibition at the state level — although the federal ban will remain in effect. What
We’ve broken down the legalization ballot measures in Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada for you below.
Arizona — Proposition 205
This initiative would legalize the possession and consumption of marijuana by people in the state of Arizona who are 21 years of age or older. People of age would be able to possess and use one ounce or less of marijuana and grow up to six plants in their homes. A 15 percent tax would be imposed on marijuana sales, with revenue going to fund K-12 education, full-day kindergarten, and a public health campaign regarding marijuana.
Read more here.
California — Proposition 64
This initiative would allow people 21 and older to possess and use up to an ounce of marijuana or up to 8 grams of concentrated marijuana and use it for recreational purposes. Individuals would also be able to grow up to six plants in their home as long as the area is locked and not visible from a public place. A statewide cultivation tax would be imposed on growers at a rate of $9.25 per ounce for flowers and $2.75 per ounce for leaves, although medical marijuana would be exempted. Additionally, a statewide tax of 15 percent would be assessed on the retail price of marijuana.
Read more from Countable here and from our partners at CALmatters here.
Maine — Question 1
This initiative would legalize the possession and use of marijuana by people in the state of Maine who are 21 years of age or older. People would be able to possess up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana, and grow up to six immature plants or seedlings and up to six flowering marijuana plants at their homes. A sales tax of 10 percent would be assessed on retail sales of marijuana and marijuana products.
Read more here.
Massachusetts — Question 4
This initiative would legalize the possession and use of marijuana by people in the state of Massachusetts who are 21 years of age or older. Individuals could possess up to 10 ounces of marijuana in their homes and under one ounce in public. They would also be allowed to grow up to six plants in their homes. The total tax on marijuana could be as high as 12 percent. A 3.75 percent excise tax would be assessed on retail marijuana sales in addition to the state sales tax of 6.25 percent. Local governments would have the option of adding a two percent tax of their own.
Read more here.
Nevada — Question 2
This initiative would legalize the possession and use of marijuana by people in the state of Nevada who are 21 years of age or older. Individuals would be allowed to possess up to one ounce of marijuana and up to one-eighth of an ounce of concentrated marijuana. They would also be able to grow up to six plants for their personal use, though they would be required to cultivate the plants in a locked, enclosed area.
Read more here.
What do you think?
In Favor
Marijuana should be legal for adults to use and grow because it’s less harmful than some legal substances, and it’s a waste of law enforcement resources to continue its prohibition. By legalizing and regulating marijuana, fewer people will turn to the black market where they can be exploited by drug dealers.
Opposed
Marijuana is a harmful substance and its usage opens the door for further drug abuse and the problems that addiction brings. Making marijuana legal will lead more people to purchase it, and it will become even harder to keep the drug out of the hands of children, as there will be more places they can access it.
— Eric RevellThe Los Angeles Times is reporting Brendan Eich, the co-founder of Mozilla and the inventor of JavaScript, donated $1,000 to the Proposition 8 Fund, which worked to pass a marriage-equality ban in California.
Despite some legal wrangling, the names, home states and employers of Prop 8 donors’ are on the public record and have been tallied by the Times in a handy online database. (It also lists people who contributed against the ban.) Thankfully, it appears Eich (right) was the only staffer from Mozilla—which operates Firefox, the Web browser you’re probably reading this on—to cough up some dough for the haters.
Y’know, there are a lot of ugly stereotypes about computer programmers, but we’d never put “homophobes” among them—Eich just makes his fellow tech nerds look bad.
Here’s hoping he stays a virgin for another 51 years.
Photo: AcidJazzedTradition (and most chroniclers) tell us that on 14 October 1066, the Anglo-Saxon army saw their King, Harold Godwinson, killed on the field of battle. It was a moment upon which the battle hinged for, seeing their leader dead, the Anglo-Saxons fled the field, pursued and killed by the Normans in their unruly rout. But is all as it seems? There is also a tradition that Harold in fact survived the battle and, deciding the loss of the kingship was God’s will, devoted his life to God as a hermit (or anchorite). Well, if I am being honest, all is as it seems and, removing the debate about exactly how Harold died, it is pretty clear he did not walk away from the battle. But such legends are a bit of fun and it is not entirely uncommon to find them attached to kings who enjoyed a certain amount of popular support, and who ‘apparently’ lost their lives and kingships in battle (and had no known burial place). Indeed, I have previously written about Olaf Tryggvason’s death at the naval battle of Svolder, and he too is reputed to have survived his fully-armoured plunge into the open ocean, and thereafter journeyed on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. What we see with both men is an element of hagiography creeping into accounts of their defeats, in which martial loss is divinely ordained, thus necessarily turning temporal defeat into spiritual victory. It speaks to a kind of cultic reverence (and nostalgia) among their supporters.
So, on the anniversary of Hastings, this is a post of a different type to our usual historical analyses. Hopefully, it is just going to be a bit of fun story-telling as I provide a selection of four Scandinavian accounts of Harold and Olaf surviving their respective battles and heading off on pilgrimage/into hermitage (with a tiny bit of commentary).
Harold’s survival is well recorded in Scandinavian sources – as I have noted elsewhere, Anglo-Saxon kings are known to frequent the pages of saga literature. Indeed, in our first account of Harold’s survival, we double-down on English kingship, as the text known as Játvarðar Saga is an account of the life of King Edward the Confessor. As a fourteenth-century text, the account is far removed from the events and, while it does provide some unique insights into the immediate post-Conquest world, its anonymous author is deeply influenced by hagiography. It is a text requiring deep scepticism. But putting that aside and turning to the narrative, it is no surprise to find an account of Hastings and its immediate aftermath in its pages, Edward and Harold’s stories are deeply intertwined.
When William heard of the death of king Edward, and that Harold had let himself be chosen king in England, he raged at the thought Harold had broken his oath. Straightway he summoned all the chiefs he could get and a mighty host beside. He made ready that force for England. He came there just at the time when the two Harolds had fought (Stamford Bridge). Then he began to harry the coast where he landed. But when Harold, Godwin’s son, heard of William’s arrival in the south by Helsingport, and that either side had a very great host, his brother, Earl Gurth spoke to Harold, saying:
“I am fear that you would transgress in holding a battle against duke William for you are bound by oaths to him, and have sworn not to hold England against him.”
King Harold answered, “It may be that you are better fitted to fight with William, but I have not been known to stand idle when other men have fought, and William the bastard shall not hear that I dare not look him in the face.”
After that King Harold made them set up his banner before him and went out to against William, and there was the greatest battle, and it seemed long uncertain which side would win the victory. But, as the fight went on, the loss of men turned on the English side, and a great host fell, and all fled who chose life. There fell king Harold and his brother Gurth, but Valtheof their brother fled out of the fight. William the bastard caused him to be burnt afterwards in a wood, and a hundred men with him. It is the story of Englishmen that in the night after the battle, some friends of king Harold fared to the battlefield and looked for his body, and found him alive, and bore him off to be healed; he was cured in secret. And when he was made whole, it was offered him by his friends to make war on William, and get the land whatever it cost. But king Harold would not do that, stating he understood that God would not grant him the realm. And perhaps it is better so. Then the king took a better plan to give up this world’s honour, and went into a cell and was a hermit while he lived, so serving Almighty God unceasingly both night and day.
Remaining with obscure Scandinavian texts, the fascinating Hemings þáttr predates Játvarðar Saga by around a century. The þáttr follows the adventures of a fictitious Norwegian protagonist – a surprising hero for an Icelandic text – who finds himself entangled in events in England in 1066. (See this article by The Clerk of Oxford for greater detail on this text). This account is loaded with great detail, so I will select passages with a focus on Harold’s survival.
The night after King Haraldr Guðini’s son had fallen, then a certain peasant and his wife drove to where the dead lay to strip the dead and get themselves some wealth. They see there great heaps of dead. They see there a bright light. They discuss this together and say that there must be a saintly man there among the dead. They now begin to clear away the corpses from where they saw the light. They see a man’s arm lift up from among the corpses and there was a large gold ring on it. The peasant took hold of the hand and asked whether the man was alive.
He answers: ‘I am alive.’
The old woman spoke: ‘Clear off the corpses: I think this is the king.’
They lifted the man up and ask if it is possible for him to be healed. The king says: ‘I do not deny that I could be healed, but you cannot do it.’
The woman spoke: ‘We shall have a go.’
[Insert witty banter from the peasant fulfilling the archetype of the ‘trickster’ from saga literature. The full translation is available online from the Viking Society for Northern Research (see pages 43 – 45)].
The next day Hemingr comes to the king and there took place there a very joyful reunion. They talk together the whole of that day. Hemingr offers the king to go all over the country collecting an army together.
‘And you could soon get the kingdom back from Viljálmr [William].’
The king spoke: ‘I realise that this may be possible, but then too many will become perjurers. And I don’t want so much evil to happen on my account. Now I am going to follow the example of King Óláfr Tryggvason, who, after he was defeated off Vinðland, decided then not to return to his kingdom, but instead went out to Greece and there served God as long as he lived. Now I am going to have a hermit’s cell made for me in Kantarabyrgi [Canterbury], where I shall be able see King Viljálmr as often as possible in the church. And the only food I shall have is what you bring me.’
Hemingr agrees to this. The king gives the old man and his wife a suitable reward, and afterwards goes into a hermitage. He stays there for three years without anyone knowing who he is except Hemingr and the priest that confessed him.
Could the þáttr author have offered a better lead-in to the accounts of Olaf Tryggvason after Svolder? But we should pause for a moment on Harold. Firstly, to note the parallel stories. While Játvarðar Saga supplies less detail than Hemings þáttr, the core narrative – that Harold was found alive on the battle-field, was encouraged by his friends to contest the kingship, and chose hermitage instead – remains unchanged. Second is to note that, while the focus of this article is on Scandinavian texts, Harold’s survival is also attested in English sources such as Gerald of Wales’ Journey through Wales. Indeed, the Játvarðar Saga author is deliberate in informing us that he is drawing upon an English tradition, and we should presume that the Hemings þáttr author is similarly influenced by the English narrative.
Yet the Hemings þáttr author is clearly aware of the Scandinavian tradition of Olaf’s survival post-Svolder, presenting it as a known fact as opposed to reported rumour. Bearing in mind that the þáttr is intended as fiction, this assertion fits within the mould of the authorial style. Yet the rumours of Olaf’s survival are not restricted to fiction, and Snorri Sturluson reports it in his Heimskringla, though notably with a historian’s tone of scepticism and an acknowledgement that what he is reporting is hearsay:
But the cruiser of Vinðr that Ástríðr’s men were on rowed away and back off Vinðland, and there was already a report by many people that King Óláfr must have thrown off his coat of mail in the water and dived away from under the longships, afterwards swimming to the Vinðr’s cruiser, and that Ástríðr’s men had taken him ashore. And there have been many stories made since about these travels of King Óláfr’s by some people, though Hallfrøðr speaks of it in this way:
Whether the sater of seagulls
of the sound of the glow of Heiti’s
beast to laud living
or lifeless, I know not,
since both tales men tell me
as truth—the king is wounded
in either case—news of him
is always unreliable |
As someone who’s done a number of true crime pieces and is working on another one now, why do you think these stories appeal to us so much? Why are they so addictive?
However you want to describe it: the whodunit; the mystery of what really happened; the mystery of personality; of who people really, really are is powerfully represented when you have a crime standing in back of all of it. It’s a way of dramatizing really significant issues: How we know what we know? How have we come to the belief that we have? Is justice served by the various mechanisms in our society? Is the law just? And on and on and on and on and on.
“Watching Making a Murderer, I was struck by the feeling of the inexorable grinding of a machine that is producing, potentially, error.”
I think it’s a mistake to assume, however, that all of these stories are doing the same thing, because they’re not. They’re doing different things. And … you see more and more criticisms of Making a Murderer because they say it’s biased—it leaves out this, that, and the other thing. To me, it’s a very powerful story, ultimately, not about whether these guys are guilty or innocent—but it’s a very powerful story about a miscarriage of justice.
There’s so many themes in it that are relevant to investigation. But what is powerful in Making a Murderer is not the issue of whether [Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey] are guilty or innocent. It’s the horror of the courts and how that story was handled the first time around and subsequently. I can never ever forget Dassey’s attorney and the investigator. The attorney with the catfish mouth and the investigator crying—unforgettable.
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Yeah. And there’s so many lines from those phone calls that are so haunting, like “Poor people always lose”—
Yes!
Or when Brendan says he likes his attorney because they have the same favorite animal.
There’s something so horrific about process in that story. Another thing that I was struck by watching Making a Murderer was the feeling of the inexorable grinding of a machine that is producing, potentially, error. You know, Brendan Dassey is forced to confess to something that he didn’t do. It’s never explained in the court how it is that it is assumed that Brendan Dassey is telling the truth, but there’s actually no evidence for what he’s saying—none.
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And there are many, many unanswered questions. Certainly, the question of their innocence or guilt—particularly, Steven Avery’s innocence or guilt. If you’re asking me, would I sign a petition stating that I believe that Steven Avery is innocent? Well, I don’t know. I really don’t know from watching Making a Murderer, but there’s one thing I do know from watching Making a Murderer—that neither Brendan Dassey nor Steven Avery received a fair trial, and that that trial should be overturned.
Slate Writers Discuss Serial Listen in every week on Slate's Serial Spoiler Special podcast.
The purpose of documentary—whether it’s true crime or anything else, for that matter—is not just to give us reality on a plate, but to make us think about what reality is. And I believe Making a Murderer really does powerfully engage us. It’s engaged millions of people. One thing that you do learn in an investigation is that we’re all prisoners of narrative, and we can’t escape from narrative; we need stories in order to figure out what the world is about. If the police come up with a story, they don’t look for any evidence that would suggest otherwise. And if you don’t look for evidence, you don’t find it, often. I found it extraordinarily powerful, and ironic, because there really is no investigation in Making a Murderer.
Right—it’s reporting on other people’s investigations.
It’s reporting other people’s investigations. Do I look at that as an infirmity of the series? I don’t. It’s using material that was not available to me—I’m jealous: record of the trial, record of depositions, records of interrogations, records of the prosecutor, et cetera. It’s this extended essay with found footage that is really, really interesting.
When people say that there’s stuff that’s omitted, well of course there’s stuff that’s omitted. At the end of it, I felt very strongly that there was a miscarriage of justice. Whether that miscarriage of justice is because Steven Avery is innocent, or Brendan Dassey is innocent, or whether it’s just simply because the horror of the lack of due process—the horror of life, the horror of how we treat people in the criminal justice system. I mean, you look at The Jinx versus Making a Murderer—it’s like flip sides of the same coin. What happens if you have a lot of money, versus what happens if you have no money—none? In The Jinx it’s not whether he did it or not; it’s, you know, how come he’s never been prosecuted successfully for any of the things that he’s done? And I think the answer is a pretty simple one—money.
With The Thin Blue Line, I was always thinking I guess, like, in parallel grooves: “What can be used in order to get him out of prison?” I was thinking like an investigator, as I was, for years, hired to investigate crime: What do I need to uncover in order to make a case on [Adams’] behalf? If anyone thinks that somehow the investigation in The Thin Blue Line was done without the court system in mind, that’s just not true. Always in my mind was the fact that I have to produce evidence that will be sufficient to overturn this conviction in a court of law.
Right.
And what do I need to do in order to make a movie—to make a fucking movie? Because you’re doing multiple things at the same time. I remember this one time this Dallas reporter said something that I thought was unusually hurtful to me, saying, “Are you ashamed of yourself because you made this art film—it probably took you years to finish—and you should have just done a straightforward film and gotten him out of prison.” I believe that I did the right thing. I believe that I made a movie that satisfies me artistically, and also it satisfies me as an investigator. But I knew that I had had all of that investigative material—truckloads of it—available, and that the case was being made in different ways.
This is another reason why I believe Steven Avery has a shot of getting out of prison, as well as Brendan Dassey. I believe Making a Murderer makes a very powerful case for why there was a miscarriage of justice, a lack of due process. I suppose the technical way to say it is both of those trials were totally fucked up. But that’s not enough in our world. You have to bring it to the attention of people in a powerful enough way that people are compelled to do something about it. I suppose it’s another sort of thing to be jealous about—not really jealous about, but a little bit—is that in 1988, there was no Internet.
Of course.
Miramax was the distributor of The Thin Blue Line. It was in... not all that many theaters. Probably well under a hundred. But people started spontaneously signing petitions. And it spurred a kind of movement. People started writing about it. But much, much more slowly and on a much smaller scale. And I was lucky. Today, with the Internet, it’s possible for—I don’t know how many millions of people have seen Making a Murderer, but there’s a lot of awareness of that story.
I don’t know if you follow this at all, but there’s this phenomenon of—particularly with Making a Murderer and Serial, Season 1—of the amateur Internet sleuth. What do you make of that phenomenon?
I think it’s a good thing, the fact that people are engaged by the world around us and are writing about it. And this doesn’t come out of an enormous respect for Internet commentary!
How did you actually come across Randall Adams?
I had very little interest in interviewing death row inmates. I had been interested in interviewing Dr. James Grigson, who was notorious because of his role in the implementation of the death penalty in Texas. He was a psychiatrist who was called on by the prosecution to interview those accused of capital crimes. Randall Adams was not part of the equation at all.
He’s the guy who calls Randall Adams a psychopath, right?
Indeed. He testified that he could predict—with 100 percent certainty that he could predict—that Adams would kill again, given the opportunity to do so, and that David Harris couldn’t hurt a fly.
Right.
It was an opportunity in one instance to be 200 percent wrong. I have often said I don’t believe you can predict human behavior except in one instance: what Dr. Grigson will say at the penalty phase of a capital murder trial. That can be predicted with some accuracy.
Grigson said, you know, “You’ve got to go to death row and interview these people. They’re not like you and me.” That’s the quote: “They’re not like you and me.” And so I set up a series—I call them “prisoner auditions”—at various different prisons in Texas, and at each one of those prisons I interviewed inmates who had been sentenced to death in part because of what Grigson said at their trial.
Adams was in a whole class of defendants who the jury instructions were not administered correctly. You might call it a minor technicality, but it led to a group of convictions being overturned. In their effort to gain executions, they just simply... I mean, the polite way to put it would be they overplayed they hands.
And so there I am, interviewing a lot of people who, everything else being equal, would’ve been executed.
Right.
They would be given the electric chair, or a lethal injection. Adams came within two or three days of being electrocuted. I’m there at Eastham Unit, probably doing three, four, maybe five interviews that day. Randall Adams being one of them. Randall Adams was never picked out as the guy that I was going to be making a movie about. He told me that he was innocent, and he started going on about the kid—and I had no idea what he was talking about. How would I?
Right—of course.
I knew nothing about his case. All that I knew was that he had been sentenced to death, in part because of Grigson’s role at his trial. So I did these interviews, and I went to Austin to read the trials. I remember reading that trial transcript very, very well. That’s really the beginning of it all.
Do you remember what it was that first tipped you off?
It’s something true of so many cases—that you know something is wrong. You know someone is being essentially framed, but you don’t know why and how.
Right.
If I were going to tell this story, I would have to talk to [David Harris], since he was the kid in the car. I had trouble finding him. I remember calling around, and finally finding out that he had been in prison for years. And this is just pure chance—he had just been paroled from San Quentin.
I got the name of his parole officer in Texas. The parole officer told me that she would not give me David’s number but she would call David on my behalf, and if David wanted to speak to me he would call me back—I would leave a number where I could be reached. He called me five minutes later.
And then he very shortly thereafter went back to prison, right?
He did not go back to prison right away. It was six, seven months after that that he went back to prison.
We agreed to meet at a bar outside of Vidor, Texas—as it turns out, a bar in the swamp, in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere. And I drove all of these back roads. There’s no good road between Huntsville and Vidor—you’re really driving these back roads in East Texas, and it was actually one of the scariest experiences that I’ve ever had. I met David Harris, and David Harris asked me—he expressed, actually, some surprise—he thought that Randall Adams had been executed. He was surprised that Adams was still alive. And he asked me, “Well, what does Adams have to say about me?”
And I often tell this story, as an example of doing something really, really, really, stupid. I started to think: “Could this guy be the killer?” He gave me the creeps. And I said to him, “I’m really glad I have the chance to meet you, because otherwise I might think you could’ve been involved in some way in this murder, and now that I’ve met you I can see that that’s absolutely out of the question.”
And he gave this look—this “What the fuck?!” look. You tell someone that you’re not thinking something because you’re afraid that they’re thinking that you’re thinking something—
But then you give away that you’re—
You give away the fact that, indeed, you are thinking just that.
Right.
And he told me when I left to be very careful driving back. He said it to me once, he said it to me a second time, and the third time he said it to me, it just gave me the willies.
Miramax Films
Yeah.
And I felt he was following me, for a while. And I stopped at this gas station and called my wife, and said, “I just met David Harris. I think he might be involved in this murder. I think he might be following me.” My wife started screaming at me—“You idiot—What are you doing?”
And that was the beginning of seven months of trying to get David Harris to be interviewed, and we had an appointment for an interview in Houston, where he was working. And he broke the appointment for the interview, and he couldn’t be found. He turned up about a week later—seven, eight days later, and he had been involved in a murder.
As I often say, it’s my favorite excuse for breaking an appointment: “I was off killing somebody.”
You can’t argue with that. That interview with Harris that closes the film— was it really the last interview, period, that you recorded? Had you edited together a bunch of the film already?
Yes. I was desperate to get an interview with David Harris. It kept getting fucked up. In the first instance, you know, he was a murderer.
Right.
Then I tried to interview him in Jefferson County Jail, and he used the fact that I was interviewing him to try to escape. He was rattling around in the heating duct system for 24 hours before he just got cold and hungry and crawled his way back in.
Oh my God.
I tried to interview him in Huntsville, on death row, but they refused to allow me to interview him, except through chicken wire. And I felt that it would ruin the movie because it was through chicken wire; you’re just giving away the fact that he’s in prison. Whereas you don’t really know until he lifts up those handcuffs at the end of the movie. He may be in orange prison jumpsuit, but you really don’t know for sure what’s going on. And it was just by good luck—chance—that I got that interview.
Is the on-camera interview with Harris and the tape recorder interview at the end—is that all one interview?
Uh, two days. My camera broke on the Friday. And I couldn’t get a replacement, and I came back with a tape recorder on Saturday. I had been trying to get an interview with David Harris for close to two years. It had fallen through again and again. I had finally managed to arrange this interview at Lew Sterrett Jail in Dallas. I’m still amazed that it even happened.
I had shot—I don’t know—five, six rolls of film. The camera malfunctioned, and I just thought, “Oh my God. This is the end of it.” And we came back the next day, thinking that—you know—I did not have a movie. And I tape recorded that last interview. And there you go.
What I couldn’t put in, because there’s no film—I asked David Harris if he was alone in the car when they were stopped. When he was stopped. And he smiled at me and nodded his head.
And of course, he knew that you couldn’t use that.
I talked to David the day before he was executed.
What did you guys talk about?
I didn’t keep in touch with him for a long time, and then, when it became clear the execution date was approaching I reached out to him.
Did you only talk to him once, or did you talk to him a few times?
Oh, I must have talked to him half a dozen times.
What was he like at that point?
In denial—I think he believed they were never going to execute him. I did not share that view, although I did not say that to David.
Right.
I assumed this was Texas and that they would execute him.
In 2011, you broke the news on Twitter that Randall Adams had died the year before. Did you ever speak to him after the lawsuit settled?
I did not. And I had always meant to sort of, like, re-establish relations with him. It’s another long, long, long story of how that all went down.
Do you have unanswered questions about The Thin Blue Line? Are there still things that nag you about those investigations even though—
Of course.
Even though you got Randall Adams out of jail, which is what you wanted?
Of course there are.
Do you mind sharing them?
There are always things that you wish you knew more about. The actual relationship between the district attorney’s office and those eyewitnesses. I have always been of the belief—because it seems the more plausible interpretation—that no one thought that Randall Adams was not guilty and they would frame him for murder. It seems much more plausible that they truly believed he was guilty. And if he was guilty, then whatever they did was justified. And they didn’t even have to say that to themselves on a conscious level. But it tilts how an investigation is done, how evidence is perceived, and so on, and so forth. It’s one of the reasons why Making a Murderer was so devastating to me, because I could see that same process at work in those two trials.
One thing The Thin Blue Line is famous for is the re-enactments. Every time we learn a new major piece of information about the murder, we see it re-enacted with the new evidence included, even when it’s clear that we should be very skeptical of it. How did the use of re-enactments—that formal strategy—come about?
I’m sure that it’s influenced by Kurosawa. Rashomon is interpreted in multiple different ways. One of the interpretations—not one of my interpretations, but one of the interpretations of Rashomon—is it tells you that all experience is subjective, that somehow we all see the world in such radically different ways that there’s no way to recover what really happened from all these different points of view. I actually think that it is quite possible to recover what really happened. You have to think about it. It’s a puzzle that you are being presented with.
The idea of the re-enactments came fairly early. Because it seemed to me that it was a way of bringing the audience into the investigation. It was how I thought of the crime. “Emily Miller—what did she really see? R.L. Miller—what did he really see?” I think the repetition, the returning to a scene again and again.... It’s the inexorability of noir, the music of Philip Glass, and just the rhythms of, actually, investigation. At least how I investigate, which is repetitive, pounding your head against documents and interviews.
People ask about The Jinx and re-enactments and The Thin Blue Line—well there’s re-enactments and re-enactments. The re-enactments in The Jinx are just repetitions of the same thing over and over again. You don’t look at the re-enactment as a tool to investigate. When I investigate a crime—and I’ve investigated a fair number of them in my day—I re-enact, in some way, as a way of trying to understand it. And to those people who... I didn’t have the appropriate language available to me in 1988 when the academy was putting their thumbs down on The Thin Blue Line. The correct answer is that everything is a re-enactment for us. Consciousness is a re-enactment of reality inside of our skull. We’re not given reality on a plate. We create conceptions of reality, pictures of reality, re-enactments—if you like—of reality.
And don’t they say now that memory is largely a re-enactment, as well?
Of course, it is.
That you, essentially, are re-remembering it every time?
We’re not tape recorders. You know, we’re sort of like meat in a can, observing the world.During a campaign stop at Elon Law School in downtown Greensboro today, President Bill Clinton made the case that his wife, Hillary Clinton is the true change agent, defending her against opponent Bernie Sanders’ theme of “political revolution.”
“I want you to vote for her because she’s the best single change-maker I’ve ever dealt with,” Clinton said. “I’ll admit it’s an almost out-of-body experience in this campaign whenever — we’re in a campaign where the other side says, ‘We just need a revolution.’ Therefore, everyone who’s ever served in any job anywhere fails, and their opinions don’t amount to a hill of beans. And so when the Congressional Black Caucus endorsed Hillary — well, they’re part of the establishment. When Planned Parenthood — people who’ve risked their lives endorsed Hillary — part of the establishment.”
The former president’s talk also brushed up against the populism and anger fueling Republican candidate Donald Trump’s success, contrasting the experiences of everyday Americans against the glowing report on the economy given by President Obama in his last State of the Union address.
“Why is everybody so torn up in this election?” Clinton asked. “Why do they have a food fight every time they have a Republican debate? Because too many people look at that beautiful picture that the president painted, and they cannot find themselves and their families in that picture to save their lives. That is the space in which this election is taking place.”
Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughan, who introduced Bill Clinton, joined the former president in leveling criticism at Bernie Sanders.
“I’m not asking you to vote for her based on her gender; I’m asking you to vote for her based on her experience and for what she has done for our country for the last 40 years,” Vaughan said. “Haven’t we waited long enough for affordable childcare and paid family leave? Don’t you think it’s finally time for equal pay for equal work?
“As a woman I know we have to protect Obamacare, which stopped insurance companies from treating women with preexisting conditions,” she continued. “Now, who, in 1993, was the first person who took a real hard look at healthcare in our country? She set the mold in 1993. Senator Sanders wants to end Obamacare as we know it, and start from scratch. If we have an all-or-nothing approach, we’re gonna end up with nothing.”
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commentsBest + Brightest: Hollow Flashlight Runs on Your Body Heat
Remember that potato clock you made for your high school science fair? Apparently, the bar has been raised quite a bit. Ann Makosinski, a 15 year old student from Canada, made a flashlight for her science fair project – a flashlight powered entirely by the body heat of the hand holding it. To be fair to the rest of us, though, this wasn’t any old science fair; this was the Google Science Fair, a global competition that brings out the best and brightest in the 13 to 18 age range.
Makosinski used Peltier tiles to create the flashlight. These tiles produce electricity when they are heated on one side and cooled on the other. A temperature difference of just five degrees is enough to power the LED bulb on the Hollow Flashlight. When the ambient temperature is colder, the flashlight will receive more power from the user’s body heat and provide more light. The average amount of electricity generated by palm heat was about 57 milliwatts in tests, and only about half a milliwatt is required to light the LED.
The Peltier tiles are arranged around a hollow aluminum tube – hollow so that the inside can receive air that will cool the backs of the tiles. In tests, the flashlight worked for around 30 minutes, but its useful time could vary widely depending on ambient temperatures. If the flashlight were ever to be mass produced for sale, Makosinski says that she would make some tweaks to her prototype design to make the light more durable and efficient.
Part of Makosinski’s inspiration for the project was her desire to reduce the use of disposable batteries. These single-use power sources are toxic and can leak harmful chemicals into the ground. But her invention can also be priceless in parts of the world where access to electricity is scarce. The inventor’s interest in harvesting sustainable energy that would ordinarily be wasted won her a $25,000 scholarship from Google.Australia’s latest national budget eliminates goods-and-services tax (GST) on bitcoin purchases.
The cut, announced today by the Australian Department of the Treasury, brings an end to a years-long controversy over the way consumers faced the prospect of paying double GST when first buying, then spending digital currencies.
The government began looking into the matter in mid-2015, and the removal of the tax comes just days after officials reaffirmed their pledge to resolve the issue. If the new budget is approved, the policy will go into effect on 1st July, according to the Treasury Department.
The Australian government noted that the new budget “will make it easier for new innovative digital currency businesses to operate in Australia”.
Officials unveiled their plan to eliminate the GST charge on digital currencies last year, as part of a wide-ranging statement on fintech.
The budget also includes support for a previously announced fintech accelerator program. The goal, according to the government, is to provide a two-year window for new technology firms to test financial products in a limited setting – a strategy that a number of governments and central banks worldwide have pursued in recent months.
“Robust consumer protections and disclosure requirements will be in place to protect customers including responsible lending obligations, best interest duty, and the need for adequate compensation and dispute resolution arrangements,” the Treasury Department said of the program.
While not part of today’s release, Australia is also weighing potential regulatory changes to account for blockchain applications.
Scissors image via ShutterstockGeraldo Rivera took on Bill O’Reilly Friday night over whether O’Reilly was disrespectful to President Obama in their big Super Bowl interview. Rivera gave O’Reilly some benefit of the doubt, but other than that thought O’Reilly was a bit too confrontational and didn’t give Obama the kind of respect a president normally deserves.
Rivera argued it was less like an interview and more like a meeting of the minds with the “President of Most of the White Guys of America” (O’Reilly) against the president of the rest of the country, and told O’Reilly that it was out of line for him to refer to Obama as a “community organizer.”
He said it was “unsettling to watch,” and the president deserves “all the respect and dignity” of the office. O’Reilly fired back that his job is not to please, it’s to “get information” and ask “the tough questions,” and believed that he gave enough deference and respect to the office of the presidency.
Rivera concluded that the larger point O’Reilly made about inner-city families was “obscured” by how he “minimized” the president.
Watch the video below, via
[photo via screengrab]
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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com[big campaign] Today's 'Cost of War Receipt' to the American People: Freefall on Wall Street
From:Weiner@americansunitedforchange.org To: bigcampaign@googlegroups.com Date: 2008-09-16 14:11 Subject: [big campaign] Today's 'Cost of War Receipt' to the American People: Freefall on Wall Street
BANK OF U.S. TAXPAYERS ::: RECEIPT<http://www.iankoski.com/aufc/¨ O> BANK OF U.S. TAXPAYERS ::: RECEIPT DATE: September 16th, 2008 Purchases: Item: Costly, Mismanaged, Endless War in Iraq Quantity: 1 Today's Tack On to the 'Cost of War' - 500 Point Freefall in Dow Jones To offset the depressive effect of massive spending on Iraq, the Fed flooded the economy with liquidity and regulators, turned a blind eye to extremely risky lending, according to Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. The result is the credit crunch, the collapse of major financial institutions and a 500 point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average - the biggest one-day decline since trading resumed after the 9/11 attacks. From Joseph Stiglitz's March 9, 2008 column, "The Iraq War Will Cost Us $3 Trillion, and Much More:" <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702846_pf.html> Until recently, many marveled at the way the United States could spend hundreds of billions of dollars on oil and blow through hundreds of billions more in Iraq with what seemed to be strikingly little short-run impact on the economy. But there's no great mystery here. The economy's weaknesses were concealed by the Federal Reserve, which pumped in liquidity, and by regulators that looked away as loans were handed out well beyond borrowers' ability to repay them. Meanwhile, banks and credit-rating agencies pretended that financial alchemy could convert bad mortgages into AAA assets, and the Fed looked the other way as the U.S. household-savings rate plummeted to zero. Original Iraq War Purchase Price: "The administration's top budget official [Mitch Daniels] estimated today that the cost of a war with Iraq could be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion." -- New York Times, 2/2/03 <http://www.iraqfoundation.org/news/2003/ajan/2_whitehouse.html> "The oil revenues of Iraq could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years. We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." - Former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz [Congressional Testimony, 3/27/03 <http://www.americanprogress.org/kf/priraqclaimfact1029.htm> ] "[F]rom the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." - Vice-President Dick Cheney [Meet the Press, 3/16/2003 <http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5145.htm> ] Current Iraq War Price Tag: 4,158 Fallen U.S. Soldiers [Source: icasualties.org <http://icasualties.org/oif/> ] $554 Billion [Source: National Priorities Project <http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home> ] "The Iraq adventure has seriously weakened the U.S. economy, whose woes now go far beyond loose mortgage lending. You can't spend $3 trillion -- yes, $3 trillion -- on a failed war abroad and not feel the pain at home." -- Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel Prize Winning Economist and professor at Columbia University <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702846_pf.html> Additional Costs: * Over 4,100 American lives lost and rising as U.S. troops remain in the crossfire of daily Iraqi civil, religious, sectarian violence with no end in sight * Eye off the ball of the real 'central front' against terrorism in Afghanistan * Less safe with U.S. military stretched dangerously thin * Shortchanged priorities here at home, from education to healthcare for children and veterans, while trillions of dollars spent in Iraq * Economy in shambles as massive financial drain of war exacerbates the credit crisis * Skyrocketing gas prices due to instability in the Middle East * Less prepared to respond to emergencies and disasters at home with National Guard resources bogged down in Iraq * Underfunded veterans healthcare system overwhelmed with incoming injured, maimed, and veterans suffering from PTSD * Military families torn apart Total Cost of War: Unimaginable The daily 'Cost of War Receipt' is a project of Americans United for Change <http://www.americansunitedforchange.org>, which will continue to provide on a daily basis recent news articles, reports, studies or statistics that underscore the incredible sacrifices our nation is making every day by staying the course with the failed Bush-McCain '100 years or more' war policy in Iraq. ________________________________ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the "big campaign" group. To post to this group, send to bigcampaign@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe, send email to bigcampaign-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com E-mail ryan@campaigntodefendamerica.org with questions or concerns This is a list of individuals. It is not affiliated with any group or organization. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---One of the most exciting times in Italy falls between mid-September and early October. This is the time of the vendemmia, or harvest, when the grapes are fully ripened and ready to begin the metamorphosis from fruit to wine. This is also the most labor-intensive period in the winemaking process as there is sometimes only a matter of days that separates ripe grapes from spoiled ones. On small farms such as Fattoria Lavacchio, time is of the essence and every person available is in the vineyard harvesting or preparing the cantina where the grapes will be crushed and fermented. Although the work is non-stop, this is a happy time of year.
Although 2013 has been a very hot and difficult year for most winemakers in Italy, small farms like Fattoria Lavacchio have made it through without impacting the quality of their wine. Because of their size, they have the ability to hand pick each bunch of grapes thereby ensuring that only the best fruit goes into their bottles. Additionally, they are able to remove whole bunches of grapes from the vines throughout the year to increase the quality of the fruit that remain and ripen. This is an exceptionally labor-intensive and time consuming practice for the winemakers. However, although they are reducing their output by sometimes two-thirds by discarding grapes, this technique allows them to control the quality and consistency of their wine.
In the case of the Puro Chianti that contains no added sulfites, tannins, or yeast, the wine needs to be treated delicately. Although sulfites act as a preservative in wine and is commonly added, sulfites also occur naturally in the fermentation process. Because Puro contains only the natural sulfites, the wine can become easily oxidized if exposed to the outside air, therefore spoiling the wine. To avoid this, the Sangiovese grapes that make up the Puro are never exposed to oxygen once they have been pressed. After harvest, they are crushed and pumped into a chilled steel tank the is filled with an inert gas such as Argon that will not affect the wine. Only in this way is the wine guaranteed to stay fresh. Once the Sangiovese grapes are crushed, the next time this wine is exposed to air is when you pull the cork to drink it.In a surprising move by EA, Captain Phasma was announced as the September daily login character for SWGoH. Speculation around the character login being from the upcoming Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi movie was logical given September 2016’s daily login toon was Scarif Rebel Pathfinder, but with the launch of the new game mode Territory Battles, Captain Phasma seems a rather odd choice. Territory Battles – Hoth focuses on Light Side characters and Rebels in particular and several Empire characters have been seen in videos and photos as the enemies we will all face. However, the choice to have a character who has been Free To Play since day one of Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes as the daily login is a borderline waste for a large percentage of players in the game today. Add the fact that Phasma is a Dark Side character and a First Order character – a faction that is long overdue for new blood (which is sure to come) – and the move is even more perplexing.
To justify the move (slightly), the new canon Star Wars novel Phasma (which we will review on the site in a month or so) is set for release on September 1st, however this hardly seems to be enough to overrule the facts listed above.
“EA is clearly trying to cash in on Game Of Thrones popularity by offering Phasma this month! They hope we will feel like we are farming Brienne of Tarth,” stated Kaki, a Guild Leader and long-time SWGoH player. Andy (@AndyHagarVO on Twitter) added, “Just when you thought CG might actually throw you a bone, given the largest update in game history, you were wrong….again. We’ve just learned you’ll be receiving a kick to the junk in the form of shard shop currency for the month of September, instead of shard scraps for something useful.”
Belkie Bitterleaf, @belkiebitterlea on Twitter commented, quite logically, “Hoth rebel soldier might have been more useful for TB tho.” Added Danilo Papais (@Danilo_Papais), “in my case Hera would have been great,” which also makes a lot of since given the need for Star Wars Rebels Phoenix toons at 6-stars in advanced areas of the Territory Battles – Hoth battlefield.
In an effort to not just complain, but to offer solutions, a list of more logical characters would include the following:
Hoth Rebel Scout
Hoth Rebel Soldier
Hera Syndulla
Sabine Wren
Ezra Bridger
Chopper (C1-10P)
Kanan Jarrus
Zeb Orrelios
Cassian Andor
Jyn Erso
K-2SO
Bodhi Rook
anyone else that is on the Light Side and not a FTP character
Baze Malbus and Chirrut Imwe are not included in the (long) list above simply because the are seen as “premium” characters.
So have fun SWGoH fans. 70% of you are getting more Shard Shop, err Shard STORE, currency this month which you |
ins College – but the newsdump underbelly remained alive and well. We can't help but imagine that some Republicans may have been glad to see some of the most stinging headlines drowned out by the wails of mourning.
For instance: More foot dragging in the trial against former Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer. Ah, timing is everything. On Thursday, an Orlando circuit judge acquiesced to the hems and haws of the bloated man's defense team, who said that there just wasn't enough time to cull through all the "emails, notes, memos and reports that mention Victory Strategies," Greer's former mythical consulting company, by the scheduled July 30 court date, according to the Tampa Bay Times. Get a search button!
Anyway, as with most stories involving this case – and, well, the nature of Greer's megalomaniacal existence and the party's pinky-swears of secrecy – the drive to political distraction is almost as important as the financial misdeeds for which Greer is on trial. You'll remember that Victory Strategies allegedly bilked the party out of $200,000, while the party brass itself allegedly had a thing for charging the fun kind of parties (the ones wrapped in travel and booze) to RPOF credit cards.
We have, indeed, been talking about this forever.
So why the delay? Well, we could go with the stated concern by Greer defense attorney Damon Chase, who only became the lead attorney last month in what must have been a horrific game of musical chairs or draw the straw. Chase portrayed his client to the Times thusly: "Jim has been absolutely adamant, 'Let's get this thing done.' It's certainly a setback … but it's the way things had to be."
More astute observers of, we don't know, things directly happening before your eyes, might be a little more cynically inclined to draw the conclusion that the rescheduled court date of Nov. 12 – a cute six days after the presidential stakes and a good couple of months after the Republican National Convention descends on an underprepared Wild West of Tampa – had a little bit more to do with the last-minute delay.
Greer was, after all, arrested two years ago. Do you think your attorneys would be able to sit on their hands that long? Doubtful.
But, hey, it's not like these are real human beings facing a real law, anyway, right? Surely Sen. Marco Rubio – the former state House speaker – is dancing around his mirrored bathroom to the delightful sounds of Huey Lewis and the News right now. Fore!
Somewhere trapped in the fetid litigation of the RPOF scandal and its bizarre continuance was the recent accusation that party-hopper Charlie Crist – characterized by Greer more than once as becoming an enemy – was a big old homosexual. While news of that old yarn (one we first discussed here last decade) may have blown over into tabloid insignificance, the latest round of concerns about the larger RPOF throwdown have put the party in a defensive posture, one that once again maintains Crist as its whipping boy. Though Crist left the party in 2010 to become an independent as well as a television-desk shill for law firm Morgan & Morgan – which, it should be noted, cut a $10,000 check to Gov. Rick Scott's Let's Get to Work political action committee in the second quarter of this year – Republicans started sounding the alarm when a July 20
Washington Post op-ed written by Crist forced website Politico to pull out the proverbial rhetorical headline on Saturday: "Is Charlie Crist mulling a comeback?" Oh, fuck.
At issue was Crist's somewhat scathing take on the current attack by Republicans on Florida voters via suppression laws.
"[I]'m concerned that zealots overreacting to contrived threats of voter fraud by significantly narrowing the voting pool are doing so with brazen disrespect and disregard for our greatest traditions," Christ cooed in typeface. "As a result of insidious political maneuvers and a lack of respect for voters, we in Florida have been entangled in litigation."
We in Florida are always entangled in litigation. This didn't stop the editorializing voices of both the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times from jumping on the "there's news hidden in here somewhere" bandwagon, suggesting that at the very least Crist was becoming a Democrat and at the most, he's planning a bid for the governor's office in 2014. Yeah, after donating to Scott's PAC, that's definitely what's going on. More likely, Crist is just tired of pretending to care about your car wreck from your yawning morning television and wants to sound relevant again. Cue the fans! The sweating man is back!
Not to be outdone by the increasing pinkening of the GOP stakes, Crist's story took a backside backseat to that of virtually powerless Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll last week as Carroll – who is being accused of being a lesbian by a former employee who illegally recorded her conversations (allegedly) and then tossed a cigar into Carroll's trash can, or something – was forced to respond to the allegations in a fairly public way.
Carroll took to the airwaves of Tampa television station WTSP on July 15 to cool the coals a bit, talking about, among other charming things, how awesome her marriage of 29 years is. "So usually black women that look like me don't engage in relationships like that," she said. Translation: I'm too pretty to be a lesbian!
Our friend Nadine Smith, who is both black and a lesbian, and leads gay-activist group Equality Florida, didn't take the jab so well. She took to thegrio.com blog to say, "There are many ways for a person to deny accusations, but Lt. Gov. Carroll reached into her anti-gay bag of tricks and ended up hurling a series of stereotypes about women, lesbians and black people in one fell swoop. The hyper, nervous giggling didn't help matters."
In fact, the whole fracas may not be helping matters for Carroll, giggling aside. By Saturday, the Palm Beach Post was pulling out its magic headline machine to declare that "Fla. lieutenant governor's GOP convention cachet plummets with office scandal." What's that you say? A black woman who was probably going to be a nice chess piece for the monochromatic good-ol'-boy collective known as the RNC is now in trouble? At least to some of her colleagues she is.
The chairman of southwest Florida's Lee County Republicans told the Post, "I'm sure the lieutenant governor was designated to have some role at the convention, but there's too much smoke around this story. This is not the kind of thing you want floating around when you're promoting the nomination of your party's presidential candidate."
Yeah, because those standards are pretty high these days. Let the games begin.China's new leader says the ruling Communist Party should tolerate sharp outside criticism, in comments that have received skepticism from a public accustomed to pervasive censorship.
State media said newly installed party General Secretary Xi Jinping made the remarks Wednesday at a gathering of non-Communist Party groups.
Xi urged members of the groups to speak truthfully, give advice even if it is unpleasant, and accurately reflect the voice of the public.
He also asked all party organizations to accept advice and criticism from outside the party.
Xi has vowed to tackle endemic official corruption, which he says threatens the future of the Communist Party.
China has routinely detained and imprisoned people critical of the party and the government. It also tightly censors newspapers, other publications and the Internet.Cooler Master has hit CES this year with plenty of new announcements including an entirely new ‘Maker’ line-up, which focusses on customizable components for PC builders. This year, Cooler Master will be releasing three major products for the Maker brand, including the MasterCase Maker 5, the MasterAir Maker 8 and the MasterWatt Maker 1200, two of which will feature some form of user customization.
Starting off with the MasterCase, this new chassis makes use of Cooler Master’s new FreeForm modular system, which allows you to customize the layout and features of your case. There is also an improved I/O with four USB ports including USB 3.0 Type-C and new fan control buttons as well. We reviewed the original MasterCase back in 2015, which you can find, HERE.
Next up is the MasterAir 8, the first CPU cooler to use 3D Vapour Chamber technology, which works by merging the horizontal base with heat pipes. You will be able to buy this cooler with two pre-configured designs, or design your own top cover or fan brackets.
Finally, we have the MasterWatt Maker, a 1200 Watt power supply, rated at 80Plus Titanium levels of efficiency, which is achieved thanks to second-generation 3D circuit design. It comes in a fully modular design and can connect to an app available on Windows, Android and iOS to allow you to monitor every power fluctuation in real-time. There is also a logging system, which will automatically save power data to your storage drive in the event of a power failure.
The new case, CPU cooler and power supply will launch at some point in the first quarter of this year though pricing and specific availability information is not yet available.
KitGuru Says: That’s quite a few big announcements from Cooler Master. What do you guys think of the new Maker line-up?Holy Grail Pizza Crust
Let's face it: Americans love pizza. And it's not just a summer fling; we have a vigorous, healthy, long term relationship with that crispy, melty, saucy little pie of savory goodness, and it doesn't look like it's going to end any time soon.But with all the carbs in the crust, what's a ketoan to do? Well first of all, don't despair: the toppings are usually very keto-friendly. Remember how your mom always yelled at you for eating the toppings off the pizza?I've gotten so good at this trick that it seems a strange, distant memory that I once too noshed on pizza crust. (The only downside is having to consume half a pizza's worth of topping to be full and risking the ire of little old ladies' sense of culinary thriftiness.)However, there is an alternative. Inventive keto eaters have been experimenting with everything from cauliflower to ground beef to come up with a low carb crust; and after trying several recipes I think I've hit upon the best of the bunch. As a bonus, it's also gluten free!1 1/2 cups shredded cheese (a mixture of mozzarella and cheddar is best)1 dollop of cream cheese (1-2 Tbsp)3/4 cup plus or minus 1-2 Tbsp almond meal1 eggPreheat oven to 425 degres.Place the cheese in a med bowl; microwave till melted. LET IT COOL enough to handle with your hands; be patient, or you'll burn yourself (ask me how I know this.)Once you can handle it safely, add the cream cheese and egg and almond flour; mix with your hands until it forms a ball. This will be quite sticky at first; almond meal varies from batch to batch, so add carefully until you get the right consistency. If you've ever made pizza dough, you'll be surprised how much like flour dough it feels - and tastes! If you've never made dough before, don't worry, you'll get the hang of it.Set the dough aside. On a cookie sheet, spread a sheet of parchment paper. Carefully spread the dough out on the parchment paper; don't worry too much about making it fit the cookie sheet, just spread it out fairly thin and even. Place in oven and bake till edges start to turn golden brown.Remove the cookie sheet from the oven; top with your favorite toppings. (Be careful not to glop on too much tomato sauce, it's fairly high in carbs). Load on the meat, veggies and cheese, baby!Return to the oven on the top rack till cheese is melty and the edges of the crust brown nicely. I don't need to tell you what to do with it from here; I'm sure you can handle this part.This dough seriously tastes amazing, and it reheats well too. At last, we can have our pizza and eat it too! (Cue the romantic music.)The water meter buried in your front yard isn't exactly the most cutting-edge piece of technology. While they are accurate, most residential water meters are read only once per month, resulting in rough usage data - often rounded to the nearest 1,000 gallons. With the limited data, water utility managers can't distinguish individual uses, such as sprinklers versus toilets, or determine usage by time of day. This limits their ability to spot costly leaks or see opportunities for water conservation. And it gives water users no useful information about how and when they use water.
Quick Read
Water resource managers across the U.S. are looking for smarter tools and information products about water supply, demand and forecasting.
A USU engineering researcher has received a major NSF grant to develop a new urban water usage cyberinfrastructure.
Using 'Smart' water meters and new data analysis tools, it's possible to collect, shrink and transform data into useful information that will help close the gap in our ability to measure and manage urban water use behavior.
Smart meters installed at campus dormitories will let residents compete in a Water Wars efficiency competition.
With growing populations in cities and increasing uncertainty about water supply and quality, water resource managers are looking for smarter tools to measure and manage urban water use.
So-called'smart' meters are one such technology that can capture water use data at high temporal resolution. Smart meters can improve water end-use forecasting and create useful information about demand and supply. And while the new meters show promise, they have failed to achieve widespread adoption in the U.S.
"Replacing existing, analog meters is expensive," said Dr. Jeff Horsburgh, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Utah State University. "And there is a lack of available cyberinfrastructure for extracting useful information from the large volume of data that smart meters produce."
That's the heart of the problem for Horsburgh: without new data analysis tools, the large volume of data from a smart meter can actually make it harder for utility managers to do their job.
"Until recently, there were no standardized formats or tools to store and analyze water usage figures," he added. "To turn complex water data into useful information, we're developing an integrated research and education plan called Cyberinfrastructure for Intelligent Water Supply."
Horsburgh was selected by the National Science Foundation to receive the prestigious CAREER award grant and will receive $507,000 to help fund this ongoing research. He and his team have developed an inexpensive technology to make existing analog meters smarter. The program will create new tools that collect, shrink and transform high resolution data into useful information products for water managers.
"The ongoing research will significantly close the gap in our ability to quantify and forecast urban water use and behavior," he said.
As part of the study, Horsburgh's team will install smart meters on about 50 homes and inside dormitory buildings on the USU Logan Campus to study patterns in residential water use. With the ability to track water usage in high temporal resolution, Horsburgh's goal is to quantify the timing and distribution of household water use to provide better information for both water users and managers.
On the USU campus, the new meters and data will also allow dorm residents to compete for the title of most water efficient in a friendly campus water wars competition.
In addition to his ongoing research, Horsburgh is part of the leadership team for a statewide study known as iUTAH. The five-year initiative is an NSF-supported program integrating research, training and education, aimed at strengthening science for Utah's water future.
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Media Contacts
Jeff Horsburgh | Utah State University | Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering
435-797-2946 | jeff.horsburgh@usu.edu | jeffh.usu.edu
Matt Jensen | Utah State University | College of Engineering
435-797-8170 office | 801-362-0830 cell | matthew.jensen@usu.edu
engineering.usu.edu | @EngineeringUSUBeing LGBT in Asia launched on on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and Chinese social networks QQ, Weibo and Douban
The LGBT community across Asia has just got new dedicated platforms across social media to unite and communicate.
The project, called Being LGBT in Asia, is funded by the UN Development Program (UNDP) and US aid program (USAID).
New Being LGBT in Asia accounts have been set up on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and Chinese social networks QQ, Weibo and Douban.
Being LGBT in Asia also has a page on Crowdmap where anyone can report violence or verbal harassment, for example, in locations across Asia. It is the first use of this technology to report LGBT human rights abuses as well as LGBT equality successes in Asia.
Organizers will be running training session on how to use the tools at Being LGBT in Asia national community dialogues in Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines and China.
The group held a community dialogue in Hanoi, Vietnam last week, where civil organizations and UN agencies talking about the LGBT movement in the Southeast Asian country.
‘We have made significant progress, although some gaps still exist,’ said Tran Khac Tung, director of Information, Connecting and Sharing (ICS) the Vietnamese organization that arranged the meeting.
‘The United Nations Development Program cares about the rights and well-being of LGBT people in this country,’ said Louise Chamberlain, UNDP country director in Vietnam.
‘We hope that through the Vietnam national community dialogue, a clear picture will emerge on how legal and social environment impact LGBT individuals and communities and how this environment affect their rights.’Guild Wars 2 is a phenomenal game, you know that, I know that, heck, everyone knows that. In case you don’t, you can always check out our glowing review here.
People will be pleased to know that the game will contain consistent free content updates, according to AreaNet’s Colin Johanson.
This is what he had to say on the Guild Wars 2 forums:
“No need to buy them, Gw2 will feature consistent free content updates and in-game events going forward. Our goal is to make it so you get more from Gw2 for free than you get from a game you pay a subscription for.
“On top of a large amount of free bonus content, we will be expanding on offerings in the Black Lion Trading Company going forward, as well as be doing large-scale expansion content down the road. We’ll cover a lot of the details on the kind of support and plans we have in place over the next month or so on the GW 2 blog and with our press partners.
“We do appreciate that you’d like to buy lots of new content, but we’d prefer to give a lot of it to you for free, cause that’s what we think a responsible MMO company does!”
How cool is this? Developers like them should be rewarded for creating a solid game and supporting it with free content as well.
Tell us what you think in the comments section below.
Thanks, Guildwarsinsider.In a sign of growing dissent within the BJP, an MP who is seen to be close to the RSS made some uncomfortable statements directed at the party’s leadership at the BJP’s parliamentary meet on Wednesday. According to a report in The Economic Times, the BJP MP from Ballia, Uttar Pradesh (UP) Bharat Singh complained of a lack of access to the top brass of the leadership at a meeting which was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Singh’s outburst came after the party’s General Secretary Ram Lal concluded with a speech about the party’s new outreach programme called “Mahasampark”. An MP who was present at the meeting told the newspaper that Singh is said to have complained saying the Union Ministry itself had become inaccessible to party workers and office bearers. Singh is reported to have complained saying that even after a year in power no development by the government was being seen on the ground. Not even a kilometre of road had been built in his constituency said the MP. “Singh said ministers do not respond to letters and at times up to several months and requests are made before the ministers respond,” a party leader was quoted as saying. According to those who attended the meeting, several MPs clapped in support after Singh spoke. Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu has brushed aside the rumours of discontent and said that the cause of Singh’s statements was because he was unhappy with the UP government for not utilising funds well. “While the party is boasting about crossing the 10 crore mark in its membership drive and now talking about a Mahasampark programme to reach out to these people, there is no sampark (connect) of the senior party leaders and Union ministers with the junior party workers," Singh reportedly said. Read more at: BJP MP Bharat Singh criticises government at party meet; complains no development on groundWhile beer is certainly one of the first alcoholic beverages known to civilization, its exact date of origin has never been determined with any precision. Most archaeological evidence suggests that beverages made from combinations of fermented grains and water were first brewed around 4000 to 3500 B.C.
Historians theorize that humankind's fondness for beer played a significant role in our evolution from a society of nomadic hunters and gatherers into an agrarian society that would settle down to grow crops. Indeed, evidence shows that the brewing of beer likely began soon after people started growing cereal grain crops to make bread.
Evidence collected from the ancient Mesopotamian trading outpost of Godin Tepe in present-day Iran shows that a beer made from fermented barley was already being brewed there some 7,000 years ago. Around the same time, Sumerians were believed to be making beer, and people of the Nubian culture of Ancient Egypt were fermenting a crude, ale-like beverage known as bousa. Hence the famous old Egyptian proverb: “The mouth of a perfectly happy man is filled with beer.”
Historians also believe beer may have been brewed in Neolithic Europe as far back as 5,000 years ago. At this time, beer was brewed mainly in the home as a byproduct of making bread. Indeed, until the commercialization and industrialization of brewing occurred, women dominated the production of beer.
According to the Ebla tablets, discovered in 1974 in Ebla, Syria, beer was produced there in 2500 B.C. In ancient Syria as well as Babylonia, beer was brewed mostly by women and often by priestesses. Some types of beers were used in religious ceremonies. In 2100 B.C., the Babylonian King Hammurabi included regulations governing tavern keepers in his code of laws for the kingdom.
In 450 B.C., Greek writer Sophocles discussed the concept of moderation when it came to consuming beer in Greek culture, and believed that the best diet for Greeks consisted of bread, meats, various types of vegetables, and beer.
Ancient Beer Recipes
Nearly every culture developed their own version of beer using different grains. Africans used millet, maize, and cassava. The Chinese used wheat. The Japanese used rice. The Egyptians used barley. However, hops, now the main ingredient in beer beverages, was not used in brewing until 1000 B.C.
The modern era of brewing beer could not begin until the invention of commercial refrigeration, methods of automatic bottling, and pasteurization.
Beer During the Industrial Revolution
Commercial beer production began to grow shortly after the advancement of the steam engine in 1765. The invention of the thermometer in 1760 and the hydrometer — a device for measuring the volume of alcohol in liquids — in 1770 allowed brewers to improve the consistency and quality of their product.
Before the later 18th century, the malt used in beer was usually dried over fires made from wood, charcoal, or straw. The prolonged exposure of the malt to the smoke from the fires resulted in a beer with a decidedly smoky flavor considered undesirable by brewers and detestable by drinkers.
The solution came in 1817 when Daniel Wheeler obtained a British patent for “A New or Improved Method of Drying and Preparation of Malt” using the recently-invented drum roaster. The drum roaster and Wheeler’s process allowed the malt to be dried without being exposed to the smoke.
According to historian H.S. Corran, Wheeler’s so-called “patent malt” began the history of porter and stout beers, and put an end to the old tradition of using the term “porter” to distinguish any brownish-colored beer from pale ale.
Effective and economical, Wheeler’s drum roasted malt process produced a more flavorful product that freed brewers of charges of selling tainted beer.
In 1857, renowned French biologist Louis Pasteur discovered the role of yeast in the fermentation process, leading brewers to develop methods of preventing the souring of beer by undesirable microorganisms.
Beer in the United States
Before the start of Prohibition in January 1920, the thousands of commercial breweries in the United States were producing heavier beers with higher alcoholic content than most modern U.S. beers.
While Prohibition put most legitimate U.S. breweries of business, hundreds of illegal “bootleg” brewers took advantage of the situation. To increase their profits, bootleg brewers often produced a “watered down” beer lower in alcoholic content than pre-Prohibition brews.
Noting the popularity of the bootleg beer, brewers continued the trend to produce weaker beer after Prohibition ended in 1933. Today, light beers are among the most popular and heavily advertised beers on the market.
The end of World War II in 1945 brought a period of mass consolidation of the U.S. brewing industry. Brewing companies would buy their rivals solely for their customers and distribution systems while shutting down their brewing operations.
Since the mid-1980s, the number of U.S. breweries has grown steadily. In 2016, the Brewers Association reported that the number of breweries in the U.S. had passed the 5,000 mark. During the early 1980s, when the industry was dominated by the huge mass-market companies, there were fewer than 100 U.S. brewing operations in business. Then, Americans discovered – and loved – specialty, or “craft” beers.
The popularity of craft beers spurred a steady growth in the American brewing industry. Between 2008 and early 2015, the number of breweries grew from about 1,500 to 3,500. By late 2015, America's brewery count topped 4,131, the previous all-time high reached in 1873, decades before Prohibition and consolidation transformed the industry.
Beer and the ‘Honeymoon’
Some 4,000 years ago in Babylon, it was an accepted practice that for a month after a wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead or beer he could drink. In ancient Babylon, the calendar was lunar-based (based on the cycle of the moon). The month following any wedding was called the "honey month" which evolved into "honeymoon." Mead is a honey beer and what better way to celebrate a honeymoon?
And a Six Pack to Go
Today, the iconic “six pack of beer” stands forever chiseled on the Mount Rushmore of product marketing. But who invented the six pack?
According to the American Beer Museum, the six pack came on the scene after the repeal of prohibition, when beer sales shifted from establishments dedicated to consumption, like bars and breweries, to retail or “take home” outlets like grocery stores.
In the early 1950s, when to-go beer packaging started, fewer than 7% of breweries offered a take-home option. Instead, beer was primarily distributed in bulky and heavy wooden crates or barrels.
Many historians credit Pabst Brewing with being the first American brewery to package its beer in six packs in the mid-1950s. One theory holds that Pabst conducted studies showing that six cans or bottles resulted in the ideal weight for the average housewife to carry home from the store. However, it is also suggested that size, rather than weight, was the reason for the six pack. A six pack of beer turned out to be the perfect size to fit in a standard paper grocery bag.
Other historians contend that the now-defunct Jax Brewing Company of Jacksonville, Florida, was the first U.S. brewer to offer the six pack. The Jax theory suggests that as aluminum canned beer took over the market after World War II had depleted the nation steel supplies, the brewery was unable to keep up with cost. Their solution was to sell its beer in sacks labeled “Jax Beer” each holding six bottles. The “six sack.”
Pabst or Jax aside, the first six pack did not hold beer. Instead, soft drink giant Coca-Cola introduced the six pack in 1923, over 30 years before the breweries got on board. According to Coca-Cola’s official history, “The carrier helped encourage people to take bottles of Coca-Cola home and drink Coke more often. Imagine carrying individual bottles of Coke — in glass bottles, no less — home. You just wouldn't do it, or you wouldn't buy as many bottles! The carton was a relatively simple idea that really helped change our business.”JUSTICE Minister Frances Fitzgerald is under mounting pressure to publish immediately a damning review of her own department, which she has had for two weeks.
JUSTICE Minister Frances Fitzgerald is under mounting pressure to publish immediately a damning review of her own department, which she has had for two weeks.
The controversial review of the Department of Justice is believed to be critical of secretary general Brian Purcell's handling of the garda scandals.
Ms Fitzgerald, who commissioned the review on taking office in May, received the report in the past two weeks, the department finally confirmed yesterday.
But the minister has not yet published the review or even brought it to Cabinet before the Government went on its summer break last week.
Fianna Fail yesterday called on Ms Fitzgerald to release the report, which is believed to be critical of her top official Mr Purcell, who she has yet to express confidence in; and his number two, assistant secretary Michael Flahive.
The party's justice spokesman Niall Collins told the Irish Independent there was a strong public interest in the report.
Following revelations in the 'Sunday Independent' on the contents of the report, Mr Collins criticised the minister for sitting on it until after the Dail rose for the summer.
Mr Collins said: "The public very much want to know the facts as to why former Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan resigned and what role her department played."
Confidence
Mr Collins also pointed to the fact that she has not yet expressed confidence in Mr Purcell. He also said it was significant that he was not present when she appeared at a recent private session of the Justice committee, as is the norm.
Mr Collins also called on Taoiseach Enda Kenny to publish a letter from former Justice Minister Alan Shatter, sent to Mr Kenny days after he resigned, in which he claimed he was "stymied" by his officials in his handling of garda whistleblower Maurice McCabe.
Arts Minister Heather Humphreys defended Ms Fitzgerald's decision to take time to consider the full significance of the report.
She said: "This report is part of an overall review of the justice system. It is a very high-level report. She is committed to publishing it in full, and is expected to do that shortly. She is giving it due consideration."
Junior European Affairs Minister Dara Murphy said it was a "bit silly" to suggest that Ms Fitzgerald was attempting to suppress the report.
"It is not in the bowels of the department. It is on Minister Fitzgerald's desk. She received it within the last two weeks. She will publish it within a short number of days," he said.
A spokeswoman for Ms Fitzgerald told the Irish Independent that the report, which examined the performance management capacity of the Department of Justice, was being carefully considered.
She said that given the scope of the report, the minister is giving it "due attention".
In May, at her instigation, the Cabinet agreed to an independent review of the department, which examined its performance, management and administration.
Irish IndependentForwards Simon Gagne and Ville Leino will have a chance to make the Boston Bruins roster at training camp, coach Claude Julien said Tuesday.
"We wouldn't invite those guys just to fill in our training camp roster," Julien told the Bruins website. "Older guys that have some experience … both of them are coming off injuries, major injuries. They both feel really good. Gagne didn't play at all last year but trained a lot; he's feeling the best he's felt in a long time. And Leino's the same way. Those guys have experience, so it's an opportunity for those guys to seize some of those spots, if they want to, and then for the young guys to battle their way into it."
Gagne and Leino will attend camp, which begins Thursday, on a tryout basis. Gagne, 34, did not play in the NHL last season because of injuries to his neck, head and groin. Leino, 30, had 15 points (all assists) in 58 games with the Buffalo Sabres and was given a compliance buyout this summer.
"You always have to have some youth in your lineup as well, so I think there's room for both, whether it's veterans or young guys," Julien said at the Bruins Foundation Golf Tournament in Bolton, Mass.
There is an opening at forward while restricted free agent Reilly Smith remains without a contract. It is unknown if he and restricted free agent defenseman Torey Krug will be signed in time for camp.
"We don't know what's going to happen," Julien said. "We'll find out Thursday morning, but if they don't [show up], then I've got to find some replacements, and we feel that we've got them at our camp. We'll just move forward."
The Bruins also are looking to replace forwards Jarome Iginla (Colorado Avalanche) and Shawn Thornton (Florida Panthers), who left this offseason as free agents. Ryan Spooner (22) and Jordan Caron (23), who played for Boston last season, along with 2014 NHL Draft pick David Pastrnak (18), could get full-time roles.
"There's going to be some openings there, and we feel we've got some people at our camp that can certainly fill those openings," Julien said. "So it's up to every one of them that has that chance to stick with the team to take advantage of it and have a good camp and force us to keep them."Aesthetic evolution need not move from lesser to greater effect. Since 1999, M. Night Shyamalan has practiced his signature brand of filmmaking, in which supernatural situations end in dramatic plot twists. But between The Sixth Sense (1999) and The Last Airbender (2010), Shyamalan's artistic success faltered even as his films continued to perform well at the box office. Decline notwithstanding, all his films were still printed to celluloid and projected onto anamorphic widescreen cinema screens.
In painting, literature, and film the public can see an artist's work evolve (or devolve) because that work is accessible to audiences in their native forms. Archivists or scholars might dig into a creator's sketchbooks or retrieve early works, but such museum work is not required for the ordinary viewer or reader to grasp the changes and refinements of work over time. This perception of creative progress is a part of the pleasure of art, whether through the joy of growth or the schadenfreude of decay.
In videogames, it's far less common to see a creator's work evolve in this way. In part, this is because game makers tend to have less longevity than other sorts of artists. In part, it's because games are more highly industrialized even than film, and aesthetic headway is often curtailed by commercial necessity. And in part, it's because games are so tightly coupled to consumer electronics that technical progress outstrips aesthetic progress in the public imagination.
Where there are game makers with a style, it has often evolved over long durations. Will Wright's discovery and later mastery of the software toy simulation, from SimCity to SimEarth to The Sims; or John Carmack and John Romero's revolutionary exploitation of new powers in real-time 2d and 3d graphics in Commander Keen, Doom, and Quake; or Hideo Kojima's development and refinement of the stealth action games of the Metal Gear series, characterized by solitude, initial weakness, cinematic cut-scenes, and self-referential commentary.
These styles evolved over decades, and they did so in the arms of financial success and corporate underwriting. Structurally speaking, they are more like Shyamalan than like Rothko and Marcus, the latter two artists having struggled to find their respective styles outside of the certainty of commercial success.
In independent games, wherein we must hope that aesthetics drive creators more than commercialism, creative evolution often takes place in tentative ways, in forms far less refined and mature than the videogame console that serves as the medium's equivalent to the cinema or the first-run hardback. Experimental titles may take their first form on a PC or a mobile device as humble experiments. If very fortunate, as have been game makers like Jonathan Blow (Braid), Jonathan Mak (Everyday Shooter), or Kyle Gabler and Ron Carmel (World of Goo), those games might find their way to the Nintendo Wii or the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3. But today, the artists who work in game development for its beauty before its profitability typically don't get to choose the most public of venues in which to experiment and come of age artistically.– Gov. Chris Christie has signed a measure that would allow the sale of Tesla and other zero-emission cars in New Jersey.
Christie signed the bill Wednesday. The new law comes about a year after the state Motor Vehicle Commission issued regulations requiring cars to be sold through franchises.
I said last yr that if NJ Legislature changed the law so @TeslaMotors could sell in NJ, I would sign it. That’s exactly what I’ve done today — Governor Christie (@GovChristie) March 18, 2015
In December 2014, the high-end car maker opened a new showroom in Paramus.
Tesla markets its vehicles directly to consumers.
A huge victory in New Jersey for consumer choice: We are open for business! @GovChristie — Tesla Motors (@TeslaMotors) March 18, 2015
Tesla CEO Elon Musk protested the regulations last year. He said the company chose not to sell through franchises because most of their revenue comes from gasoline-powered cars leaving little incentive to sell electric vehicles.
The legislation also requires companies selling cars directly to consumers to maintain a servicing facility and to report sales figures to the state.
(TM and © Copyright 2015 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2014 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)DETROIT (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co (F.N) posted a higher-than-expected first-quarter profit on the strength of its North American unit, but overall structural costs |
hit a lot. Guys want to do more like Eli [Manning], even if they're not going to be as productive as they would want to. They'd rather the quarterback don't get hit, so they'd rather stay shallow, small, short throws and try to have screens to slow us down."
Let's start with Johnson’s sack in the third quarter at the Vikings' 30-yard line.
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Brian Robison stands up, as he often does for the Vikings' nickel pass rush, and provides an overloaded look to the strong side of the Texans formation on third-and-7. The aim is to get Danielle Hunter, lined up at left defensive end, a one-on-one matchup on the outside, Johnson said, knowing their tackles often leaned inside to take away the three-technique defensive tackle. On the far side, Griffen (97) would lead the left tackle insidewhile Johnson (92) looped around.
"Most tackles are told don't get beat on the inside, which leaves me one-on-one with the guard," Johnson said. "So all I have to do is beat the guard on the outside. Everson is going to flush him to me."
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Griffen accelerated toward the inside hand of Texans left tackle Duane Brown, forcing Osweiler to sidestep to the outside. Without other rushers on his side of the center, Brown sticks with Griffen as Johnson slips by for the third-down sack. On the next play, after pressure on consecutive snaps, Osweiler throws a screen on fourth-and-16 for a turnover on downs.
"When the play comes, I'm going to go across his face," Johnson said. "I'm going to bring the center with me, which puts the guard in a situation that he got to know I'm either going to hit the A gap or the B gap and Everson takes it underneath. He takes his tackle underneath and [the tackle] has to respect that."
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Some of the Vikings’ twists require read and reaction. Facing an early third-and-7, Johnson and Robison (96) run a movepredicated on which way the center blocks. Should the center block away, that defender needs to rush at the center while the other defender loops around.
"This is the first quarter or second quarter, we had a lot of three-and-outs; still the beginning of the game," Johnson said. "So we're still trying to figure out what they're doing, how they're doing it and make adjustments off of it."
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Stunts were used on 13 pass plays [28%], giving the Vikings four hits on the quarterback. This was not one of those hits as the center backpedals to gain depth, a counter to the coming twist, while the guards pinch inside. The Texans kept a back and tight end in to doubleGriffen, so the left tackle stalls Johnson in his tracks.
"We're just reading off of [the center]," Johnson said. "B-Rob went down, took the center since he's backing up. And since he's penetrated, see how hard the guard went down? But they still have the tackle giving him a hand. See how they're still trying to help the interior? So I was about to beat the guard, but the tackle ended up coming from way out there."
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The Vikings often ran stunts on the weak side of the Texans’ protection schemes. Since the Texans again lined up to double Griffen on third-and-8, Johnson and Hunter (99) ran a move on the back side. Johnson's initial step toward center, along with the position of Anthony Barr (55), freezes the guard long enough to get around him.
"You see Anthony back there, so that means the guard has to respect me sitting in there," Johnson said.
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Johnson's stutter step at the line creates enough time for Hunter to step toward an outside rush, creating valuable space, and then stem inside on right tackle Derek Newton to force him to chase. Johnson loops around for the hit on third down. On the next play, Marcus Sherels padded the lead with a 79-yard punt return for a touchdown.
"We're calling it off of what they've been doing," Johnson said. "That's what makes it so well for all of us because we're basically matched up with the offense in so many different ways from what we're seeing out of our opponent."
Click here if this video is not displaying.“We don’t get religion.” That masterful admission came from the executive editor of The New York Times, Dean Baquet, concerning journalists’ inability to report on the effects of faith on the voters of the 2016 election.
I’d add a sub-group to his claim: Music journalists don’t get religion.
It’s not their fault. By and large, music journalists aren’t religious people, and, if the philosopher Max Scheler is to be believed, the non-religious are as able to describe the psychology of religion “as a person totally blind is able to describe the sensation and mood produced by vivid colors.” (On the Eternal in Man)
I have no problem with softening the edges of this claim. The non-religious album reviewer could sympathize with the God-haunted songs that cross his desk. He could read up on eucharistic theology to understand the indie-rock sensation Saint Seneca’s lyrics: “The flesh of God is flayed for you to eat.” He could go to church with his grandmother to understand Chance the Rapper’s “Sunday Candy,” or brush up on the Lord’s Prayer to get a handle on D’Angelo’s Black Messiah. He could research Eastern Orthodoxy and medieval scholasticism to tell us why the punk band Protomartyr is called “protomartyr;” their latest record The Agent Intellect; its last song “Feast of Stephen.”
Instead, we get NPR’s analysis. They neglect to mention the hermits, heretics and “sodden priests” that roam the lyrics of The Agent Intellect. They recognize that “the band subverts rock while rocking out, infusing angularity with an industrialized blur of motion,” but they miss the fact that the band also subverts rock by framing their punk in and through religious experience.
The bigger the review, the more likely it is to plant itself firmly on the level of aesthetic and political criticism—ignoring, mocking, or (worse) merely “noting” an album’s religious content. This would be forgivable if not for the fact that almost every genre of music is undergoing a religious revival. The press is late to a spiritual revolution that has already changed the face of contemporary music.
A Church in the Wild
The song has become a safe haven in a world increasingly hostile to religious expression. It’s not difficult to see why. Religion in the Western world is largely tolerated only as a private experience, a personal commitment and an individual faith. Public displays of one’s relationship with God are either reduced to a quaint “tradition”—or they are controversial. Speaking aloud about God is always a decision to enter into the culture wars—and so few speak, outside of the echo-chambers of fellow believers and seekers.
The song, on the other hand, has increasingly become a confessional space in which stark honesty about the churning of the spirit is not only allowed but encouraged. The creative arts have a long history of taking to what is taboo in the public square. It is no surprise that they are taking religion, the ugly duckling of modern secular life, under their wing.
Illuminated by the Hand of God
Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly got all the attention it deserved. But from Pitchfork to Rolling Stone to SPIN, critics barely brushed the reason why Christian preachers were thanking Kendrick for his work and why Christian blogs were doing what the review mills never will—lyric analysis, song by song. The major reviews pointed out the “black experience” and the “hood politics” with due racial reverence but neglected to describe the album as it presented itself—a prolonged battle with Lucifer.
Lucy gon’ call you even when Lucy know you love your Father I’m Lucy I loosely heard prayers on your first album, truly Lucy don’t mind cause at the end of the day you’ll pursue me (“For Sale?”)
It’s this struggle to avoid temptation and get “right with God” (“Alright”) that gives the album an arc and a movement from the arrogance of “King Kunta,” through the suicidal depression of “u,” all the way to the triumph of “i”, where Kendrick is “illuminated by the hand of God.” Kendrick began his previous album, good kid, m.A.A.d city reciting “the sinner’s prayer”:
Lord God, I come to you a sinner, and I humbly repent for my sins. I believe that Jesus is Lord. I believe that you raised Him from the dead. I will ask that Jesus will come into my life and be my Lord and Savior
He announced his baptism on stage and gave “all glory to God” upon winning a Grammy for Butterfly. Despite these radical signs of faith, the press treats his Christianity as a quaint side note of black culture.
G.K. Chesterton said that the topic of belief is met by the press with either “slanging or silence.” The “slanging” is obvious. Critic David Turner compares Lamar’s faith to rapper Vince Staples’ and typically, considers it as a pre-packaged phenomenon of the black community without existential weight: Kendrick is “teasing earned hope” and “trading temporal pain with eternal salvation.”
Slate magazine’s Carl Wilson turns his otherwise glowing review nasty when it comes to religion: “Christianity comes to the fore, particularly in the latter tale of a run-in with a homeless beggar who turns out to be God himself. Talk about cornball. It’s like a groovy adaptation of a Jack Chick gospel tract.”
This is, of course, a lack of understanding of Kendrick’s lines, which rely on the Christian understanding that the poor are God, not in some fairy-tale fashion, but according to the words of Christ, “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 25:40)
He looked at me and said, “Know the truth, it’ll set you free You’re lookin’ at the Messiah, the son of Jehovah, the higher power The choir that spoke the word, the Holy Spirit The nerve of Nazareth, and I’ll tell you just how much a dollar cost The price of having a spot in Heaven, embrace your loss, I am God.”
Wilson framed his review as an answer to the question: “How should white listeners approach the ‘overwhelming blackness’ of Kendrick Lamar’s brilliant new album?” He gives no answer. Instead, he peters out into vague predictions of a new golden era of black music, speculating that “some kind of spirit is rising, like a bright cloud of monarchs finally migrating back after an extended stay at Michoacán … I don’t know, and it’s not for me to say.”
His non-answer is no accident. It is the price Wilson pays for regulating religion to a corny sideshow of Kendrick’s socio-political life. He misses the point: White listeners cannot snag some community with the “overwhelming blackness” of Butterfly. Community doesn’t come from claiming solidarity with another person’s experience of race (though resentment might). White people and black people can say “we are not brothers in race or in politics; we are brothers in Christ,” and do so without offense, because Christian brotherhood does not nullify our racial differences, but posits that race is a difference that serves a higher unity in which “all are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)
Wilson cannot grasp anything but corniness in a trope that goes back to Ancient Greece, resonates through the Middle Ages, and informs the social preaching of our day—the presence of God in a beggar that binds him into a community with me despite our radically different lives. Because of this, he cannot answer the question of his own review. The greatest rap album of the last few decades is a confession of a religious struggle that, in its very religiosity, transcends race without crushing it.
Without this transcendent religious perspective, To Pimp a Butterfly becomes the difficulty that Clover Hope of Jezebel struggles with—an “overwhelming” and “suffocating” experience of a “blackness” that remains “way too vast.” The religion the review ignores is the unifying perspective that makes sense of the album’s “unfathomable complexity,” the guiding light that makes sense of the myriad of characters that populate its soundscape, and the perspective that reveals the album in its undeniably universal quality.
The Only Thing That Keeps Me From Cutting My Arm
What To Pimp a Butterfly was to rap, Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie & Lowell was to folk—a breakaway triumph that topped nearly every “best album of the year” list worth its salt. Pitchfork rightly points out that it is his best album, an emotionally and musically bare confession—“his most classic and pure effort.” But like Butterfly, it has been subjected to a praise that hollows the album of its religious content.
Religion is brushed, and then brushed over. Brandon Stosuy, writing for Pitchfork, argues that “there are Biblical references, and references to mythology, but most of it is squarely about Stevens and his family.” SPIN Magazine, without a word on religion, agrees wholeheartedly: “He’s writing his autobiography.”
I would hardly deny that Carrie & Lowell concerns Stevens’ family. But to call the album autobiographical misses the point that Stevens himself lays out in Pitchfork’s review: “It’s something that was necessary for me to do in the wake of my mother’s death—to pursue a sense of peace and serenity in spite of suffering … This is not my art project; this is my life.”
Only “Eugene” and the album’s title track are strictly autobiographical songs. The rest are expressions of Stevens’ present-moment suffering. He did not create Carrie & Lowell to tell the story of his family, he created it to grieve the wounds and losses of family. The autobiographical details magnified by Sufjan’s critics serve, but do not exhaust, his pursuit. When viewed as an act of grief, the album reveals itself as a fundamentally religious work, a cry to the “God of Elijah” asking “how did this happen?” (“Drawn to the Blood”)
It would take a complete lyrical analysis to show that every song on the album is haunted by the shadow of the cross, but a closer reading of the song “The Only Thing” should suffice to open the door to an interpretation the critics miss. Here, Sufjan paints his suffering in religious colors. It takes a religious eye to see them.
Suffering is rendered tolerable when it becomes sacrifice. Sacrifice, broadly speaking, is the forsaking of a lower good for the sake of a higher one. To wake with all my limbs burning is intolerable. To realize that my limbs are burning because I ran eight miles the day before renders that same pain tolerable—even joyful. When my pain becomes a pain for something—a loss of physical comfort for the higher goods of health and personal triumph, then my pain can become my joy.
What to do, then, when it is not one’s limbs, but one’s life that is burning? If life itself is pain, what higher good can transform that pain into sacrifice and thereby render it tolerable and even joyful? A suffering that cuts to the core of one’s life is only rendered tolerable if it is understood as a forsaking of the good of life for some good higher than life itself. This is why great suffering and religious experience go hand in hand. One either posits some value higher than life that can transform life-suffering into sacrifice, or one finds life intolerable.
This is why Sufjan can sing:
The only thing that keeps me from driving this car Half-light, jack knife, into the canyon at night Signs and wonders: Perseus aligned with the skull Slain Medusa, Pegasus alight from us all
“Signs and wonders” are “the only thing” that keep Stevens from suicide because they give evidence to the existence of goods that transcend human life. When Sufjan says that his album is the struggle to find peace in spite of suffering, it’s a gross misinterpretation to call his album an “autobiography,” rather than an active struggle to believe in the existence of those transcendent goods in whose alchemy the iron of suffering becomes the gold of sacrifice:
The only reason why I continue at all Faith in reason, I wasted my life playing dumb, Signs and wonders: sea lion caves in the dark Blind faith, God’s grace, nothing else left to impart
With this as a key, the constantly recurring fear that these goods are “fictions,” “fables” or “myths” begins to make sense, as does Stevens’ decision to “still I pray to what I cannot see.” Carrie & Lowell is a trembling act of faith in the face of death. Without “getting” religion, Stevens’ reviews, while kind, remain incomplete and reductive. Rolling Stone called it an “existential crisis”—a favorite term haphazardly applied to a diversity of experiences by critics who have no idea what to call the religious existence of the human person. The New York Times Magazine wins the award for vagueness. The album involves “questions of faith”—never mind that it contains songs written in and through John, the “beloved” disciple of Jesus, wherein Sufjan sings, “Jesus I need you, be near, come shield me / from fossils that fall on my head.” If the critics missed that Kendrick Lamar was offering us a vision of universal unity in God, they missed that Sufjan Stevens was praying.
Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at Hand
It’s not that these reviews are bad, they have a lot to say, and when it comes to analyzing moods and instrumentation, they say it better than anyone else. What they do not know how to deal with is religion that is more than an “artistic influence” or a vaguely referenced “faith.” When the album is a religious work—an act of believing in, proclaiming, doubting and wrestling with the living God—the critic is as flummoxed as a nonbeliever at a Christmas church service.
As it stands, most critics rely on the popularity of the work of art for the popularity of their review. They uncover nothing new. They provide a basic, parasitic commentary that, at worst, amounts to a banal series of impressions and, at best, gives the album some historical or political context. Through the lens of the critics, one gets the impression that our songwriters “reflect” on deep themes of faith and existence and end up with nothing to say.
We need a generation of critics as fearless concerning religion as the artists who put albums on their desks. We need critics who work to describe the meaning of the increasingly meaningful songs being sung. This would involve long listenings, the end of the first-impression review, a dedication to research and a horribly articulable purpose: to shed light on difficult works of art, reveal their inner unity, describe their structure and articulate in clear terms what the artist is trying to say. We’ll do this, or we’ll miss the coming revival, in which the life of the spirit, so controversial and hurtful to a polarized public discourse, takes refuge in the shadow of the song.Iraqi Kurdistan, officially called the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (Kurdish: ههرێمی کوردستان, translit. Herêmî Kurdistan) by the Iraqi constitution,[8][9] is an autonomous region located in northern Iraq.[10] It is also referred to as Southern Kurdistan (Kurdish: باشووری کوردستان, translit. Başûrê Kurdistanê), as Kurds generally consider it to be one of the four parts of Greater Kurdistan, which also includes parts of southeastern Turkey (Northern Kurdistan), northern Syria (Rojava or Western Kurdistan), and northwestern Iran (Eastern Kurdistan).[11]
The region is officially governed by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), with the capital being Erbil. Kurdistan is a parliamentary democracy with its own regional Parliament that consists of 111 seats.[12] Masoud Barzani, who was initially elected as president in 2005, was re-elected in 2009. In August 2013 the parliament extended his presidency for another two years. His presidency concluded on 19 August 2015 after the political parties failed to reach an agreement over extending his term.
The new Constitution of Iraq defines the Kurdistan Region as a federal entity of Iraq, and establishes Kurdish and Arabic as Iraq's joint official languages. The four governorates of Duhok, Erbil, Silemani, and Halabja comprise around 46,861 square kilometres (18,093 sq mi) and have a population of 5.8 million (2017 estimate).[5] In 2014, during the 2014 Iraq Crisis, Iraqi Kurdistan's forces also took over much of the disputed territories of Northern Iraq; the total area under the control of the Kurdistan Regional Government contains some 8 million inhabitants.
The establishment of the Kurdistan Region dates back to the March 1970 autonomy agreement between the Kurdish opposition and the Iraqi government after years of heavy fighting. However, that agreement failed to be implemented and by 1974 Northern Iraq plunged into the Second Iraqi–Kurdish War, another part of the Iraqi–Kurdish conflict between the Kurds and the Arab-dominated government of Iraq. Further, the 1980–88 Iran–Iraq War, especially the Iraqi Army's Al-Anfal Campaign, devastated the population and environment of Iraqi Kurdistan. Following the 1991 uprising of Kurds in the north and Shia Arabs in the south against Saddam Hussein, Iraqi Kurdistan's military forces, the Peshmerga, succeeded in pushing out the main Iraqi forces from the north.
Despite significant casualties and the crisis of Kurdish refugees in bordering regions of Iran and Turkey, the Peshmerga success and the Western establishment of the northern Iraqi no-fly zone following the First Gulf War in 1991 created the basis for Kurdish self-rule and facilitated the return of refugees. As Kurds continued to fight government troops, Iraqi forces finally left Kurdistan in October 1991, leaving the region with de facto autonomy. In 1992, the major political parties in the region, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, established the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government. The 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent political changes led to the ratification of a new constitution in 2005.
Etymology
The name Kurdistan literally means "Land of the Kurds". The suffix -stan is Persian for "place of" or "country". In English translations of the Constitution of Iraq, it is called "Kurdistan", four times in the phrase "region of Kurdistan" and once in the phrase "Kurdistan region".[13][14] The regional government calls it the "Kurdistan Region".[9]
The full name of the government is the "Kurdistan Regional Government", abbreviated "KRG". Kurds also refer to the region as Başûrê Kurdistanê or Başûrî Kurdistan ("Southern Kurdistan"), referring to its geographical location within the whole of Kurdistan. During the Baath Party administration in the 1970s and 1980s, the region was called the "Kurdish Autonomous Region".[15]
Geography
A canyon near the northern city of Rawandiz
The Kurdistan Region is largely mountainous, with the highest point being a 3,611 m (11,847 ft) point known locally as Cheekha Dar ("black tent"). Mountains in Iraqi Kurdistan include the Zagros, Sinjar Mountains, Hamrin Mountains, Mount Nisir and Qandil mountains. There are many rivers running through the region, which is distinguished by its fertile lands, plentiful water, and picturesque nature. The Great Zab and the Little Zab flow from the east to the west in the region. The Tigris river enters Iraqi Kurdistan from Turkish Kurdistan.
The mountainous nature of Iraqi Kurdistan, the difference of temperatures in its various parts, and its wealth of waters make it a land of agriculture and tourism. The largest lake in the region is Lake Dukan. There are also several smaller lakes, such as Darbandikhan Lake and Duhok Lake. The western and southern parts of the Kurdistan Region are not as mountainous as the east. Instead, it is rolling hills and plains vegetated by sclerophyll scrubland.
Ecology
Vegetation in the region includes, firs, oaks, conifers, platanus, willow, olive trees, poplar, hawthorn, oriental plane, cherry plum, rose hips, pistachio trees, rosaceae, pear, mountain ash and Turkish pines. The desert in the south is mostly steppe and would feature xeric plants such as palm trees, tamarix, date palm, fraxinus, poa, white wormwood and chenopodiaceae.[16][17]
Animals found in the region include the Syrian brown bear, wild boar, gray wolf, golden jackal, Indian crested porcupine, red fox, goitered gazelle, Eurasian otter, striped hyena, Persian fallow deer, onager, mangar and the Euphrates softshell turtle.[18]
Bird species include, the see-see partridge, Menetries's warbler, western jackdaw, Red-billed chough, hooded crow, European nightjar, rufous-tailed scrub robin, masked shrike and the pale rockfinch.[19][20]
Climate
Due to its latitude and altitude, Iraqi Kurdistan is cooler and much wetter than the rest of Iraq. Most areas in the region fall within the Mediterranean climate zone (Csa), with areas to the southwest being semi-arid (BSh). Due to the summers being less extreme, thousands of tourists from the hotter parts of Iraq come to visit the region in that season.[21]
Despite its reputation for having "mild" summers, they are still very hot for non-Iraqi standards though, with average temperatures ranging from 35 °C (95 °F) in the cooler northernmost areas to blistering 40 °C (104 °F) in the southwest, with lows around 21 °C (70 °F) to 24 °C (75 °F). Winters, however, are dramatically cooler than other areas in Iraq, with highs averaging between 9 °C (48 °F) and 11 °C (52 °F) and with lows hovering around 3 °C (37 °F) in some areas and freezing in others, dipping to −2 °C (28 °F) and 0 °C (32 °F) on average. Elevated places such as mountain tops would be colder.
Among other cities in the climate table below, Soran, Shaqlawa and Halabja also experience lows which average below 0 °C (32 °F) in winter. Duhok has the hottest summers in the region with highs averaging around 42 °C (108 °F). Annual rainfall contrasts in the region, with some places seeing rainfall as low as 500 millimetres (20 in) in Erbil to as high as 900 millimetres (35 in) in places like Amadiya. Most of the rain falls in winter and spring, and it's usually heavy. Summer and early autumn are virtually dry. Spring is fairly tepid. Iraqi Kurdistan sees snowfall occasionally in the winter, and frost is very common. There is a seasonal lag in some places in summer, with temperatures peaking around August and September.
Climate data for Erbil Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Year Record high °C (°F) 20
(68) 27
(81) 30
(86) 34
(93) 42
(108) 44
(111) 48
(118) 49
(120) 45
(113) 39
(102) 31
(88) 24
(75) 49
(120) Average high °C (°F) 12.4
(54.3) 14.2
(57.6) 18.1
(64.6) 24.0
(75.2) 31.5
(88.7) 38.1
(100.6) 42.0
(107.6) 41.9
(107.4) 37.9
(100.2) 30.7
(87.3) 21.2
(70.2) 14.4
(57.9) 27.2
(81.0) Daily mean °C (°F) 7.4
(45.3) 8.9
(48.0) 12.4
(54.3) 17.5
(63.5) 24.1
(75.4) 29.7
(85.5) 33.4
(92.1) 33.1
(91.6) 29.0
(84.2) 22.6
(72.7) 15.0
(59.0) 9.1
(48.4) 20.2
(68.3) Average low °C (°F) 2.4
(36.3) 3.6
(38.5) 6.7
(44.1) 11.1
(52.0) 16.7
(62.1) 21.4
(70.5) 24.9
(76.8) 24.4
(75.9) 20.1
(68.2) 14.5
(58.1) 8.9
(48.0) 3.9
(39.0) 13.2
(55.8) Record low °C (°F) −4
(25) −6
(21) −1
(30) 3
(37) 6
(43) 10
(50) 13
(55) 17
(63) 11
(52) 4
(39) −2
(28) −2
(28) −6
(21) Average rainfall mm (inches) 111
(4.4) 97
(3.8) 89
(3.5) 69
(2.7) 26
(1.0) 0
(0) 0
(0) 0
(0) 0
(0) 12
(0.5) 56
(2.2) 80
(3.1) 540
(21.2) Average rainy days 9 9 10 9 4 1 0 0 1 3 6 10 62 Average snowy days 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 Average relative humidity (%) 74.5 70 65 58.5 41.5 28.5 25 27.5 30.5 43.5 60.5 75.5 50.0 Source #1: Climate-Data.org,[22] My Forecast for records, humidity, snow and precipitation days[23] Source #2: What's the Weather Like.org,[24] Erbilia[25]
Climate data for Barzan Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Year Average high °C (°F) 9.0
(48.2) 10.5
(50.9) 14.7
(58.5) 20.6
(69.1) 27.8
(82.0) 34.5
(94.1) 38.7
(101.7) 38.8
(101.8) 34.8
(94.6) 27.4
(81.3) 17.9
(64.2) 10.9
(51.6) 23.8
(74.8) Daily mean °C (°F) 4.3
(39.7) 5.5
(41.9) 9.4
(48.9) 14.8
(58.6) 21.1
(70.0) 26.9
(80.4) 30.9
(87.6) 30.8
(87.4) 26.6
(79.9) 20.0
(68.0) 12.3
(54.1) 6.3
(43.3) 17.4
(63.3) Average low °C (°F) −0.3
(31.5) −0.6
(30.9) 4.2
(39.6) 9.0
(48.2) 14.4
(57.9) 19.4
(66.9) 23.2
(73.8) 22.8
(73.0) 18.4
(65.1) 12.7
(54.9) 6.7
(44.1) 1.7
(35.1) 11.0
(51.8) Average rainfall mm (inches) 151
(5.9) 172
(6.8) 150
(5.9) 114
(4.5) 37
(1.5) 1
(0.0) 0
(0) 0
(0) 1
(0.0) 19
(0.7) 88
(3.5) 106
(4.2) 839
(33) Source: Climate-Data[26]
Climate data for Batifa Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Year Average high °C (°F) 7.7
(45.9) 9.4
(48.9) 13.7
(56.7) 19.1
(66.4) 26.3
(79.3) 33.3
(91.9) 37.7
(99.9) 37.5
(99.5) 33.2
(91.8) 25.3
(77.5) 16.8
(62.2) 9.8
(49.6) 22.5
(72.5) Average low °C (°F) −0.6
(30.9) 0.3
(32.5) 3.7
(38.7) 8.1
(46.6) 13.2
(55.8) 18.2
(64.8) 22.2
(72.0) 21.7
(71.1) 17.6
(63.7) 11.8
(53.2) 6.2
(43.2) 1.5
(34.7) 10.3
(50.6) Average precipitation mm (inches) 124
(4.9) 144
(5.7) 132
(5.2) 107
(4.2) 51
(2.0) 0
(0) 0
(0) 0
(0) 1
(0.0) 29
(1.1) 84
(3.3) 123
(4.8) 795
(31.2) Source: Climate-Data[27]
Climate data for Amadiya Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Year Average high °C (°F) 6.2
(43.2) 7.8
(46.0) 12.1
(53.8) 17.8
(64.0) 25.1
(77.2) 31.9
(89.4) 36.3
(97.3) 36.2
(97.2) 32.2
(90.0) 24.4
(75.9) 15.4
(59.7) 8.4
(47.1) 21.2
(70.1) Average low °C (°F) −2.4
(27.7) −1.3
(29.7) 2.4
(36.3) 7.2
(45.0) 12.5
(54.5) 17.4
(63.3) 21.4
(70.5) 20.9
(69.6) 16.8
(62.2) 10.9
(51.6) 5.0
(41.0) 0.0
(32.0) 9.2
(48.6) Average precipitation mm (inches) 126
(5.0) 176
(6.9) 156
(6.1) 128
(5.0) 56
(2.2) 0
(0) 0
(0) 0
(0) 1
(0.0) 32
(1.3) 96
(3.8) 126
(5.0) 897
(35.3) Average precipitation days 7 6 10 8 4 0 0 0 1 7 7 10 60 Source #1: World Weather Online (precipitation days)[28] Source #2: Climate-Data (temperatures and rainfall amount)[29]
Coordinates:
History
Pre-Islamic period
The Neolithic village of Jarmo
In prehistoric times, the region was home to a Neanderthal culture such as has been found at the Shanidar Cave. The region was host to the Jarmo culture circa 7000 BC. The earliest neolithic site in Kurdistan is at Tell Hassuna, the centre of the Hassuna culture, circa 6000 BC. The region was inhabited by the northern branch of the Gutian/H |
, the Foreign Agent Registration Act, and other related laws”[26]. Furthermore, this CIA front is calling for putting the blacklisted opposition media outlets under “formal investigations” and under “further scrutiny.” This has been understood as a call for the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency or any other such government agency to harass them with fabricated investigations.[27], [28]
Following the catastrophic concentration of Western media ownership, the coalescing of their political views into one neoliberal ideological platform, and the CIA control of that media, the conditions of media freedom and freedom of speech at large have dramatically declined in the West. The deterioration of the situation has after 2000 been so overwhelming that we may say that free speech is gone from the West. The problem is most pressing in regards to the Anglo-American media groups with global reach, the ownership of which has been concentrated in very few hands (with only a handful of dominant media corporations holding sway over most of the Western countries). These corporations have established a de facto control – I would even say censorship - over Western thinking. With seemingly unrestricted propaganda manipulation, the media has seized control over the democratic process in most of Europe and North America. – These media groups have converted the idea of freedom of speech into a license to lie. It is my conviction that the concentration of media ownership into fewer and fewer hands and the reach of their lies is the biggest threat to democracy world-wide and by implication the biggest threat to mankind itself.
In the last decade, with the rise of the alternative media there has, however, been a considerable improvement with a trend pointing towards a restitution of the lost right to freedom of speech. The whole idea of freedom of speech necessarily requires multiple access to media, speech platforms, and an ease to set up new media outlets. For real freedom of speech it is not enough that there is a theoretical right to free speech, rather it requires the existence of real opportunities to express oneself in a mass circulation media, a true possibility to voice one’s opinions, to make competing opinions known.
Freedom of speech is traditionally understood as “the right to express one's opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation or censorship from the powers that be.” This definition is lacking a crucially important second condition, which I believe has never been articulated before, namely the condition of existence of a pluralistic competitive media which de facto would guarantee that every person has a possibility to exercise the right to free speech. I call this second condition the platform condition, in reference to the need that there must exist a sufficient number of competing media outlets, or platforms for speech. In addition to a “right” there has to be an “opportunity” a real possibility to exercise this right, a real possibility for free expression.
Without awarding due consideration to the platform condition, the “right” to free speech would remain a mere declarative statement, something that could be expressed as “that would be nice to have.” The problem with that truncated definition is that the “right” there would remain a mere abstraction. The expanded definition with my suggested addendum respecting the platform condition makes this right efficacious, it materializes the right.
There must exist the condition for a real possibility to make one’s voice heard, a real possibility to express oneself and for that expression being carried to the public. But this is not how it is in the world today. Today freedom of speech remains a hallowed but empty principle that the Western politicians and their monopoly media like to brag about. They pay lip service to this sacred right, while they have de facto monopolized the speech platform, the media. – Freedom of speech is not our right to stand on a park bench and bellow out our ideas or to jabber with drinking mates in a pub. Efficacious freedom of speech requires access to mass media on equal terms for all.
At the final analysis, freedom of speech, like everything else, is a function of a competition of arguments. (I have written about freedom of speech as a competition of arguments in my book All is Art.[29])
A newspaper, a media outlet is always biased. Cynically we could say that each media lies in its own particular way. In a competitive media environment one lie would be challenged by another competing lie, one lie would cancel the other lie, and in a perfect competition the outcome would be truth. The more, in a perfect competitive media environment those actors who would aim at being taken seriously would temper their lies in advance anticipating the rightful criticism from competing media.
Today, just as the Western governments have started their unprecedented attack on alternative media and social media platforms we have reached a development trend that could have ushered in an environment of true freedom of speech. The monopoly of the Western mainstream media is seriously wobbling and strong challenge has emerged from various directions: media of other than Western countries challenging the Western monopoly at their turfs; multiple strong alternative media outlets; social media, which really has enabled everyone to utilize his right to freedom of speech.
But now, the masks are off. This real environment of freedom of speech is precisely what the Western elite, their governments and their media are afraid of. They now want to stop it at all costs and introduce a totalitarian media regime a speech control. For them the slogan “freedom of speech” has really only been a cover for dressing up their media monopoly, for their license to lie.
By way of concluding remarks, I think it is interesting to draw some historic parallels. During the previous Cold War, the Soviet government chose to guard against Western influences and internal criticism by establishing a totalitarian media regime and speech control just as the West is right now doing in turn. After Vladimir Putin assumed the leadership of Russia, he in the beginning of 2000’s acknowledged that the Russian society was subject to a constant brazen campaign of influence from the side of the West both through covert and open means of propaganda and other forms of subversion. Putin back then declared that Russia would withstand that subterfuge and develop its own democracy but that Russia thereby would not repeat the errors of the Soviet Union trying to close down society, Russia would maintain an open society while developing its fragile democracy and counter the Western subterfuge with the truth. Almost two decades later, we can see that Putin has succeeded. Russia has developed into an open society with a free and sovereign democracy while it is in the West that the ghost of totalitarianism is on the rise.
Finally, I want to point out how the EU Parliament resolution on “combatting Russian propaganda” reads as a projection on Russia of all the shenanigans and trickery that the EU and its American partner have been subjecting Russia to through the years. Below is an extract from said resolution, you could exchange “Russia” and any Russian references to “EU” or “US” and then you will have an exact list of what they have been up to against Russia during the last two decades while Russia has successfully struggled, notwithstanding the West, to become a free society. In the text, I have highlighted in bold the key devices from the EU and US regime change toolkit, which they now deceitfully accuse Russia of applying against themselves.
“The EU Parliament “Recognises that the Russian Government is aggressively employing a wide range of tools and instruments, such as think tanks and special foundations (e.g. Russkiy Mir), special authorities (Rossotrudnichestvo), multilingual TV stations (e.g. RT), pseudo news agencies and multimedia services (e.g. Sputnik), cross-border social and religious groups, as the regime wants to present itself as the only defender of traditional Christian values, social media and internet trolls to challenge democratic values, divide Europe, gather domestic support and create the perception of failed states in the EU’s eastern neighbourhood; stresses that Russia invests relevant financial resources in its disinformation and propaganda instruments engaged either directly by the state or through Kremlin-controlled companies and organisations; underlines that, on the one hand, the Kremlin is funding political parties and other organisations within the EU with the intent of undermining political cohesion, and that, on the other hand, Kremlin propaganda directly targets specific journalists, politicians and individuals in the EU.”
FOOTNOTES:The way that they now publicly wage this propaganda war shows that they are really in panic. They remind me of the famous series of videos with Hitler in his bunker surrounded by his closest advisors just before the final defeat.
They are desperate. And they will all be wiped out soon, very soon.
I really hope there will be a trial, better yet that they would be lynched on the streets the way they had Saddam and Gaddafi lynched.
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/eureferendum/12018877/The-truth-how-a-secretive-elite-created-the-EU-to-build-a-world-government.html
[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/04/27/the-european-union-always-was-a-cia-project-as-brexiteers-discov/
[3] http://www.globalresearch.ca/bbc-bias-brexit-the-eu-bilderberg-and-global-government/5518878
[4] http://tass.com/politics/918809
[5] https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/20/address-president-obama-71st-session-united-nations-general-assembly
[6] http://www.activistpost.com/2016/09/obama-america-must-surrender-sovereignty-embrace-one-world-government.html
[7] http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-14-612_en.htm
[8] https://projectunspeakable.com/conspiracy-theory-invention-of-cia/
[9] http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-23/1967-he-cia-created-phrase-conspiracy-theorists-and-ways-attack-anyone-who-challenge
[10] http://www.globalresearch.ca/bbc-bias-brexit-the-eu-bilderberg-and-global-government/5518878
[11] http://www.awarablogs.com/dollar-euro-monopolies-destroyed-market-economy/
[12] http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-02/house-quietly-passes-bill-targeting-russian-propaganda-websites
[13] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html?utm_term=.6f8355bf3b89
[14] https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byj_1ybuSGp_NmYtRF95VTJTeUk/view
[15] http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/11/27/the-western-war-on-truth-paul-craig-roberts/
[16] http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/30/the-cia-and-the-press-when-the-washington-post-ran-the-cias-propaganda-network/
[17] http://www.unz.com/akarlin/fake-news-fizzles-on-arrival/
[18] http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/11/27/the-western-war-on-truth-paul-craig-roberts/
[19] http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/11/28/major-purveyor-fake-news-cia-corporate-complex.html
[20] https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgracefully-promotes-a-mccarthyite-blacklist-from-a-new-hidden-and-very-shady-group/
[21] http://yournewswire.com/merkel-internet-alternative-media/
[22] http://www.dw.com/en/experts-say-laws-not-enough-as-germany-fights-bots-and-fake-news/a-36528332
[23] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2F%2FEP%2F%2FTEXT+REPORT+A8-2016-0290+0+DOC+XML+V0%2F%2FEN
[24] http://yournewswire.com/merkel-internet-alternative-media/
[25] http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-02/
[26] https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgracefully-promotes-a-mccarthyite-blacklist-from-a-new-hidden-and-very-shady-group/
[27] http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/11/28/major-purveyor-fake-news-cia-corporate-complex.html
[28] https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgracefully-promotes-a-mccarthyite-blacklist-from-a-new-hidden-and-very-shady-group/
[29] hellevig.netMade from naturally felled madrona trees--an indigenous variety with a rich, red wood and pronounced grain--these bowls come in various shapes and sizes, but all have the wood's distinctive warmth. $30-$110; orcasartworks.com
Carry around the taste of the Pacific with mini tins of this flaky salt straight from the blustery Oregon coast. The saline crunch lights up almost any dish. Why not buy a bag for home, too? $3.50 for a.25-oz. tin, $10 for a 4-oz. bag; jacobsensalt.com
Reclaimed, repurposed, and just really awesome, Nube's Hudson Bay blanket-covered chairs fit with the environmentally aware (and eco-chic) ethos of the region. Plus, they work equally well in your cabin or two-bedroom condo. $295; nubegreen.com
Stumptown (oh, and Starbucks) may get all the press when it comes to the region's coffee purveyors, but this roaster has been quietly sourcing its own beans for sought-after, small-batch coffees since 1987. $17 per lb.; batdorfcoffee.com
This good-beer-in-a-can opens with an old-fashioned church key (included in six-packs). It's just like the brew your granddad used to drink--if he favored craft Pilsners in cool, retro packaging. (See site for availability.) churchkeycanco.com
Oregon's first USDA-approved salumeria (and now, two restaurants) turns out a full line of old-school, no-compromises, European-style cured meats, from saucisson sec to its own line of pates. From $10; olympicprovisions.com
The Asian influence and imperfectly perfect aesthetic of Akiko Graham's tableware falls in line with the homespun sensibilities of the region. Look for it gracing the tables of Manresa and Coi. From $12; akikospottery.com
This limited-edition reissue of a classic Filson coat nods to the region's lumberjack roots (and the company's 100-plus years of making clothes for rainy Washington weather) but features surprisingly hip, modern, and clean lines. $335; filson.com
Wild salmon--Chinook, King, and Sockeye--is the iconic fish of the Pacific, and Seabear smokes theirs over alder wood after a simple brine. We're partial to the fatty belly portion--essentially the bacon of the sea. Prices vary; seabear.com
This "bike with the soul of a pickup" is a mix of commuter and errand-runner (you can fit a lot of kale in that front rack). It's hand-built using many locally sourced parts, too. From $3,600; sweetpeabicycles.com
Over the past decade, the
Pacific Northwest has built a food and style movement all its own. And while the bike riding, espresso guzzling, and jam making may dip into hipster ridiculousness at times (see Portlandia ), the region's restaurants, artisanal producers, and woodsy aesthetic influence how the rest of us eat, drink, and live. Here's how to bring their world to yours. -- Deena Prichep
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One of the things that makes curry great is how versatile it is. Really, you can use just about anything you have on hand as toppings. Carrots, potatoes, and onions are the standard in Japan, but strips of stewed beef, pork cutlets, chunks of chicken, and even tuna are easy ways to add extra protein. Popular vegetarian options include cheese, spinach, and other assorted vegetables,
But one brand of instant curry from Hyogo Prefecture gives prominent billing to something we’ve never heard of being associated with curry before: shirikodama, or orbs that, according to Japanese folktales, exist inside humans’ buttholes.
Legends say that shirikodama were coveted by kappa, a type of mythical creature often referred to as a “water imp” in English translations. With their beaks, shells, and bald spots, modern-era kappa are often depicted as friendly, or at least silly, beings.
However, the Hyogo town of Fukusaki, whose local tourism association came up with the idea for shirikodama curry, is committed to maintaining the frightening aesthetics of old-school kappa horror stories. This is, after all, the town where a mechanical kappa rises from a park pond to scare visitors multiple times a day, and which also chose the terrifying kappa character Gajiro as its local mascot, as a nod to the town being the birthplace of famed folklorist Kunio Yanagita, whose writings included tales of kappa.
▼ Gajiro, taking a break from his busy schedule of doing what he does best…
▼ …frightening small children.
Now, if all this has you intrigued about Kappa Curry with Shirikodama (which can be ordered through Amazon Japan here for 570 yen [US$5.15] a pack) but you’re not quite sure if you’re ready for such an imposing culinary challenge, you can take solace in the fact that shirikodama exist exclusively in Japanese folktales. So as a real-world substitute, the curry instead uses quail eggs. Those still might not be something you’re used to eating but you have to admit they sound far less frightening than magical anal orbs, so really, the only thing to be scared of here is Gajiro’s grotesque appearance.
Source: Fukusaki Tourism Association
Top image: Amazon Japan/福崎町観光協会
Insert images: Amazon Japan/福崎町観光協会, Irasutoya
[ Read in Japanese ]
Follow Casey on Twitter, where he was planning on eating curry for lunch, but is now having second thoughts.
[ Read in Japanese ]The Imitation Game is a 2014 historical thriller film based on the biography Alan Turing: The Enigma by the mathematician and gay rights activist Andrew Hodges. It stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the British cryptanalyst Alan Turing, who, working with a team of experts at the country estate Bletchley Park, devises a machine that, after much trial and error (and official interference) cracks the Germans’ notoriously difficult Enigma communications code. This breakthrough turns the tide of World War II and hastens Germany’s defeat. Turing is later prosecuted by a British court for his homosexuality and commits suicide as a result of the hormone treatment he is forced to endure.
The film was a huge commercial success (grossing $219 million against a $14 million production budget), received many award nominations, and won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. However, while The Imitation Game was critically acclaimed, it was also slated for its many historical inaccuracies. Largely neglected in all the commentary about the Weinstein Company’s historical drama is the Jewish ethno-political agenda that runs through the film.
One Jewish source notes that, despite Benedict Cumberbatch being “so gentile it’s almost shocking,” the film has “significant Jewish angles” while being about “a non-Jewish mathematical genius from Cambridge University, Alan Turing, and his efforts to crack Nazi codes in the bucolic British countryside.” It admits that, given the Jewish domination of Hollywood, “perhaps it’s not shocking that the film’s producers are Jews (the clues are there in ‘film’ and ‘producers’)”—these producers being Ido Ostrowsky, Nora Grossman, and Teddy Schwarzman (the son of billionaire Jewish financier Stephen Schwarzman) who “were drawn to Turing’s story as a tale of a brilliant outsider forced to work with others to win the war against German evil.” Ah, the venerable heroic Jew as outsider theme.
Naomi Pfefferman, writing for The Jewish Journal claims that Turing’s efforts shortened the war and “saved up to 14 million lives, including those of millions of potential Holocaust victims,” and observes that:
For the Israeli-born Ostrowsky — who moved to Los Angeles with his family when he was a baby — there was another point of connection to Turing’s work: Ostrowsky’s Russian-Jewish grandparents lost relatives in Nazi concentration camps, and Ostrowsky is keenly aware that he, too, as a gay Jewish man, would have worn both the pink triangle and the yellow Jewish star during the Third Reich. Of the millions of lives Turing saved, he said, “I thought about how many of those people might have been my family members; it really hit close to home that Turing was a hero for all people, but also my people. And then he was treated in such a horrific way; it just felt like a shocking injustice. Even though he was officially pardoned after we shot our movie, it felt like he had never properly been celebrated or brought back to his rightful place in history.”
Turing’s story also resonated with fellow producer, Nora Grossman, whose “great-grandfather, Benjamin Grossman, migrated to Ventnor [New Jersey] from Poland just before World War II” while most of his family who remained “perished in ghettos.” Grossman’s cousin, Gail Rosenthal, is the director of a Holocaust Resource Center at Stockton College in New Jersey. Having watched the film, a representative from the center opined that “The movie was very powerful on multiple levels,” and claimed that, “On one level, the film deals with stopping the biggest bully of all time, Hitler. But it also shows how Turing himself was bullied as a kid in school and later in life. It’s ironic that the man who helped defeat the biggest bully of all time met his demise as a result of bullying.”
Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown summed up the line of thinking that motivated the many Jews involved in the production of The Imitation Game when, writing in praise of Turing in 2009, he contended that:
Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate — by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices — that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out the European civilization for hundreds of years. It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present. So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work, I am very proud to say: we’re sorry. You deserved so much better.
In 2010 Ostrowsky and Grossman pooled their money and bought the rights to Andrew Hodges’ biography. At the time, Grossman was working at the Jewish-owned and controlled DreamWorks studio in the TV department and Ostrowsky was working at the Jewish-controlled NBC. The next step in bringing Turing’s story to cinematic life was to find someone to adapt the book into a screenplay. Inevitably, their choice of screenwriter involved Jewish ethnic networking. Grossman “chanced” to invite the young Jewish writer Graham Moore to her home for a party in 2010. She was discussing her “Alan Turing project” with a friend and recalls how “Graham, whom I had known from my television days, was actually involved in another conversation, but he overheard me, interrupted me and said, ‘I love Alan Turing!’” As soon as he discovered Grossman and Ostrowsky had optioned the rights to Andrew Hodges’ book, he lobbied for the chance to tell the story of “his underappreciated, lesser-known childhood hero.”
Moore, who at that time was writing a sitcom for ABC Family (a subsidiary of the Jewish-owned and managed Disney), recounts how:
I was at a party at Nora’s house, and at the time I didn’t know her particularly well, but I asked her what she had been up to and she said, “Well, I just used a chunk of my own money to option a book,” and I said, “Oh, that’s really cool, cheers! Have a drink, that’s great, doing your own thing! What’s the book about?” and she said, “This mathematician, you’ve never heard of him.” And I said, “Well, I do know a little bit about mathematics,” and when she said “Alan Turing,” I instantly freak out and launch into this totally insufferable 15-minute monologue about how I’ve dreamed about writing about Alan Turing since I was a little kid, I went to computer camp, where all we ever talked about was Alan Turing. This is what the movie is, this is how it starts, and I could see her start to inch back step by step, trying to get away from me. But somehow I convinced her to let me do it.
As with Grossman and Ostrowsky, Moore’s fascination with Turing is a product of his Jewish identity and sympathies. The son of two lawyers, Moore grew up on the north side of Chicago in a family with a deep commitment to leftwing politics. The Tablet notes that Moore’s mother is “not just any Yiddishe Mameh” but Susan Sher, who, during the first term of the Obama administration served as special assistant to President Obama and then as chief-of-staff to Michelle Obama (whom she first met in 1991). These jobs were in addition to her role as the official White House liaison to the Jewish community, “a realm that has become increasingly important to her son.”
Moore has always felt strongly connected to the Jewish community. “My Judaism has felt more and more important to me, and more and more of a social identifier,” he told The Jewish Journal. “My grandparents passed away a few years ago, and I was very close to them, and for their generation, their Jewish identity was extremely important. And after they passed away, this notion that me [sic] and my mother would become the keepers of this tradition became very apparent and very important.” Moore’s mother is currently involved in “advocacy” to build the Obama Presidential Library on the South Side of Chicago as part of her role as senior advisor to University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer (who, inevitably, is also Jewish).
Despite being the privileged representative of the wealthiest, most well-connected and powerful ethnic group in the United States — and someone who attended Colombia University (where he became editor of the student newspaper) — Moore sees himself as an “outsider” who is alienated from the American mainstream. “I think I always felt like an outsider, like a weirdo,” he claimed — a condition which, according to Danielle Berrin, writing for the ‘Hollywood Jew’ section of The Jewish Journal, has “afflicted almost every artist that ever lived, not to mention, almost every Jew.”
In addition to his putative “outsider” status, Moore is stereotypically Jewish in other ways, reportedly being “hyper-articulate, to the point where he needs only a simple prompting to riff energetically on a number of subjects, and his ability to speak on a range of topics suggests the diversity of his interests — technology, journalism, rock music and politics.” Moore is also, inevitably, a “genius.” Berrin claims, for instance, that taken together, Moore’s “back-to-back successes,” suggest that he “is either experiencing an unheard of bout of beginner’s luck, or he is, perhaps, like the subjects on which he writes, something of an anomalous genius himself.”
The screenwriter of The Imitation Game grew up with a small group of friends who were “a very motley bunch of outsiders.” He claims that “Some of us were gay, some were straight, but most of us wore nail polish. (I certainly did). Occasionally, lipstick and eyeliner.” His best friend was the “NYU film grad Ben Epstein,” who suggested they become writing partners. Upon graduation Epstein quickly secured work in Hollywood as a writer, producer and director for numerous shows including the 2014 series Happyland for Sumner Redstone’s pestilential MTV. Moore, like Epstein was irresistibly drawn to Hollywood, where one of his earliest jobs was as a staff writer for the short-lived series 10 Things I Hate About You. Moore’s real breakthrough, however, was his novel The Sherlockian which was on the New York Times bestseller list for three weeks.
Alan Turing was a figure that meant a lot to Moore from a young age, and he claims to have become “obsessed with this idea that his cryptographic work and his computer work is him dealing with the issues of being a closeted gay man. … One of the things I found so fascinating about him is that he was someone who didn’t fit into the society around him for many different reasons.” Moore could also identity with Turing being “the smartest person in every room that he entered,” and, while apparently not being homosexual himself, sympathized with the plight of a man, who, “when the government found out he was gay, he was arrested, persecuted by the country he’d just saved from Nazi rule, until he finally committed suicide.” Moore told the L.A. Times that:
Once I heard the story, I wanted to learn more. I needed to learn everything I could about him. Alan Turing was an outsider’s outsider — perhaps the most brilliant scientist of his generation, a social outcast who produced theories decades ahead of their time. A gay man who was able to keep secrets for the government so well precisely because he’d been forced to spend his entire life keeping his sexuality secret from a world in which a kiss between two men was literally punishable by two years in prison. For a weird kid like myself, who never felt like he belonged or fit in, Alan Turing wasn’t just an inspiration — he was a patron saint. (As a Jew, my mother would be aghast to hear me describe anyone as a saint, but you get the idea).
Moore’s screenplay has been criticized for its numerous historical inaccuracies and clichéd characterizations. Writing in the New York Review of Books, Christian Caryl accused the film in general and Moore specifically of “monstrous hogwash,” “caricature” and a “bizarre departure from the historical record.” L.V. Anderson, reviewing The Imitation Game for Slate, similarly observed that Moore “takes major liberties with its source material, injecting conflict where none existed, inventing entirely fictional characters, rearranging the chronology of events, and misrepresenting the very nature of Turing’s work at Bletchley Park.”
Moore’s characterization of Turing is deeply flawed. His claim that Turing was someone who was “forced to spend his entire life keeping his sexuality secret from a world” is simply wrong. Hodges’ biography is filled with instances where he boldly propositioned other men — mostly without success. Turing also told his friends and colleagues about his homosexuality. Caryl points out that Moore’s false characterization “is indicative of the bad faith underlying the whole enterprise, which is desperate to put Turing in the role of a gay liberation totem.” He notes that the film’s factual errors “are not random; there is a method to the muddle. The filmmakers see their hero above all as a martyr of a homophobic Establishment, and they are determined to lay emphasis on his victimhood.”
Moore strongly implies (again contrary to Hodges’ biography) that Turing is somewhere on the autism spectrum: he never gets jokes, takes common expressions literally, and is totally indifferent to the annoyance and offence his behavior causes others. While Hodges describes Turing as a man who is eccentric and impatient with irrationality, he also observes that he had a keen sense of humor and was charming with friends and trusted colleagues. One of these colleagues at Bletchley Park later recalled him as “a very easily approachable man” and said “we were very very fond of him.” None of this is reflected in Moore’s screenplay (or the film) which instead reduces Turing to a caricature of the tortured genius. Caryl observes that:
Turing (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) conforms to the familiar stereotype of the otherworldly nerd: he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t even understand an invitation to lunch. This places him at odds not only with the other codebreakers in his unit, but also, equally predictably, positions him as a natural rebel. … The film spares no opportunity to drive home his robotic oddness. He uses the word “logical” a lot and can’t grasp even the most modest of jokes. … On various occasions throughout the film, [the chief codebreaker at Bletchley Park] Denniston tries to fire Turing or have him arrested for espionage, which is resisted by those who have belatedly recognized his redemptive brilliance. “If you fire Alan, you’ll have to fire me, too,” says one of his (formerly hostile) coworkers.
All of this is pure invention by Moore. In reality, Turing was a willing participant in the collective enterprise at Bletchley Park that featured a host of other outstanding intellects (including Denniston) with whom he happily coexisted. Ignoring this, Moore is determined to suggest maximum dramatic tension between their tragic outsider and a blinkered establishment. “You will never understand the importance of what I am creating here,” he has Turing wail when Denniston’s minions try to destroy his machine (which again never happened). L.V. Anderson notes that:
the central conceit of The Imitation Game — that Turing singlehandedly invented and physically built the machine that broke the Germans’ Enigma code — is simply untrue. A predecessor of the “Bombe”—the name given to the large, ticking machine that used rotors to test different letter combinations—was invented by Polish cryptanalysts before Turing even began working as a cryptologist for the British government. Turing’s great innovation was to design a new machine that broke the Enigma code faster by looking for likely letter combinations and ruling out combinations that were unlikely to yield results. Turing didn’t develop the new, improved machine by dint of his own singular genius—the mathematician Gordon Welchman, who is not even mentioned in the film, collaborated with Turing on the design.
Turing’s “bombes” — electromechanical calculating devices designed to reconstruct the settings of the Enigma — were already being used to decipher German army and air force codes from early in the war.
Moore’s account of Turing’s arrest and death also distorts the facts. In his screenplay, Moore has Turing investigated by police on suspicion of spying for the Soviet Union and when they, pursuing this line of enquiry, discover his homosexual lifestyle, it leads to his arrest. Contrary to the film’s depiction, it was Turing himself who alerted the police to his homosexuality by reporting a petty theft from his home to the police and then changing the details of his story to cover up a relationship with the suspected culprit, the 19-year-old Arnold Murray. It was Turing’s own actions which brought his homosexuality to the attention to the police and which led to legal proceeding against him. Turing was convicted on indecency charges in 1952, and chose a therapy involving female hormones — aimed at suppressing his unnatural desires — as an alternative to jail time.
Turing’s other biographer, B. Jack Copeland, disputes the assertion in the film that this treatment sent Turing into a downward spiral of depression. By the accounts of those who knew him, he endured it with fortitude, and spent the next year enthusiastically pursuing projects. Copeland cites a number of close friends (and Turing’s mother) who saw no evidence that he was depressed in the days before his death, and notes that the coroner who concluded that Turing had died by biting a cyanide-laced apple never actually examined the fruit. Copeland offers compelling evidence that his death was accidental, the result of the accidental inhalation of cyanide fumes from a device used for electroplating spoons with gold. In statements to the coroner, friends had attested to Turing’s good humor in the days before his death. Turing also left no suicide letter.
Even if one accepts that Turing was driven by the “homophobic establishment” to his self-inflicted death, The Imitation Game’s depiction of his fate is ridiculous. In one of the film’s most egregious scenes, his wartime friend Joan pays him a visit in 1952 or so, while he is still taking the hormones. She finds him dementedly shuffling around the house in his bathrobe. He tells her that he’s terrified that the authorities will take away “Christopher”—his latest computer, which he’s named after the dead friend of his childhood (just as he did with his machine at Bletchley Park). Caryl notes that this scene is “monstrous hogwash, a conceit entirely cooked up by Moore,” while Anderson observes that “Turing did not call any of the early computers he worked on ‘Christopher’ — that is a dramatic flourish invented by screenwriter Graham Moore.”
Clearly it is only Turing’s homosexuality, and his devotion of his talents to the cause of defeating the Germans that makes his story palatable to the many Jews involved in the production of The Imitation Game. Lest an audience be led to assume that a White man (albeit a homosexual White man) should take all the credit for breaking the Enigma Code, one Jewish source is eager to assure its readership that Jewish historian Martin Sugarman “has painstakingly pointed out, [that] among the 7,000-8,000 staff working at Bletchley during the war were perhaps 200-300 Jews.”
Moore goes even further than Sugarman and embroiders an episode from Hodges’ biography to create the impression that Turing was Jewish (or at least was a victim of the “anti-Semitic |
into his evening wishing a beloved niece the best at a shotgun wedding reception. If there were a video equivalent, it would have involved a chair in front of a brick wall and a single light bulb.
10. I don't buy the line some are peddling that the shape of rhetoric after the announcement is partly due to our giving corporations the benefits of personhood. Frankly, we wouldn't stomach DC's actions over the last 26 years towards Alan Moore from a person. We don't give corporations the same rights we give people; we privilege them over people.
11. Somehow lost in the discussion -- either ignored or waved away -- is DC's conduct over the lifetime of the original work. Say what you will about Moore and Gibbons' faith in having the work returned to them when it slipped out of print. Call it naive, call it clueless, wrap yourself in hard-man certainty that you would have done things differently had you been around at the time. That the project was going to return to the creators is indeed what everyone believed was going to happen, to the point it was bragged about in comics circles. This means that when that turned out not to be the case DC was violating the spirit of the agreement. They then turned around and messed with the actual agreement through the "licensed items as promotional items" stunt. When this and other actions lost them the services of Alan Moore, they eventually reclaimed those services by buying a company for which Moore was working at exactly the time during that work when he was least likely to leave. They promised him a specific working arrangement that when it suited them they violated, for what seems like in hindsight stupid-ass, arbitrary reasons. Their stewardship of the comic in question as a movie property led to a slightly clueless misfire of a Watchmen film, turning the greatest work of its genre into another movie that comes on opposite The Hangover and 27 Dresses on a random Saturday night. There were a thousand minor cuts, too. More recently, I believed DC has played a role in allowing Moore to become an object of derision. Heck, one of the authors they had doing publicity work for the More Watchmen project even mocked the author's pretension and perceived lack of reason in the course of that publicity campaign.
12. That yields a depressing irony, of course. Because of the movie, because of the open derision of Moore, and because many of the surface elements have been redone to death by lesser creators, doing More Watchmen has become less of a creative risk than it would have been at an earlier time. Seeing that ridiculous Comedian cover would have seemed much more absurd before we saw spinning, kung-fu Rorschach. The idea that the creator that gave us Walkabout Superman would really be hired to write more of this work would have seemed absurd when he was following in the footsteps of Creative Genius Alan Moore, and seems much less so now that he's following Crazy, Snake-Worshipping, Dismissive Alan Moore that can't get a decent movie made and is a hypocrite besides. Looking at ten years of comics Internet activity even with a much more useless brain isn't that far off from what Ozymandias was doing with all of western culture via that bank of TVs. That experience tells me that the reputation of Watchmen has declined just enough that the original work and its creators -- even and maybe especially Moore, who wants nothing to do with them -- will shoulder a significant part of any blame to go around if these new books don't hit.
13. I'm sort of at a loss when it comes to explaining what Alan Moore has done that makes so many fans quick to mock and criticize him. If you feel like you've been poorly treated, how is it a bad thing to say so in forthright fashion? As far as I can figure out, the only real thing Moore's done during the entire process that would make me want to say something to him were he to do it at a dinner party is be quick to criticize creators with whose work he's not entirely familiar, and to too easily conflate a certain kind of superhero comic book making with all of comics. I think those using Moore's statements as a way to drive attention to what they're doing share the blame in these incredibly minor acts of ingratitude finding expression, but mostly I'm not certain it's a big deal. The fact that we wave off the open exploitation of corporations and their actors as "well, that's what they do" and we somehow can't process when a human being acts, well, human -- that makes me sad.
14. One gets the feeling that Moore's biggest crime in the eyes of many is his failure to be properly appreciative of the money made on his behalf. Note this places the moneymaking itself squarely on the business partner facilitating the product rather than the creative person making it, which is already dubious to my mind. The absolute and frequently expressed inability of people from comics fans to fellow comics creators who should know better to realize that a creator might not hold making as much money as is possible the ultimate goal of art is astonishing to me, and distressing. There are other values, arguably more noble ones, and even if you don't think so you shouldn't get to decide what someone else's should be.
15. I'm not sure which line of argumentation in comics circles was dimmer: the way the notion of "hypocrisy" is processed, or making an equivalent between what Moore does with characters based on other characters and DC doing what they're doing with More Watchmen. If you really want to and are willing to work the examples with as much fury as you can muster, you can find hypocrisy in the actions of everyone from Gandhi to Abraham Lincoln to King David on key issues in relation to which we properly credit their achievements. In some cases, the move from one way of thinking to another is even the point. It also used to be that underlining someone's hypocritical statements was a way of indicting their statements because it was based on what they're doing right at the time, not some expectation that a person 100 percent endorse the most absolute view of something their entire lives in every aspect you can discern or as a result risk being shouted down. As for comparing Moore's use of James Bond or Voldemoort or Dorothy Gale or even The Peacemaker with the More Watchmen effort, that just seems so clearly to me not the same thing by a thousand degrees I can only look on at anyone making that argument with bafflement. I don't even know how to articulate a counter-argument. From my perspective, it's not saying "the sky isn't blue; it's green" it's saying "the sky isn't blue; it's refrigerator."
16. That More Watchmen represents the triumph of brand over literary content, I think is more true than overly facile. Watchmen the work doesn't require a sequel and never did. Watchmen the collection of cool characters and isolated story moments and licensing opportunities demands one. It may really be that simple.
17. I'm also not certain how you can see this as anything but a step away from the wider cultural message of Watchmen back in the 1980s: that authors matter, that original work can be rewarded on the same level as reworking someone else's ideas, that comics have literary and culture value for their ideas and expressive force above and beyond their value as entertainment product. I might call DC foolish if they were touting these sequel books as a match for Watchmen's artistic achievement, but that this idea isn't even on the table may be scarier. This is a toy line. This is a happy meal. This is "based on." This is product.
18. I'm dubious of the notion of applying bottom-line considerations to actions that have aspects that don't involve said bottom-line. Still, I think it's fair to point out that DC's treatment of Moore may have cost DC in the long run. DC has built its current empire on a great book program, the clever revamping of characters it owns, and the creation of some original content with enduring value. Moore is really good at all of those things. DC's significant role in the marketplace -- I think sometimes earned in underhanded ways, like negotiating a deal with a distributor and not telling anyone about that deal's salient details the way they did more recently than published Watchmen -- guarantees them some access to the work of creators working in all of these key areas. And yet I have to imagine their general policies and even this specific action may cost them a few. I know I'd rather work with Eric Stephenson than Dan DiDio right now. Wouldn't you?
19. This may sound strange, and I don't know that I should be bringing it up here. I don't really believe in boycotts. I very much believe in making moral and ethical choices about what you consume. I applaud anyone that does so. But I'm very much dubious of boycott mechanisms as perceived tools for changing policy. I don't think they have real value except in some cases where a company is vulnerable to the wider perception issue and makes a utilitarian choice to cave rather than negotiate the "controversy" as another PR get. In cases like More Watchmen, I think the companies involved are very much insulated from even an unlikely significant drop in profits and bad publicity. If profits are five percent less than what they should be at a comics company, everything we know about the last two decades indicates it's much more likely more people will be fired and page rates reduced than policy changed. I think if you're going to promote a response in terms of its bottom-line efficacy, you need to really grapple with what that is and why that is. Otherwise, if you don't pull it off, your failure to do so becomes a tacit endorsement of the virtues of that you're trying to foil. That doesn't mean I don't think you should do them; I just think you need to be careful how they're presented. A boycott isn't really a boycott if all it does is make you feel better about where you're directing your anger, if the expression of it in a blog post is a bigger deal than its eventual economic impact. I'm at fault for taking a lot of cheap shots at people the last couple of weeks for the joy of seeing my anger reflected back to me in a lot of right-on, right-back-atcha statements from my peers. For all the fun writing that's been put out there, I'm not sure we're any closer to seeing this doesn't happen again. Alan Moore's statement that he just didn't want to see this happen remains for me the most painful moment in this whole matter, and I'm not sure we've found a way yet for it not to happen to the next guy.
20. So what should we do? I think it behooves us to talk about these matters, even if part of maintaining the status quo is that extended discussion about serious issues be characterized as boring and lame if it goes on for more than a day and isn't expressed in language that makes us feel good in fuck-yeah ways about our own positions. There are discussions worth having that don't end in a high-five. I think it's good to be honest about the fact that these are specific decisions that distinguish some actors from other actors -- that it's as possible for DC not to have done this than for them to have done this, and that maybe you really are much better off in the long run not taking certain kinds of money and opportunities when it can come back to bite you on the ass.
21. Ten days or so past the official announcement, I'm thinking More Watchmen may be best understood as a blow to comics' dignity. It's product, not art. It's a limited, small series of ideas derived from a bigger, grander one. It's sad. One thing that Watchmen did a quarter century ago was to underline certain values of craft and intent and creative freedom that have helped to yield enough equivalent expressions -- to my mind even grander expressions -- that we may now see this follow-up project for what it is: nothing special. Not Moore. More.
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1. In and of itself, More Watchmen is an interesting story, but it's notinteresting a story. The More Watchmen story reminds us of how enthralled even the most enlightened comics fans are by an orientation towards North American comic books, specifically superhero comics, and even more crucially the superhero comic books of one's youth. Because that's whatis now for a huge chunk of comics fans: a formative experience a tiny bit further in the past than#1 was when the Moore/Gibbons series hit the stands.2. The More Watchmen firestorm became more intriguing for of the heap of pathologies on display in the response to the story, and for the snapshot it provided as to where the industry and its culture stands right now on various, perceived issues.3. It's hard to draw a bead on comics that don't exist yet, but I'm guessing some of the More Watchmen books will be okay, some of them will be awful, and a few could be fine or better. I'd seek out new, original comics from exactly two of those creators based on reputation alone. I'll still buy work from Alan Moore or Dave Gibbons every chance I get, and would have pushed past the entire Muncie Northside High School cheerleading team to get a new comic of Moore's in the mid-1980s. As a whole, it's very unlikely they will have much to do with the original project or, by virtue of being derivative works, come close to matching it in terms of quality or ambition.4. More Watchmen is something of a perfect Internet-era story, and as such serves as a reminder of how much we're driven by and limited to the nature and form of the way news stories develop now. You couldn't build a story like this in a laboratory. The More Watchmen story is about a product; people like products. It's about the hype for a product, which in many ways and for many fans has become the best part of any arts-product experience. Because the work itself doesn't exist yet, arguments can be made on its behalf positing an ideal outcome or a disastrous one -- your choice. More Watchmen isn't just about a superhero comic, it revolves aroundsuperhero comic. This makes it a story aboutsuperhero comics.is a superhero comic that became a movie and so therefore has some currency in non-comics media that are routinely interested in that particular intersection of art forms.was a project that many people hold dear for when it came out and what it said about the potential for the medium and the genre, so More Watchmen is a story about-- comics fans' favorite subject matter. Alan Moore is a compelling personality, and has made no secret of his wishes and desires about the project. The story has been simmering as a depressing eventuality for months now. More Watchmen brings to the fore a bunch of issues about which people have virtually no agreement, and it plugs right into culture-wide developments in terms of our attitudes towards money, the role of corporations versus individuals and the value of art.5. One of the reasons I've been hesitant to write anything at all about it here onis that getting people worked up about these things is part of the point for a big corporation like DC. Every single piece of commentary, positive or negative, is part of DC's PR campaign. That's where we are now. Further, you can argue that a wave of PR is in some waysimportant to a company like DC. It's easy to make the argument that having the most buzz possible is more important to a company like DC than whether or not the books or good. It may be even easier to argue that, barring a noticeable collapse of the kind that also seizes PR attention, that making a big splash right is more important to DC than how the books end up operating on the retail level. I'm not sure DC has any stake in the various industry issues and attitudes that are brought to the fore. Part of why the buzz is so important now is that reducing art to brands and product makesas something moves through the publication process way more important than it used to be. Part of why the PR has achieved primacy is that projects like More Watchmen exist on a parallel track to their real-world status: they're strategies employed by people at corporations, collectively and individually, to further their status within the corporation or in the wider corporate world as much as they're ever comics in stores.6. More Watchmen is another project DC is pushing right down a middle road. A potential option with anotherproject would haven been to announce a twelve-issue Before Watchmen maxi-series with Grant Morrison and Darwyn Cooke (or their equivalents) for 2012 and then a twelve-issue After Watchmen maxi-series with Mark Millar and Frank Quitely (or their equivalents) for 2013, perhaps with all the covers on both series by Dave Gibbons. Another option would have been to have a major crossover with Batman and the rest of the Justice League. Still another, a series of six on-going series folded into the New 52. The strategy DC's employing here -- a bunch of mini-series of varying size, with a concluding one-shot and a threaded-through back-up story -- seems to me to replicate their halfway, hesitant, political thinking on the New 52 (where these books right here are full reboots, these over here are pocketed away to protect from reboot considerations, and these few here aren't really reboots at all). That project also split the difference between possible extremes. I think we now have something of a clue as to how the current DC regime makes decisions. On the one hand, it worked in many ways for what they wanted to do with New 52. On the other hand, this doesn't speak well to our ever seeing a project from this group that in 26 years will have grown to the point it can be exploited the waycan now be exploited. When we talk about companies managing brands instead of making things, we focus on the brand-part and not enough on the managing-part. That has long-term implications, too.7. The number of books involved indicates a definite eye on multiple, eventual collections while at the same time serving the periodical market with which they had success on the New 52. More Watchmen is giving the Direct Market lot of #1 issues, and should also yield several volumes for the book folks to push into that market. It should even provide one or two big volumes for the archival volumes division. This touch-every-base aspect of the announcement further exposes what DC was slinging last summer -- that stuff about not being interested in measurables other than long-term, bottom-line sales -- as the obvious horseshit it was. They're clearly interested in all the markets, all the standards of success, all the reasons one may send out a press release and update the resume. It's those considerations and not bottom-line sales that are driving how More Watchmen will look and operate in the marketplace.8. I think Dave Gibbons not writing or providing cover work is significant. For one thing, it's the project's loss: Gibbons is a fine writer and a cracking designer. A more significant appreciation of Gibbons' contributions to the original work was the best thing about the ramp-up to the creatively misguided movie adaptation. Editor Len Wein's involvement notwithstanding, Gibbons' direct involvement would also have led to a more significant imprimatur in terms of providing continuity between this project and the past work. I don't think that matters to DC, not really, but it might have mattered to a few folks out there.9. I also thought Gibbons' quote endorsing the project was pretty grim for that kind of thing, to the point of being darkly hilarious. He sounded like a grumpy uncle five cocktails into his evening wishing a beloved niece the best at a shotgun wedding reception. If there were a video equivalent, it would have involved a chair in front of a brick wall and a single light bulb.10. I don't buy the line some are peddling that the shape of rhetoric after the announcement is partly due to our giving corporations the benefits of personhood. Frankly, we wouldn't stomach DC's actions over the last 26 years towards Alan Moore from a person. We don't give corporations the same rights we give people; we privilege them over people.11. Somehow lost in the discussion -- either ignored or waved away -- is DC's conduct over the lifetime of the original work. Say what you will about Moore and Gibbons' faith in having the work returned to them when it slipped out of print. Call it naive, call it clueless, wrap yourself in hard-man certainty that you would have done things differently had you been around at the time. That the project was going to return to the creators is indeed what everyone believed was going to happen, to the point it was bragged about in comics circles. This means that when that turned out not to be the case DC was violating the spirit of the agreement. They then turned around and messed with the actual agreement through the "licensed items as promotional items" stunt. When this and other actions lost them the services of Alan Moore, they eventually reclaimed those services by buying a company for which Moore was working at exactly the time during that work when he was least likely to leave. They promised him a specific working arrangement that when it suited them they violated, for what seems like in hindsight stupid-ass, arbitrary reasons. Their stewardship of the comic in question as a movie property led to a slightly clueless misfire of afilm, turning the greatest work of its genre into another movie that comes on oppositeandon a random Saturday night. There were a thousand minor cuts, too. More recently, I believed DC has played a role in allowing Moore to become an object of derision. Heck, one of the authors they had doing publicity work for the More Watchmen project even mocked the author's pretension and perceived lack of reason in the course of that publicity campaign.12. That yields a depressing irony, of course. Because of the movie, because of the open derision of Moore, and because many of the surface elements have been redone to death by lesser creators, doing More Watchmen has become less of a creative risk than it would have been at an earlier time. Seeing that ridiculous Comedian cover would have seemed much more absurd before we saw spinning, kung-fu Rorschach. The idea that the creator that gave us Walkabout Superman would really be hired to write more of this work would have seemed absurd when he was following in the footsteps of Creative Genius Alan Moore, and seems much less so now that he's following Crazy, Snake-Worshipping, Dismissive Alan Moore that can't get a decent movie made and is a hypocrite besides. Looking at ten years of comics Internet activity even with a much more useless brain isn't that far off from what Ozymandias was doing with all of western culture via that bank of TVs. That experience tells me that the reputation ofhas declined just enough that the original work and its creators -- even and maybe especially Moore, who wants nothing to do with them -- will shoulder a significant part of any blame to go around if these new books don't hit.13. I'm sort of at a loss when it comes to explaining what Alan Moore has done that makes so many fans quick to mock and criticize him. If you feel like you've been poorly treated, how is it a bad thing to say so in forthright fashion? As far as I can figure out, the only real thing Moore's done during the entire process that would make me want to say something to him were he to do it at a dinner party is be quick to criticize creators with whose work he's not entirely familiar, and to too easily conflate a certain kind of superhero comic book making with all of comics. I think those using Moore's statements as a way to drive attention to what they're doing share the blame in these incredibly minor acts of ingratitude finding expression, but mostly I'm not certain it's a big deal. The fact that we wave off the open exploitation of corporations and their actors as "well, that's what they do" and we somehow can't process when a human being acts, well,-- that makes me sad.14. One gets the feeling that Moore's biggest crime in the eyes of many is his failure to be properly appreciative of the money made on his behalf. Note this places the moneymaking itself squarely on the business partner facilitating the product rather than the creative person making it, which is already dubious to my mind. The absolute and frequently expressed inability of people from comics fans to fellow comics creators who should know better to realize that a creator might not hold making as much money as is possible the ultimate goal of art is astonishing to me, and distressing. There are other values, arguably more noble ones, and even if you don't think so you shouldn't get to decide what someone else's should be.15. I'm not sure which line of argumentation in comics circles was dimmer: the way the notion of "hypocrisy" is processed, or making an equivalent between what Moore does with characters based on other characters and DC doing what they're doing with More Watchmen. If you really want to and are willing to work the examples with as much fury as you can muster, you can find hypocrisy in the actions of everyone from Gandhi to Abraham Lincoln to King David on key issues in relation to which we properly credit their achievements. In some cases, the move from one way of thinking to another is even the point. It also used to be that underlining someone's hypocritical statements was a way of indicting their statements because it was based on what they're doing, not some expectation that a person 100 percent endorse the most absolute view of something their entire lives in every aspect you can discern or as a result risk being shouted down. As for comparing Moore's use of James Bond or Voldemoort or Dorothy Gale or even The Peacemaker with the More Watchmen effort, that just seems so clearly to me not the same thing by a thousand degrees I can only look on at anyone making that argument with bafflement. I don't even know how to articulate a counter-argument. From my perspective, it's not saying "the sky isn't blue; it's green" it's saying "the sky isn't blue; it's refrigerator."16. That More Watchmen represents the triumph of brand over literary content, I think is more true than overly facile.the work doesn't require a sequel and never did.the collection of cool characters and isolated story moments and licensing opportunities demands one. It may really be that simple.17. I'm also not certain how you can see this as anything but a step away from the wider cultural message ofback in the 1980s: that authors matter, that original work can be rewarded on the same level as reworking someone else's ideas, that comics have literary and culture value for their ideas and expressive force above and beyond their value as entertainment product. I might call DC foolish if they were touting these sequel books as a match for's artistic achievement, but that this idea isn't even on the table may be scarier. This is a toy line. This is a happy meal. This is "based on." This is product.18. I'm dubious of the notion of applying bottom-line considerations to actions that have aspects that don't involve said bottom-line. Still, I think it's fair to point out that DC's treatment of Moore may have cost DC in the long run. DC has built its current empire on a great book program, the clever revamping of characters it owns, and the creation of some original content with enduring value. Moore isat all of those things. DC's significant role in the marketplace -- I think sometimes earned in underhanded ways, like negotiating a deal with a distributor and not telling anyone about that deal's salient details the way they did more recently than published-- guarantees them some access to the work of creators working in all of these key areas. And yet I have to imagine their general policies and even this specific action may cost them a few. I know I'd rather work with Eric Stephenson than Dan DiDio right now. Wouldn't you?19. This may sound strange, and I don't know that I should be bringing it up here. I don't really believe in boycotts. I very much believe in making moral and ethical choices about what you consume. I applaud anyone that does so. But I'm very much dubious of boycott mechanisms as perceived tools for changing policy. I don't think they have real value except in some cases where a company is vulnerable to the wider perception issue and makes a utilitarian choice to cave rather than negotiate the "controversy" as another PR get. In cases like More Watchmen, I think the companies involved are very much insulated from even an unlikely significant drop in profits and bad publicity. If profits are five percent less than what they should be at a comics company, everything we know about the last two decades indicates it's much more likely more people will be fired and page rates reduced than policy changed. I think if you're going to promote a response in terms of its bottom-line efficacy, you need to really grapple with what that is and why that is. Otherwise, if you don't pull it off, your failure to do so becomes a tacit endorsement of the virtues of that you're trying to foil. That doesn't mean I don't think you should do them; I just think you need to be careful how they're presented. A boycott isn't really a boycott if all it does is make you feel better about where you're directing your anger, if the expression of it in a blog post is a bigger deal than its eventual economic impact. I'm at fault for taking a lot of cheap shots at people the last couple of weeks for the joy of seeing my anger reflected back to me in a lot of right-on, right-back-atcha statements from my peers. For all the fun writing that's been put out there, I'm not sure we're any closer to seeing this doesn't happen again. Alan Moore's statement that he just didn't want to see this happen remains for me the most painful moment in this whole matter, and I'm not sure we've found a way yet for it not to happen to the next guy.20. So what should we do? I think it behooves us to talk about these matters, even if part of maintaining the status quo is that extended discussion about serious issues be characterized as boring and lame if it goes on for more than a day and isn't expressed in language that makes us feel good in fuck-yeah ways about our own positions. There are discussions worth having that don't end in a high-five. I think it's good to be honest about the fact that these are specific decisions that distinguish some actors from other actors -- that it's as possible for DC not to have done this than for them to have done this, and that maybe you really are much better off in the long run not taking certain kinds of money and opportunities when it can come back to bite you on the ass.21. Ten days or so past the official announcement, I'm thinking More Watchmen may be best understood as a blow to comics' dignity. It's product, not art. It's a limited, small series of ideas derived from a bigger, grander one. It's. One thing thatdid a quarter century ago was to underline certain values of craft and intent and creative freedom that have helped to yield enough equivalent expressions -- to my mind even grander expressions -- that we may now see this follow-up project for what it is: nothing special. Not Moore. More.This article is about shelled gastropods that live in saltwater. For the fish which are also sometimes known as " snails", see Snailfish
Epidendrium billeeanum with a mass of egg capsules in situ on their food source, a red cup A species of sea snail in its natural habitat: two individuals of the wentletrap with a mass of egg capsuleson their food source, a red cup coral
Sea snail is a common name for snails that normally live in saltwater, in other words marine gastropods. The taxonomic class Gastropoda also includes snails that live in other habitats, such as land snails and freshwater snails. Many species of sea snails are edible and exploited as food sources by humans.
Shells [ edit ]
Syrinx aruanus can be up to 91 cm long. The shell ofcan be up to 91 cm long.
The shells of most species of sea snails are spirally coiled. Some, though, have conical shells, and these are often referred to by the common name of limpets. In one unusual family (Juliidae), the shell of the snail has become two hinged plates closely resembling those of a bivalve; this family is sometimes called the "bivalved gastropods".
Their shells are found in a variety of shapes and sizes, but are normally very small. Those of living species of sea snails range in size from Syrinx aruanus, the largest living shelled gastropod species at 91 cm, to minute species whose shells are less than 1 mm at adult size. Because the shells of sea snails are strong and durable in many cases, as a group they are well represented in the fossil record.
Anatomy [ edit ]
Sea snails are a very large group of animals and a very diverse one. Most snails that live in saltwater respire using a gill or gills, a few species, though, have a lung, are intertidal, and are active only at low tide when they can move around in the air. These air-breathing species include false limpets in the family Siphonariidae and another group of false limpets in the family Trimusculidae.
Many, but not all sea snails have an operculum.
Human uses [ edit ]
A number of species of sea snails are used by humans for food, including abalone, conch, limpets, whelks (such as the North American Busycon species and the North Atlantic Buccinum undatum) and periwinkles including Littorina littorea.
The shells of sea snails are often found by humans as seashells commonly wash up on beaches. Because the shells of many sea snails are attractive and durable, they have been used by humans to make necklaces and other jewelry from prehistoric times to the current day.
The shells of a few species of large sea snails within the Vetigastropoda have a thick layer of nacre and have been used as a source of mother of pearl. Historically, the button industry relied on these species for a number of years.
Use by other animals [ edit ]
The shells of sea snails are used for protection by many kinds of hermit crabs. A hermit crab carries the shell by grasping the central columella of the shell using claspers on the tip of its abdomen.
Definition [ edit ]
Determining whether some gastropods should be called sea snails is not always easy. Some species that live in brackish water (such as certain neritids) can be listed as either freshwater snails or marine snails, and some species that live at or just above the high tide level (for example species in the genus Truncatella) are sometimes considered to be sea snails and sometimes listed as land snails.
Taxonomy [ edit ]
2005 taxonomy [ edit ]
The following cladogram is an overview of the main clades of living gastropods based on the taxonomy of Bouchet & Rocroi (2005),[1] with taxa that contain saltwater or brackish water species marked in boldface (some of the highlighted taxa consist entirely of marine species, but some of them also contain freshwater or land species.)
Acanthina punctulata has been disturbed, and has retracted into the shell, using its claws to bar the entrance in the same way the snail used its hermit crab occupying a shell ofhas been disturbed, and has retracted into the shell, using its claws to bar the entrance in the same way the snail used its operculum
Clade Patellogastropoda
Clade Vetigastropoda
Clade Cocculiniformia
Clade Neritimorpha Clade Cycloneritimorpha
Clade Caenogastropoda Informal group Architaenioglossa Clade Sorbeoconcha Clade Hypsogastropoda Clade Littorinimorpha Informal group Ptenoglossa Clade Neogastropoda
Clade Heterobranchia Informal group Lower Heterobranchia Informal group Opisthobranchia Clade Cephalaspidea Clade Thecosomata Clade Gymnosomata Clade Aplysiomorpha Group Acochlidiacea Clade Sacoglossa Group Cylindrobullida Clade Umbraculida Clade Nudipleura Clade Pleurobranchomorpha Clade Nudibranchia Clade Euctenidiacea Clade Dexiarchia Clade Pseudoeuctenidiacea Clade Cladobranchia Clade Euarminida Clade Dendronotida Clade Aeolidida Informal group Pulmonata Informal group Basommatophora Clade Eupulmonata Clade Systellommatophora Clade Stylommatophora Clade Elasmognatha Clade Orthurethra Informal group Sigmurethra
See also [ edit ]Dystopian fiction is hot right now, with countless books and movies featuring decadent oligarchs, brutal police states, ecological collapse, and ordinary citizens biting and clawing just to survive. For bestselling author Naomi Klein, all this gloom is a worrying sign.
“I think what these films tell us is that we’re taking a future of environmental catastrophe for granted,” Klein says in Episode 129 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “And that’s the hardest part of my work, actually convincing people that we’re capable of something other than this brutal response to disaster.”
Her new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, argues that only dramatic policy shifts can avert climate catastrophe, and that ordinary people need to speak up and demand emissions caps, public transportation, and a transition to renewable energy. That’s a hard sell politically, which is why dubious measures like geoengineering and cap-and-trade have been proposed instead.
“It seems easier, more realistic, to dim the sun than to put up solar panels on every home in the United States,” says Klein. “And that says a lot about us, and what we think is possible, and what we think is realistic.”
But things are starting to change, with indigenous groups winning lawsuits to block drilling on their land, local communities coming together to ban fracking and establish solar energy grids, and a growing divestment campaign seeking to shame and isolate the fossil fuel industry. Many of these movements are being led by young activists like Anjali Appadurai, who gave a speech in 2010 pointing out that the United Nations has been fruitlessly debating climate change action since before she was born.
“Young people have |
" of cyberspace. One of the more controversial aspects of the Pentagon strategy was its official designation of cyberspace as a potential war-fighting domain.
Too Much Focus On War?
The White House cybersecurity adviser, Howard Schmidt, is among those who have argued that too much attention on war scenarios diverts attention from more pressing cybersecurity challenges and mischaracterizes current cyber intrusions.
"My father was in a war. My son's been in a war. I've been in a war. And this is not what we're going through right now," Schmidt said in a recent interview with NPR.
The Pentagon's new strategy contrasts with cyber agendas pursued in other U.S. government agencies, where the focus is on such issues as Internet commerce and the exchange of information.
"We have to recognize that cyberspace is predominately a civilian space used predominately for civilian purposes," said Christopher Painter, the new cyber policy coordinator at the State Department.
Painter, however, sat in the front row as Pentagon officials introduced their cyber strategy in a presentation at the National Defense University. In an interview, Painter said Internet and cybersecurity policies across the U.S. government need to be coordinated, but that communication across agencies is far better now than it was a few years ago.
Improving Coordination
"You had people who were looking at the economic aspects, you had people looking at the security aspects, [and] you had people looking at the Internet freedom aspects. Those communities seldom talked together," Painter said. "Now that's changing."
The State Department and other U.S. agencies will soon introduce their own cyberpolicy plans. Defense officials insist they see no potential conflict with the Pentagon strategy.
"Far from'militarizing' cyberspace, our strategy of securing networks to deny the benefit of an attack will help dissuade military actors from using cyberspace for hostile purposes," Lynn said. He characterized the Pentagon approach as focused on the improvement of computer defenses, so that an adversary sees less benefit in carrying out an attack.
"If an attack will not have its intended effect, those who wish us harm will have less reason to target us," Lynn said.This is the first article in a follow-up series to our previous series, Dogs of War. In Dogs of Defense, we’ll focus on dogs for personal protection.
Today we’ll begin by asking if there is a need for trained protection dogs. The next article will discuss whether there’s a danger associated with “weaponizing” a dog, followed by an article that considers breeds, trainers, and the responsibilities of the owner of a trained dog.
Later articles will discuss the safety of those around a trained protection dog and how to maintain that dog’s peak performance. We’ll also illustrate methods of integrating a protection dog into a home defense plan, as well as how U.S. laws relating to service dogs can be used to keep your family safe.
Should You Own a Personal Protection Dog?
Any security minded person, especially in today’s society of ever rising crime rates and increasing violent crimes, should seriously consider owning a protection dog.
Do you own a gun? You should seriously consider owning a protection dog.
Do you have a family to protect? You should seriously consider owning a protection dog.
While there are many other valid reasons to own a protection dog, let’s examine the above questions in more detail.
Crime Rates and Security
Increasingly, we find ourselves in an ever more violent and criminal society. Economic depressions tend to increase this trend as more people find themselves out of a job and desperate to find money and goods to take care of themselves. Of course, many others simply commit violent crimes for the pleasure they receive from seeing others suffer.
Home invasions are one of the most dangerous crimes, often resulting in violence against the victims. Violent crimes in general have steadily increased for more than 20 years. According to the Bureau of Justice statistics on violent crimes, you have a 126% chance of being a victim of violent crime at some point in your lifetime. So do your children.
Many people think that a security system will protect them from violent crimes within their homes. I can tell you, as a Military Police Officer and Sheriff’s Deputy, there is little chance that law enforcement will respond quickly enough to stop a crime from occurring.
Others claim that their martial arts training will protect them. Sadly, this is woefully inadequate in most real world encounters. Are you prepared for multiple attackers taking you by surprise at night when many still have difficulty clearing their mind enough to respond appropriately? This does not even consider the fact that most of these violent encounters involve weapons on the part of the attackers.
But the most popular response to protecting your home from violent crime is having a gun readily available and being trained to use it. I’m an advocate of the second amendment and strongly encourage anyone who can own a gun to do so and learn how to effectively use it. But is having a gun enough?
Firearms for Home Defense: Their Limitations
Home invasions are fast paced and chaotic. You won’t know if there’s one attacker or many. Depending on the layout of your home, you may leave your family vulnerable by unknowingly allowing an attacker to bypass you while you clear other areas of your home. There is a high probability that you may find the attacker between you and your family, even if they are on the other side of a wall, restricting your ability to shoot due to the threat of over-penetration.
If you have a family, your home defensive plan probably looks something like this: We are alerted to a threat, your wife gathers the children and calls the police while holding a firearm as a last defense, in case something should happen to you. You grab your handgun or shotgun, and begin clearing your home to ensure that there is no threat.
Now let me ask you a question: With you by yourself, are you really prepared to take on several attackers with weapons of their own? Please put away the bravado for a second and for the sake of your family, really think this one through. Are you willing to rest the safety of your wife and children on your ability to single handedly clear your home if there are actually attackers present?
Think about that long and hard, because if it ever happens to you — and the chances are increasingly greater that it will — you do not want to make the wrong decision here.
Here is another question to think about: if a special operations team were going to enter your home and clear it, would they send one guy, or a team with a K-9 force multiplier? Can an individual highly trained operator conduct this task at peak performance alone? Unless you are one of these few men, then soberly consider your own limitations and what failure means to your loved ones.
Family Protection: When You’re Gone
Let’s pretend that you are Rambo, capable of taking on vast hordes of Vietcong, zombies and home invaders with ease. You have millions of rounds of ammunition, several strategically placed mini-guns and you even decided to set up some claymores under your porch; just in case. No one is getting into your home and harming your family on your watch.
What about when you aren’t there? “I will always be there,” you reply with confidence. Really? You don’t go to work? You don’t travel for your job? You don’t take overnight hunting or fishing trips with the boys? Will you really always be there?
What about when your wife takes a trip to the mall alone in the evening. Some dear friends of ours just had a terrible experience where the wife was kidnapped in a car, driven around for several hours, and then dumped back off at the mall. Terrible situations like this happen. Are you sure they will never happen to you?
How can you, as a loving protector, ensure that your family will be safe in your absence? The real answer is that you can never fully ensure it, but you can certainly take steps that give you and yours a much increased level of protection.
The Constant Companionship of a Dog
If you have a trained protection dog in your home, you have a team of defenders instead of being alone. Your trained protection dog can indicate the presence of an intruder, often before they ever actually enter your home. Your trained protection dog can be left at a key location to prevent anyone from circumventing you and reaching your family. Your trained protection dog can distract the first attacker, allowing you to focus on the second.
When you are away, your protection dog can warn your wife and children of an intruder. The dog can be commanded to bark, warning off would be attackers. The dog is now the teammate of your family, able to assist them if the need should arise.
When you wife goes out to the mall at night, she can take along the dog. Often the presence of a dog is enough, but, even if that doesn’t deter them, the bite will certainly be worse than the bark.
Force Multipliers
Force multipliers refer to the idea of using something relatively small or simple to give you a significant advantage in a fight. That is what a dog brings to the table.
Should you own a trained protection dog? I strongly believe that you should. We’ll explore this question further, along with the process that you should use to evaluate your specific situation, in the upcoming articles in this new series.
Because so many questions arise immediately when this topic is brought up, I wanted to use this opportunity to provide an overview of what the articles in this series will contain. If you have any questions that do not seem likely to be covered in the series, feel free to ask in the comments below or contact me directly.
Joel is the founder and head trainer of Dunetos K-9, a training facility and equipment manufacturer specializing in Tactical and standard K-9 equipment. He’s been training and handling dogs for over 10 years and works closely with Baden K-9, a highly respected training facility in Ontario, Canada. Joel has served in the United States Army for 11 years as a Military Police Officer deploying to the Pentagon days after the 9/11 attack, Afghanistan (2003), Iraq (2007) and is currently serving in Bogota, Colombia (2011) in the War on Drugs. Joel has specialized in integrating dogs into every aspect of life, from personal obedience and protection to specialized military application.The Real Story Of How Macklemore Got 'Thrift Shop' To No. 1
YouTube
The No. 1 song in the country right now is "Thrift Shop" by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, a rap group out of Seattle. Their claim to fame: They got the song to the top of the chart by themselves, without being signed by a major label.
They've bragged about this success in a video spoof and on Twitter.
Twitter
But the story they've been telling — the story that's been widely reported — is not entirely true.
The truth is that Macklemore and Ryan Lewis hired a company to help them get their music into stores. That company, Alternative Distribution Alliance, is an arm of Warner Music Group, one of the most major of the major labels.
Still, the rise of "Thrift Shop" is something new. It's an indication of a power shift away from the major labels to the artist themselves. Clearly, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis accomplished a lot on their own.
The rap group spent their early years hustling and playing small clubs like a lot of acts. But they also used technology to build a devoted following on Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube.
They eventually got to the point where their touring was so successful that they could have been signed by a major label.
Instead, they went a different route. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis took the money they'd made from touring and made their own album — a process that digital technology has made much cheaper.
To get their album to the top of the charts though, they needed help.
"You really cannot get a radio hit at this point without major label backing," says Gary Trust from Billboard.
Even in today's world of iTunes and YouTube, you still need the radio to become a superstar, Trust says. So Macklemore and Ryan Lewis hired Warner Music Group to get the band more radio play. That helped propel "Thrift Shop" to No. 1.
Yes, artists can do a lot on their own today. But to get to the top of the charts, they still have to work with a major label.Back in April, we wrote about the Ferrari auction to be held by RM Auctions Italy. Partial results are in via Luxist and it is stunning: The 1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa was sold for $12.2 million which is a new world record. We will list the million dollar sales once the results are public on RM Auctions, usually within a few days after the auction.
Max Girardo, Managing Director of RM Europe says:
“The historical significance of this car attracted a bidding war as collectors from around the world – both in the room and on the telephone – competed to secure one of the most alluring and iconic of all Ferrari racing cars,” said. “The eyes of the world were watching today’s sale as cars of this quality are so rarely offered to the market. The quality and the provenance of the Testa Rossa speaks for itself and the price we achieved today is testament to that.”
Source: LuxistWhen it comes to making machines to perform tasks that humans have done for years, the United States, China and India are far ahead of anyone else, according to a top tech industry executive.
The three countries are leading an artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, Malcolm Frank, head of strategy at leading outsourcing firm Cognizant, told CNNMoney in an interview.
Frank is the co-author of a recent book entitled "What to Do When Machines Do Everything," on the impact artificial intelligence will have on the global economy in the coming years.
"I think it's three horses in the race, and that's probably the wrong metaphor because they are all going to win," he said. "They are just going to win differently."
While AI is progressing quickly elsewhere too, Frank said the other development hotspots are mainly city hubs such as London and Stockholm, or far smaller economies such as Estonia.
"The big three [are] India, China and the U.S," he said.
Here's why:
America
Silicon Valley giants such as Facebook (FB), Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOGL) and Tesla (TSLA) are already investing billions in harnessing the power of computers to replace several human tasks.
Computers are already beginning to substitute for people in sectors such as agriculture and even medicine, not to mention the race to get driverless cars on the road.
"With Silicon Valley, and the vendors and momentum that exists there... that's going to continue," Frank said.
China
The world's second largest economy is also betting big on artificial intelligence.
Tech companies including Tencent (TCEHY) and Baidu (BIDU) are competing with Silicon Valley to develop new uses for AI, and tech billionaire Jack Ma of Alibaba (BABA), one of China's richest men, has even said CEOs may eventually be obsolete.
Unlike in the U.S., however, the biggest push towards this new world in China is coming from the government.
"You look at the playbook China has had very successfully, with state sponsorship around developing the [physical] infrastructure of the country," Frank said. "They're taking a very similar approach around artificial intelligence, and I think that's going to yield a lot of benefit."
The Chinese government has already laid out an ambitious plan for a $150 billion AI industry, saying last month that it wants China to become the world's "innovation center for AI" by 2030.
India
In India, the main shift towards artificial intelligence is coming from companies that make up its $143 billion outsourcing industry -- a sector that employs nearly 4 million people.
Top firms like Infosys (INFY), Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro (WIT), which provide technology services to big names including Pepsi (PEP), Kellogg (K) and AMD (AMD), are increasingly relying on automation in their operations.
"In India, you look at this remarkable platform that is in place now... of incredibly sophisticated skills that are focused on the needs of [global] companies," said Frank.
In addition, India's startup scene also makes him "very optimistic" about the future of artificial intelligence there.
Cognizant (CTSH), which is based in the U.S. but has most of its workforce in India, is also making ever greater use of AI -- from online bots managing clients' finances to helping create automated systems for smart devices.
Should we be worried?
Many are worried about the potential pitfalls of artificial intelligence, including Tesla's billionaire founder Elon Musk. He has warned that the technology could pose "an existential threat" if not used properly, and published a letter this week with over 100 other industry experts demanding a global ban on using it to make weapons.
Frank said that the development of artificial intelligence requires careful thought, by governments and companies working together to establish ground rules. The tech executive compared it to safety regulations for air travel and for cars, which have evolved several times over the years.
The focus needs to be on creating a world "where AI is going to be safe and you get the benefits of it without the downsides," he said.
As for the other pervasive fear -- that more robots will lead to job losses -- Frank argues that AI will not only create more and different kinds of jobs in the future, but also enhance many of the existing ones.
"That's what happened with assembly lines, that's what happened with the steam engine, that's what we think is going to happen with artificial intelligence."
— Correction: An earlier version of this article gave an incorrect list of clients of India's big outsourcing companies.One of the cool things to arise out of the last decade or so of programming language development is reimplementations. Plenty of people have said to themselves “why can’t I run $myFavouriteLanguage on the JVM?”. So they go and make it happen!
Anchor has historically been a strong Python house, but we’re pragmatic about getting things done. Nagios checks? We’ll write Perl and Ruby if it gets the job done. Automation tasks? Plenty of shell and Perl there.
Recently we’ve picked up JRuby. Put simply, JRuby ports the Ruby interpreter to the JVM – you still write pretty much the same Ruby code, but it runs on the JVM and the backtraces are four times longer. Why would you do this? It turns out there’s some really good reasons.
Here’s a big one: performance. It’s fair to say that Ruby owes much of its popularity to Rails, and people deploying Rails apps are always looking for ways to make it faster and more scalable. One of the early goals for JRuby was to run Rails apps, and they’ve succeeded, while also being much faster than the reference implementation.
Performance is never a bad thing, but we think there’s something much more interesting: direct access to native Java classes. This is amazingly powerful. Java ships with a large set of standard packages, and there plenty more out there for pretty much any conceivable need. JRuby gives you access to all of them.
Let me spin this to you as a scenario: You need to access a third-party accounting API, let’s pretend that the third party is some company like Netsuite. But, the only interfaces they provide are for Java and.NET, neither of which you’re prepared to deal with. So you switch to JRuby, pull in Netsuite’s library, then get some real work done instead of wrangling Java objects.
Accessing Netsuite’s API is now a matter of throwing some Ruby code together. We’ve been writing APIs using Grape, a Rack-compatible framework, so we get rapid development of the API itself, and hassle-free access to Netsuite!
It’s even remarkably clean for something that crosses language boundaries. This is a basic example for the Netsuite scenario, about as simple as it gets for something that’s actually useful:
#!/usr/bin/env jruby require 'java' require 'NetSuiteAPI.jar' # Instantiate our service object service = com::netsuite::webservices::platform_2012_2::NetSuiteService.new() # Hook up the service endpoint port = service.getNetSuitePort() # Enable session management on the binding provider so we retain our session # between SOAP calls rc = port.getRequestContext() rc.put(javax::xml::ws::BindingProvider::SESSION_MAINTAIN_PROPERTY, true) # Setup our login "Passport" passport = com::netsuite::webservices::platform::core_2012_2::Passport.new() passport.setEmail("alex@example.com") passport.setPassword("feisty$cheese9meal") passport.setAccount("314159") # And attempt to login puts "Logging in.." result = port.login(passport) if!result.getStatus().isIsSuccess() then puts "Login failed, bailing out" exit end # Now we get to work, fetching the customer record for customer ID 200. recordRef = com::netsuite::webservices::platform::core_2012_2::RecordRef.new() recordRef.setType(com::netsuite::webservices::platform::core_2012_2::types::RecordType::CUSTOMER) recordRef.setInternalId("200") puts "Fetching customer record for customer ID 200.." result = port.get(recordRef) if!result.getStatus().isIsSuccess() then puts "Failed to get customer record, bailing out" port.logout() exit end puts "Success! Now frobbing your data" final_result = munge(result) pp final_result # We're done now, logout and close up puts "Logging out.." port.logout()
We reckon you should check out JRuby. We know you have a working ruby environment that you don’t want to mess up, so we recommend using rbenv to maintain your sanity. If you find some really novel uses for JRuby to bridge the two languages, we’d be interested to hear them.U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a sixth-term Republican from Washington State who is a climate change denier and an ardent opponent of regulations for greenhouse gas emissions, has been nominated by President-elect Donald Trump for Secretary of Interior.
If McMorris Rodgers is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, she would govern the management of more than 500 million acres of federal public lands, including more than 400 national parks.
Perhaps most critically, she would oversee the development of many of America’s fossil fuels and renewables resources, including all of its offshore oil, gas and wind development. Federal land is the source of more than 20 percent of all the oil and gas and 40 percent of the coal produced in the U.S.
McMorris Rodgers would have the power to reverse Obama administration efforts to protect federally managed waters from oil and gas development as well as end the research into how coal mining affects the climate. Earlier this year, the Obama administration placed a three-year moratorium on federal coal leasing, and closed the entire East Coast and parts of the Arctic Ocean to offshore oil drilling.
The land the Interior Department manages stores atmospheric carbon in trees and tree roots; protects biological diversity in wilderness areas, forests and national parks; and provides water for millions of people, mainly in the West.
McMorris Rodgers would also have wide-ranging influence over how the National Park Service and the U.S. Geological Survey communicate to the public about global warming, potentially troubling in light of her denial of climate change and climate science.
“Scientific reports are inconclusive at best on human culpability of global warming,” McMorris Rodgers falsely toldthe Spokane, Wash., Spokesman-Review newspaper in 2012. “Regardless of which theory proves correct, the goal is the same – to reduce carbon emissions, we need innovation in the private sector; not excessive government regulation to stifle some industries while rewarding others. I oppose ‘cap and trade’ and other big government schemes because they will destroy jobs while likely having minimal impact on the climate.”
McMorris Rodgers signed a 2012 pledge sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political advocacy group funded by billionaire David Koch, promising that she would oppose any federal climate-related legislation that would raise revenue for the federal government, including a carbon tax.
Coming from Washington State, which is highly dependent on large hydroelectric dams for its electricity, McMorris Rodgers is a vocal supporter of hydropower and nuclear energy and has sponsored legislation expanding the development of small hydroelectric dams nationwide — a valuable source of renewable energy.
But she is also a major proponent of drilling public lands for fossil fuels.
The League of Conservation Voters gives McMorris Rodgers a 4 percent lifetime score out of a possible 100 in their environmental scorecard because she has voted against bills that would have required the federal government to account for the social cost of carbon in administrative actions and required federally funded projects to be resilient to the impacts of climate change.
McMorris Rodgers has supported legislation that would have opened the Outer Continental Shelf to oil drilling, andopposed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as an air pollutant. She has also voted against tax credits for renewable electricity.
“That is not a record that is likely to inspire confidence from the environmental community,” said Mark Squillace, a natural resources law professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder. “On the other hand, I don’t sense that she has been a leading voice on public lands issues and so perhaps she will take a more conciliatory approach if she is confirmed as Interior Secretary.”
He said that McMorris Rodgers has mostly voted with other Republicans on environmental and public lands issues.
“She also serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, but again I have not seen clear signs of leadership on energy issues, other than a pattern of consistent votes in favor of fossil fuels and against taking action on climate change,” Squillace said.
In 2011, McMorris Rodgers co-sponsored a bill that would have required the Interior Secretary to sell off more than 3 million acres of public lands in 10 western states, a bill driven largely by western Republicans who believed the landserved no specific purpose. Selling it would have raised more than $1 billion for the federal government, Utah Sen. Mike Lee said at the time.
As Interior secretary, McMorris Rodgers will oversee water management in much of the West. The department’s Bureau of Reclamation operates 476 dams and 348 reservoirs across the country, and it is in charge of numerous scientific endeavors and mapping the entire globe through the U.S. Geological Survey.
Robert H. Nelson, a professor of public policy focusing on public lands management at the University of Maryland and a proponent of the federal government transferring federal public lands to the states, said that what’s most notable about McMorris Rodgers’ nomination is that, unlike other Trump cabinet nominees, she does not appear to be a well-known activist.
“If he had done that, he would have picked someone from a state like Utah,” Nelson said, referring to Trump. “Her district, however, along with the rest of Washington State, is heavily affected by hydropower supplied from federal dams. There she has a higher profile. She has publicly supported, for example, keeping the four Snake River dams that many environmentalists would like to tear down.”
Other experts and conservationists are grim about the future of public lands under McMorris Rodgers.
“Together the pro-fossil fuel team of McMorris at Interior and Scott Pruitt at EPA is a disaster in the making for efforts to reign in CO2 before we hit truly awful tipping points,” said Jack Tuholske, director of the Vermont Law School Water and Justice Program. “Federal lands have enough coal, oil and gas to push us over any reasonable carbon threshold. President Obama has been fairly successful in limiting access to those resources, especially in his second term. All of those efforts could be undone with Trump's team in place.”
Dominick DellaSala, chief scientist of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Ore., said McMorris Rodgers is no fan of the National Environmental Policy Act, the law that requires environmental review of new development and land management changes on federally owned land.
McMorris Rodgers is “bad but could be worse on these issues,” DellaSala said. “She’s not likely to champion public lands conservation issues.”
Gary Wockner, director of Save the Colorado, a group advocating for conservation and preservation of the Colorado River, said McMorris Rodgers has an “extreme” anti-environment voting record.
“The U.S. Senate should do everything in its power to stop her appointment and stop Trump's impending war on the public lands, rivers, and wildlife of the West,” Wockner said.
This article is reproduced with permission from Climate Central. The article was first published on December 9, 2016.W hen a writer like
hen a writer like New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait feels it necessary to whine in print about his and other (mostly well-remunerated) writers’ inability to write offensive tripe without consequence, I think: Boo-fucking-hoo. Get a real problem.
It is in that environment that Chait wants us to take seriously and without any offense his weighty, serious mind-baubles on everything from race relations to his frustration that rape laws are supposedly too strict and now his hand-wringing over imaginary affronts to white liberal men’s ability to speak freely (by which he means “without women or people of color getting mad at him”). Feminism might be dominating many conversations, but sexism is still horrific and, while there is a good conversation to be had over how ideological one-upmanship and “call out culture” impacts rigorous debate, that is not the conversation Chait is starting.
Chait conflates real incursions on speech – a University of Michigan student who was harassed and intimidated after he published what was seen as an offensive newspaper column, for example – and simple forms of activism like signing a petition to keep a speaker off campus. Most of the acts that Chait says are “perverting liberalism” are acts of free speech themselves: discussions of racial microaggressions, hashtag campaigns, and even complaints from women of color about racism on a Facebook group. It seems the only kind of speech Chait thinks should be “free” is the kind he agrees with.
He also paints proponents of this “PCness” as hysterical over-reactors while simultaneously misrepresenting and hyping up his own examples of free speech supposedly under attack. (It would be ironic if it wasn’t so intellectually dishonest.) Chait, for example, cites #RIPpatriarchy as a hashtag created by kneejerk feminists in response to Hanna Rosin’s book to “lampoon her thesis.” In fact, the hashtag was directly responsive to an excerpt of her book on Slate entitled, “The Patriarchy is Dead: Feminists, accept it” – she rhetorically killed it off, so the lampooners mourned its death.
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Rosin – an author, writer at The Atlantic, and a host of one of Slate’s popular GabFest podcasts who has appeared The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, and given a TED Talk – told Chait for his article, “The price is too high; you feel like there might be banishment waiting for you.” If only everyone using hashtags to make fun of her had access to such banishment!
Chait’s real problem, it seems, is that he doesn’t understand why his privilege – or anyone else’s – should impact how people perceive what he says. “Under p.c. culture, the same idea can be expressed identically by two people but received differently depending on the race and sex of the individuals doing the expressing,” he writes.
If the worst thing that Chait’s version of “PCness” has wrought is that folks occasionally feel uncomfortable when they do and say terrible things, I can live with that and he should, too.
We are finally approaching a critical mass of interest in ending racism, misogyny and transphobia and the ways they are ingrained into our institutions. Instead of rolling our eyes at the intensity of the feelings people have over these issues, we should be grateful that they care so much, because racism, misogyny and transphobia can and do kill people. If the price we all pay for progress for the less privileged is that someone who is more privileged gets their feelings hurt sometimes – or that they might have to think twice before opening their mouths or putting their fingers to keyboards – that’s a small damn price to pay. That’s not stopping free speech; it’s making our speech better.There may be no actor who so forcefully brings budding film lovers into world cinema as Toshiro Mifune, the Japanese wild man who redefined period epics and still puts most action stars to shame. Given the (very) rarified place he occupies in cinema, his enshrinement via documentary is an inevitable thing. While Steven Okazaki didn’t get there first, his Mifune: The Last Samurai appears to have done it well.
With the likes of Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa regular Kôji Yakusho on hand for interviews — as well as narration from Keanu Reeves — the film appears to follow a standard career-and-life walkthrough, admirers and co-workers alike singing his praises while clips and archival photos move us along. (A less-than-glowing review, one of the only published thus far, indicates as much.) So be it: any excuse to revisit his work, even in bite-sized form, is always welcome, and some unseen material only sweetens the deal.
Watch it below (via Filmmaker Magazine):
Synopsis:
Nearly 20 years after his death and in the final run-up to his centenary, Toshiro Mifune remains a true giant of Japanese cinema. Rich with archive footage and personal reminiscences from family and friends, this Keanu Reeves-narrated documentary shines a light on both the man and the actor, starting with his childhood and military service, through to his early years in the popular ‘chanbara’ action movies that he would later draw on for a string of masterpieces made with legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. Mifune: The Last Samurai reveals him as a formidable and mercurial talent, both onscreen and off, and offers rare insights into his background that draw intriguing parallels with Lee Marvin, Robert Mitchum and the Hollywood hard men of his generation. But it is the talking-head testimony of the likes of Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg that prove just how transcendent Mifune was as an actor, with a rough-cut grace, charisma and style that still resonates through world cinema.
Strand Releasing will give us Mifune: The Last Samurai on November 25.: It can be lonely reviewing games by yourself. Matt and Paul might be at the Game Developer’s Conference, but I have a solution!
Matt’s head made from papier-mâché: that’s because you’re great quinns
Quinns: Ha ha, you flatter me! Let’s get down to business, Matt.
Matt’s head made from papier-mâché: i love business
Quinns: Today we’re reviewing Quartermaster General 1914, the third (and most highly-rated) entry in the Quartermaster General series. Like Memoir ‘44, these games might look like stodgy wargames, but don’t be fooled! 1914 is a tricky, playful card game that lets you get stuck into the drama and anxiety of WAR without having to measure any distances or frown at charts.
Now, our site has said over and over again that there aren’t enough team-based board games –
Matt’s head made from papier-mâché: oh goodness no, nowhere near enough
Quinns: Don’t speak, you’re getting flakes of glue on the table. So team play is exactly what the Quartermaster General series is all about. In our case, 1914 is a five player game where three frail players take on two wealthy ones. It’s a tremendously exciting hook, and we’re just getting started.
Before this game’s even begun everyone feels nervous about being either outnumbered or outgunned, you’re thumbing through your personal deck, chatting to your team-mates, and everyone’s laughing at the Russia player who gets a smaller deck than everyone else. If the game drags on their crumbling government can, and will, simply run out of cards.
If you have less than five players, however, 1914 doesn’t compromise its vision in any way. Some players simply have to control two powers at once, which involves managing two hands of cards at once, an unwieldy and exhausting process that will make you question all those balletic warriors in D&D that make dual-wielding look cool. As such SU&SD categorically doesn’t recommend this game with less than 5 players. That means inserting it into a game night requires planning and forethought, as if you were planting a crop of card-based entertainment, fearing frost.
But ooh, all of this effort is worth it, because with 5 players you’re harvesting some delicious… game… vegetables(?).
SO! Quartermaster General has two teams engaging in a sedate tug of war across Europe. At five points throughout the game you have “Scoring Rounds”, where you earn one point for every territory you control with a nice star on it.
The game ends after turn 17, but if either team produces enough temporary momentum that they lead the other team by 12 points they immediately win the game. Exciting!
As for how each player’s turn works, you’ll need to read along carefully. I’m thrilled to say that this game is both loaded with nuance and unlike anything else I’ve ever played.
Each player gets their own personal deck representing their “power”, which might represent multiple countries. If you’re playing The UK & The U.S.A. you get an awful lot of cards that expand your navies, gradually enclosing Europe in a stranglehold. If you’re Germany, you’re given a pack of devastating cards that set the other team groaning. If you’re playing France & Italy you get a lot of half-decent cards controlling your besieged French forces, as well as a few cards that let you nudge Italy awake and have them get into the d— war.
At any moment players are probably holding an enormous hand of seven cards, which might let you build an army, launch an attack, permanently upgrade your forces or play a devastating event. In picking which card to play on your turn you’ll be trying to make use of two particularly brutal rules.
Any piece that can’t trace a path back to its home city is considered “out of supply” and can’t attack or defend itself. By destroying armies that represent vital links in this supply chain you can therefore cut off distant units from their vital supplies of pomade and bully beef, allowing you to do some bullying yourself. If you have an army sat in an enemy power’s home space, not only is that player’s supply chain destroyed, their units don’t score during the scoring phase. This is the Quartermaster General equivalent of being given a wedgie and shut in a locker, and the only way out of it is one of your allies coming to your rescue.
Lovely stuff. But on your turn you can only play a single card, which means that Quartermaster General is also a very slow game. If you want to make the most of these two awful rules that hang from Quartermaster General |
told gay people to come out of the closet and show everyone that gay people were good people too."
Son: "All the gay people were in closets?"
Me: "Not real closets, baby. That's just what we call it when gay people pretend they aren't gay."
Son: "Why would they do that?"
Me: "Then Dan White shot and killed the mayor of San Francisco and Harvey Milk."
Son: "Did he go to jail forever?"
Me: "No, honey, he didn't. Mr. White said he shot them because he ate too many Twinkies."
Son: "What are Twinkies?"
It went on and on like that. I was describing a world so foreign to him. He snuggled into me as we looked at pictures of Harvey Milk, read aloud his words and struggled to understand. By the end I was exhausted and left wondering whether this whole thing was a good idea at all.
Then the day of his report arrived. My kid was excited to dress up in a tan suit with a gold-and-yellow-striped '70s tie. We went over his facts on the drive to school, and my son was in great spirits as he waved goodbye to me at drop-off.
The students spent the first part of their day writing out their essays, then the second half reading them to the class. When it was my son's turn, he chose not to read but simply to tell his class what he had learned. He told his class that Harvey Milk was gay and fought for the rights of gay people. He explained to his class about what it meant to be "in the closet" and why it wasn't good. He told them about how Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were shot by Dan White, and how the city rioted when White was not convicted of murder. And he told them that President Obama presented Harvey Milk's nephew with "the highest award in the land" (aka the National Medal of Freedom).
The other students had never heard of Harvey Milk. They were engaged in what my son had to say. They listened and then started asking questions and expressing their disbelief. They had the same questions that my son had asked me: Why would people hide being gay? Why did people think being gay was bad? What were Twinkies? My kid answered all the questions like a pro.
When I talked to my kid after school, he was elated. The report had gone very well, and everyone had loved it. Later I got a call from his teacher telling me all the details. She was thrilled, and so was I.
It doesn't take much to fill me with motherly pride. A ball going through a hoop, cookies being shared without prompting, a spontaneous "I love you, Mom" -- all of those things make my heart swell. But this was something bigger than that.
On this day in a second-grade classroom in the Midwest, Harvey Milk was on the same stage as Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth and Elizabeth Cady Stanton: an important civil rights leader in our country, someone everyone should learn about. Harvey Milk said:
Gay people, we will not win our rights by staying quietly in our closets.... We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, the distortions. We are coming out to tell the truths about gays, for I am tired of the conspiracy of silence, so I'm going to talk about it. And I want you to talk about it. You must come out.
There was no silence in a second-grade classroom where an 8-year-old boy, a gay boy who has never seen the need for a closet, told Harvey Milk's story.
Things are not perfect. There are still lies, myths and distortions to fight, but the battleground has changed. Thirty-four years ago 12 jurors swallowed the Twinkie defense and let a murderer off with a slap on the wrist, and today 20 second graders saw right through it.Windows Phone 8 handsets are finally hitting retail shelves on Friday, which means anyone can get their hands on Microsoft's latest mobile operating system. The company has detailed several of the platform's features -- Live Tiles, the new Start Screen, Kids Corner, a revamped Camera, and more -- but whether you're a Windows Phone veteran or thinking about buying your first Windows Phone device, there's a lot to learn with Windows Phone 8. We've collected some of the most useful tips, tricks and hidden features that you'll encounter in Windows Phone 8. Got any suggestions we didn't mention here? Let us know in the comments. Take a Screenshot You can finally take screenshots in Windows Phone 8 by simultaneously pressing the Home and Lock buttons -- as you would on the iPhone. Prior to WP8, capturing your screen required developer-unlocking your phone and downloading a developer-specific app. Now anyone can quickly share all of their ridiculous text threads and Home Screen variations. Above: Alexandra Chang demonstrates taking a screenshot on a Windows Phone 8 Nokia. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired
Know That Tune You won’t need to download Shazam onto your Windows Phone 8 handset, because the operating system has its own song-recognition feature built into the Search tool. Just tap the hardware Search button and tap the music icon in the bottom toolbar. The phone will listen for music and tell you what song is playing, along with a link to purchase that song in the store. In our testing, the feature worked very accurately and delivered results in under 15 seconds.
Power Down When your battery is running low, Windows Phone 8 has a special trick to help prevent total power loss. Just go to Settings and turn on the Battery Saver option. Doing so tells the OS not to run any apps in the background or sync email automatically. You’ll still be able to make and receive calls and texts, but everything else will require manual syncing (opening up the app and choosing to sync). You can choose for Battery Saver mode to kick in only when your battery is actually low, or keep it on at all times. A little heart over the battery icon tells you when the phone is in Battery Saver mode.
Filter Your Feeds Don’t want to look at your 500-plus Facebook friends while trying to find your mom on your contact list? When you’re in the People hub, go to Settings, tap “filter my contact list,” and select which accounts you want to show up. You can also hide updates from certain networks, so you won’t have to scroll through your high school friend’s baby bump updates while you’re trying to browse the latest news links on Twitter.
When You're Running Late Windows Phone 8’s built-in Calendar has a Late button option that comes in handy when you’re behind schedule. Tap the button in an event and the app will draft an email addressed to all of the people invited to or attending that event. The default text: “I’ll be a bit late, but I’m on my way. See you soon.” You can edit or just hit send to use it as is. We only wish this could send late notices to contacts via text too.
Get From A to Z It’s not immediately obvious how you should navigate your People hub contacts. If you’ve added all of your social networks -- Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn -- then the list of people can get too long to just swipe through. For quicker navigation you can just tap the header letter of a section, the “a” at the top, for example, and get a large overlay of all the letters in the alphabet. Tap one and hop over to that section of your contacts. Of course, you can always just tap the search icon at the bottom and type in your contact’s name.
Blocked Number Remember back when you had to dial *69 to block your phone number and caller ID when making a prank call or dialing the number of your crush, who you were too afraid to speak to? Windows Phone 8 lets you choose who to show your caller ID to. You can select everyone, no one, or your contacts.
Attach Your Location In Windows Phone 8 you can compose a text, tap the paper clip icon, and attach your location directly to the message. If your contact has a Windows Phone, they’ll receive a thumbnail of your location on the Maps app, which they can open up from there. If they have any other kind of phone, they’ll get a link that will open up in their browser.
See Things Clearly Microsoft doesn’t want you to have to hold your phone up to your face to be able to read the text. The Ease of Access settings option lets you make text larger across the platform, from the Lock Screen to e-mails and texts. You can also opt for a high-contrast mode so that words appear starker against the background. Myopic eyes will appreciate this feature.
Internet Explorer Buttons Internet Explorer is speedy and smooth in Windows Phone 8, but it does have some quirks. For one, there’s no easy way to switch through tabs. But you can change this. By default, there is a stop/refresh button to the left of the address bar located at the bottom of the screen. If you go to the settings in IE, you can actually change that button to be either tabs, favorites or stop/refresh. We personally recommend the tabs button, since it’s much easier to switch through all of your windows than having to open up a separate menu.
Mail in One Place This isn’t anything fancy, but it can be useful if you have multiple e-mail addresses. In Windows Phone 8 you can choose whether or not you want to consolidate your e-mail accounts into a single inbox or keep them separate. It’s possible to link multiple inboxes together while keeping some others as individual apps. Just go to your Mail app, tap the ellipses icon in the lower right corner and then tap “link inboxes.”As if things couldn't get worse for those living in the besieged nation of Yemen, a cholera outbreak has reportedly killed more than 50 people and spread to thousands more since late April, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed on Thursday.
The outbreak was first announced in October 2016 but the recent surge creates a dangerous trifecta of crises. Already facing widespread threats of famine and an ongoing war that has claimed the lives of 4,000 civilians, the Middle Eastern nation has very little infrastructure or capacity to deal with the highly-contagious disease.
As WHO noted in its press statement, "The uptick in cholera cases comes as Yemen's already weakened health system struggles under the weight of two years of conflict. Key infrastructure, including water and sanitation facilities, are collapsing, contributing to the spread of diarrhoeal disease."
According to the United Nation's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), less than half of Yemen's medical facilities are currently functional.
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"WHO is in full emergency mode to contain the recent upsurge of suspected cholera cases," said Dr. Nevio Zagaria, WHO representative in Yemen, who noted that 51 have died since April 27 while there is evidence the disease has spread to as many as 2756 people.
Laboratory testing by OCHA confirmed cases of cholera in 10 of the nation's governorates. WHO estimates that 7.6 million people live in areas at high risk of transmission.
At the same time, Telegraph Middle East correspondent Raf Sanchez reports, "[a]round seven million of the country's 27 million people are facing 'emergency' shortages of food, according to the U.N., just one level below all-out famine. Two-thirds of the population does not have access to clean drinking water." The UN has previously called Yemen "the largest humanitarian crisis in the world."
And the situation could grow even more dire as the U.S-backed, Saudi Arabia- led coalition is threatening to attack Yemen's Hodeidah port, despite warnings from the United Nations and U.S. lawmakers that such a move would cut off the nation from essential food and aid and would displace 200,000-500,000 people.Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink was left to rue his side's drop in concentration after falling to his first defeat as QPR manager.
Junior Hoilett continued his fine run of form to net deep into first half injury time before Ipswich scored twice in the closing stages.
After defending solidly for 75 minutes Rs defence came unstuck in the final 15 minutes as first Jonathan Douglas found the net and then Luke Chambers headed home in the final minute.
Hasselbaink was critical of his side in the final stages as well as failing to capitalise on their extended periods of possession.
He said: “Look it comes to this, if you don't defend properly, if you switch of you will be punished.
“In this sense, Ipswich capitalised very well. I thought their first goal was a little bit flukey, he miss-hit it, but then you still have to stop the cross coming in.
“Ninety six minutes you have to defend properly and capitalise when you have the ball and I think we did capitalise when we had the ball but I think the confidence and the calmness because we are getting to the end went a little bit out of the door.”
The gaffer added: It’s now two games we are winning 1-0 that I really didn’t see that we would draw or lose we were comfortable, but when you are comfortable you have to be sharp and we didn’t do that very well.
“That’s what happens in football and there is where you need to stay sharp, and when you are comfortable you switch of, that is just a human thing that we need to improve.
“We have the players who can create opportunities but you have to then also be aware that we can't concede and sometimes it is human nature you switch off because you are doing well and thinking of other things.”
Despite going home empty handed, the QPR gaffer was pleased with the way his side started the game but knows they need to take chances.
After taking the lead, Leroy Fer had an excellent opportunity to double the lead but failed to find the back of the net.
He said: “I think in the first half we were really well organised and we couldn't have scored at a better moment, we get a chance to score 2-0 you don't take it, it stays 1-0 then you know you have to be resolute and defend until the end.
“I'm not disappointed in the first half, the first 25 minutes, but after you need to increase your awareness and your concentration, you need to increase that, you need to increase that by 20%.
“You know the last 20 minutes that is where they are going to be more direct committing more people forward taking more risk and all those kinds of things so you have to be more disciplined and sharper and I think we can do better than that.”According to a recent Pew Research Center study, only 26 percent of those surveyed say they can trust government always or most of the time, while 73 percent say they can trust the government only some of the time or never. “Majorities across all partisan and demographic groups express little or no trust in government,” according to the study.
It’s clear that the Obama years, rather than deepening public confidence in government, has had the opposite effect. A president who has almost limitless faith in government is having a corrosive effect on its reputation. To some of us this is not an irony but an inevitability.
In this environment, conservatives can offer several arguments, the most obvious of which is this: Right now the federal government is doing far more than it should, doing very little of it well, and doing outright harm in far too many circumstances.
Beyond that, conservative lawmakers could respond not by saying they’ll dismantle government, which is neither realistic nor wise. Rather, they could present themselves as those best equipped to re-limit, reform and modernize government–including our tax code, entitlement and immigration systems, regulatory regime, and schools. Many of these programs were designed decades ago, when circumstances were profoundly different, and they are badly out of date and out of touch. One example: our current immigration policy, passed into law the same year (1965) the Beatles met Elvis and The Sound of Music was the biggest grossing film in America, created a bias toward so-called family reunification. Today we need to alter our approach by tightening family reunification and substantially increasing visas for high-skilled workers.
I’d add two other points. The first is that conservatives in the 1990s experienced remarkable success against three seemingly intractable problems–welfare dependency, drug use, and violent crime–not by scaling back government’s involvement but by implementing better public policies at both the federal and local level. The massive drop in crime, for example, was attributable to several factors, including higher incarceration rates, an increase in police per capita, improvements in policing techniques, and addressing urban disorder and vandalism, which have a magnetic attraction to criminals.
The second point is that conservatives should recognize that the hemorrhage of trust in government is harmful to a liberal democracy (as well as something of a self-indictment). Skepticism toward government is one thing; outright hostility is quite another. It is hard for citizens to fully love their country if they have utter disdain for its government. Indeed, sustained contempt for America’s government often leads one to feel ashamed of America.
The 19th century economist Alfred Marshall described government as “the most precious of human institutions, and no care can be too great to be spent on enabling it to do its work in the best way.” Thinking of government as a precious human institution doesn’t come naturally to many modern-day conservatives. It’s easy to understand why, given the damage government is doing on a daily basis. Still, there’s an important truth in Marshall’s insight. And there’s a world of difference between showering dismissive contempt on government versus restoring respect for government by re-limiting and reforming it.
It seems to me that conservatives should, for philosophical and practical reasons, make the case that they will give Americans a government, and therefore a country, they can once again take great pride in.(Collaborative post by Mateusz “j00ru” Jurczyk and Gynvael Coldwind)
Almost five months ago, Gynvael Coldwind and I wrote about an effort to improve the security of popular PDF parsing and rendering software; back then, we were primarily focused on the Chrome PDF Renderer and latest Adobe Reader applications. In order to achieve our results, we used several hundred CPU cores to create a unique, minimal set of PDF documents aimed at optimal code coverage. That corpus, which we now consider a fundamental part of our bug hunting success, was used as fuzzing input to numerous mutation algorithms (basic bitflipping, undisclosed PDF-specific algorithms that respect the primary rules of a document’s structure, and things in between).
As a quick recap, we found more than 50 vulnerabilities ranging from low (unlikely exploitable) to high (serious memory errors) severity in the PDF-parsing component of Google Chrome with the help of AddressSanitizer. All of these were fixed by the Chrome Security Team by August 2012, mostly by Chris Evans – kudos! In addition to that, we also reported around 60 Adobe Reader crashes appearing to be unique in June last year. This consequently resulted in a total of 25 separate fixes addressed by 12 CVEs, as described by the Adobe in their APSB12-16 security bulletin and implemented in the new 9.5.2 and 10.1.4 versions of the software for Windows and Mac OS X platforms. Unfortunately, a few very important questions remained unanswered, such as “what about the remainder of the reported bugs?” and “what about the security of Reader for Linux users?”. With Adobe releasing new versions for all supported Reader branches and platforms today (9, X, XI for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux), we would like to take the chance to give you an update on where we stand with PDF fuzzing, and what thoughts we have around Reader and the many other pieces of software people use in their daily work with documents.
Let’s start with Google Chrome – has anything changed since our last posting? Well, we’ve kept playing with different fuzzing configurations and algorithmic approaches, and discovered 20 new security issues over the last six months, summing up to a total of 78 unique bugs found and fixed in the renderer in 2012. As of now, we are not aware of any unfixed non-DoS issues in the PDF Chrome component.
[134955] [135488] [137106] [137288] [137302] [137547] [137556] [137606] [137635] [137880] [137928] [144579] [145079] [145121] [145163] [146462] Medium CVE-2012-2875: Various lower severity issues in the PDF viewer. Credit to Mateusz Jurczyk of Google Security Team, with contributions by Gynvael Coldwind of Google Security Team.
[143798] [144072] [147402] High CVE-2012-2890: Use-after-free in PDF viewer. Credit to Mateusz Jurczyk of Google Security Team, with contributions by Gynvael Coldwind of Google Security Team.
[145029] [145157] [146460] High CVE-2012-2895: Out-of-bounds writes in PDF viewer. Credit to Mateusz Jurczyk of Google Security Team, with contributions by Gynvael Coldwind of Google Security Team.
Coincidentally, the Chrome Security Team just doubled the rewards for all significant vulnerabilities found in the PDF renderer, see a complete list of changes to the VRP rules at http://blog.chromium.org/2012/08/chromium-vulnerability-rewards-program.html. For anyone interested, Chrome Security issues eligible for a reward (all other, too) can be filed under http://crbug.com/. Good luck!
We used our corpus to fuzz two other PDF projects: poppler, an actively-maintained open-source library having its roots in xpdf (which it was originally a fork of) and ghostscript, which includes its own lightweight PDF parsing library called MuPDF. Both libraries can be downloaded and built manually, enabling the usage of AddressSanitizer, and thus, improving the memory error detection ratio. As you might expect, a number of serious problems have been localized in these projects, and they are currently being worked on by their respective development teams, together with some security teams associated with Linux distributions. We would especially like to thank Huzaifa Sidhpurwala from RedHat Security here for his continued interactions with project maintainers on our behalf, passing along reports and being an all-around helpful guy. The general progress in fixing bugs in both projects can be observed in respective upstream git browers: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/poppler/poppler and http://git.ghostscript.com/?p=mupdf.git;a=summary. We estimate that it might take another few weeks or months until the libraries reach a state where no low-hanging fruit vulnerabilities can be easily fuzzed out. Until then, we recommend any potential direct or software wrapped use of the software (such as Okular) be done with extreme care where sensitive data is at risk, either by running them in a properly sandboxed environment, or only against fully trusted input data.
Following the release of Adobe Reader 9.5.2 and 10.1.4 and publication of our previous post, we have continued working closely with Adobe and specifically their Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) to ensure 16 pending crashes from previous iteration and new crashes from further iterations can be resolved as soon as possible. In late August, we created a new set of PDF files in the hopes of getting better coverage. There are many features in the standard that are only fully functional in Reader, such as 3D models or certain Javascript features amongst many others, and we wanted to fuzz test these. Generating the corpus took enormous amounts of resources and time; terabytes of public documents has to be run through extremely slow dynamic binary instrumentation-driven parsing. Having a new, greatly improved, and several times larger set of input files at our disposal, we tested its capabilities by running it through the very same algorithms that we used with the previous files, and the results exceeded our wildest expectations: we managed to trigger exactly 568 crashes with unique stack traces during less than a week of running the fuzzing engines (Note: the number of unique stack traces is usually much higher than the number of actual bugs).
All reproducing PDF files were provided to Adobe in a single report on August 27, 2012. The vendor immediately acknowledged reception of the files and sorted through them as soon as possible. Adobe’s PSIRT sent us regular updates regarding their progress on resolving the reported issues, but said that updates for Windows / Mac OS X platforms would not occur until January 2013. Although we suspected that many of the reported issues could represent critical vulnerabilities in the software and the proposed timeline was far beyond our regular 60-day policy, we refrained from making public announcements until today.
In the meanwhile, on October 15, Adobe released a completely new version of Reader marked as “XI”. Although no public security bulletin coincided with this new version’s release, the company incorporated ~50 new security fixes derived from our previous reports – fixes that would only be included in the latest application branch and not found in either the currently supported branches 9 or X. If we look back at the situation at the time, it could be summarized in the following three points:
Adobe Reader 9 and X for Windows and Mac OS X were subject to ~16 old vulnerabilities from June 2012 which were missed in the August 2012 update.
Adobe Reader 9 for Linux was vulnerable to all ~50 security bugs from the first iteration of testing.
Releasing Adobe Reader XI with new patches resulted in the potential disclosure of ~50 new vulnerabilities from the second iteration of testing in both Adobe Reader 9 and X for all platforms.
The above scenario is a good illustration of what happens if certain supported versions of software are provided with security patches, while others are not. In the era of wide availability of professional binary diffing tools, we find it very possible that many of the bugs fixed on the Windows / Mac OS X platforms but not on Linux and/or in version XI but not 9/X could have been successfully found by third-parties by performing comparison between the patched and unpatched versions of software. In fact, this practise was the sole subject of Nikita Tarakanov’s ZeroNights 2012 presentation called “The Art of Binary Diffing or how to find 0-dayz for free”, which only shows that provoking such situations of security inconsistency between equally-supported versions of software can pose a real threat these days.
As of now, the overall security of the Adobe Reader software family has greatly improved compared to 2012. Today’s security bulletin addresses around 80 bugs in Adobe Reader 9 and X, and up to 19 unique bugs in Adobe Reader XI. According to Adobe, only 19 of these were of critical severity and thus the bulletin contains that many CVE identifiers for the most severe problems. Unfortunately, resolving some of the problems have still been deferred to next versions: 20 bugs are still pending in Reader 9, 14 in Reader X and 9 in Reader XI. It should be noted that these deferred bugs have all been investigated by Adobe and either partially fixed (up to a point where they are no longer exploitable) or considered non-exploitable (e.g. infinite recursions).
All in all, we think that Adobe did a lot of solid work in terms of dealing with our reports, fixing the bugs, and providing timely updates. On the other hand, we believe that they could still do better in how security updates are released for the various versions of their products. We are hoping that releasing a collective update for all Reader products today will become a standard followed by the vendor in the future.
Of course, we are planning to run more fuzz testing against the latest Reader (and other software) within the next few days, so you can probably expect more news on the PDF security front to appear on our blogs this quarter :-)
TimelineSheri Dew's advice for those who wonder if it’s OK to ask questions recently made an impact on social media. A short video clip from the Deseret Book CEO's BYU-Idaho devotional address, “Will You Engage in the Wrestle?” from May 17, has been viewed over 200,000 times on Facebook. The "devotional highlight" is the most-viewed video meme on the BYU-Idaho Facebook page, according to school officials.
“If you’ve never asked the Lord how he feels about you, that is a great question to ask,” Dew said as she taught students how to ask and receive answers to inspired gospel questions. “In time and over time, he will tell you and, as he does, you will learn more and more about speaking his language.”
Dew shared what she has learned about asking questions and “wrestling” with the Lord to find answers. One of her examples focused on the church’s policy regarding children of parents in same-sex marriages.
“The Lord wants us to ask every probing question we can muster because not asking questions can be far more dangerous than asking them,” Dew said.
A summary of Dew’s remarks can be read on LDS Church News. See a transcript of the talk, along with video and audio, at byui.edu.
The video was shared over 3,600 times on the BYU-Idaho Facebook page.
“I did that and now I know how it feels for me when the spirit witnesses to me,” one commenter wrote in response to Dew’s challenge.This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Common Sense
Author: Thomas Paine
Release Date: June 9, 2008 [EBook #147]
Last updated: June 24, 2017
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8.
Produced by John Campbell. HTML version by Al Haines. Modified by Robert Homa.
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMMON SENSE ***
COMMON SENSE;
addressed to the
INHABITANTS
of
AMERICA,
On the following interesting
SUBJECTS
A new edition, with several additions in the body of the work. To which is added an appendix; together with an address to the people called Quakers.
Man knows no Master save creating Heaven
Or those whom choice and common good ordain.
Thomson.
PHILADELPHIA
Printed and sold by W. & T. Bradford, February 14, 1776.
MDCCLXXVI
Common Sense
By Thomas Paine
Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.
2 As a long and violent abuse of power, is generally the Means of calling the right of it in question (and in Matters too which might never have been thought of, had not the Sufferers been aggravated into the inquiry) and as the King of England hath undertaken in his own Right, to support the Parliament in what he calls Theirs, and as the good people of this country are grievously oppressed by the combination, they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpation of either.
3 In the following sheets, the author hath studiously avoided every thing which is personal among ourselves. Compliments as well as censure to individuals make no part thereof. The wise, and the worthy, need not the triumph of a pamphlet; and those whose sentiments are injudicious, or unfriendly, will cease of themselves unless too much pains are bestowed upon their conversion.
4 The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances hath, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected, and in the Event of which, their Affections are interested. The laying a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling; of which Class, regardless of Party Censure, is the
AUTHOR
P.S. The Publication of this new Edition hath been delayed, with a View of taking notice (had it been necessary) of any Attempt to refute the Doctrine of Independance: As no Answer hath yet appeared, it is now presumed that none will, the Time needful for getting such a Performance ready for the Public being considerably past.
Who the Author of this Production is, is wholly unnecessary to the Public, as the Object for Attention is the Doctrine itself, not the Man. Yet it may not be unnecessary to say, That he is unconnected with any Party, and under no sort of Influence public or private, but the influence of reason and principle.
Philadelphia, February 14, 1776
Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first a patron, the last a punisher.
6 Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expence and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.
7 In order to gain a clear and just idea of the design and end of government, let us suppose a small number of persons settled in some sequestered part of the earth, unconnected with the rest, they will then represent the first peopling of any country, or of the world. In this state of natural liberty, society will be their first thought. A thousand motives will excite them thereto, the strength of one man is so unequal to his wants, and his mind so unfitted for perpetual solitude, that he is soon obliged to seek assistance and relief of another, who in his turn requires the same. Four or five united would be able to raise a tolerable dwelling in the midst of a wilderness, but one man might labour out of the common period of life without accomplishing any thing; when he had felled his timber he could not remove it, nor erect it after it was removed; hunger in the mean time would urge him from his work, and every different want call him a different way. Disease, nay even misfortune would be death, for though neither might be mortal, yet either would disable him from living, and reduce him to a state in which he might rather be said to perish than to die.
8 Thus necessity, like a gravitating power, would soon form our newly arrived emigrants into society, the reciprocal blessings of which, would supersede, and render the obligations of law and government unnecessary while they remained perfectly just to each other; but as nothing but heaven is impregnable to vice, it will unavoidably happen, that in proportion as they surmount the first difficulties of emigration, which bound them together in a common cause, they will begin to relax in their duty and attachment to each other; and this remissness, will point out the necessity, of establishing some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue.
9 Some convenient tree will afford them a State-House, under the branches of which, the whole colony may assemble to deliberate on public matters. It is more than probable that their first laws will have the title only of Regulations, and be enforced by no other penalty than public disesteem. In this first parliament every man, by natural right, will have a seat.
10 But as the colony increases, the public concerns will increase likewise, and the distance at which the members may be separated, will render it too inconvenient for all of them to meet on every occasion as at first, when their number was small, their habitations near, and the public concerns few and trifling. This will point out the convenience of their consenting to leave the legislative part to be managed by a select number chosen from the whole body, who are supposed to have the same concerns at stake which those who appointed them, and who will act in the same manner as the whole body would act were they present. If the colony continue increasing, it will become necessary to augment the number of the representatives, and that the interest of every part of the colony may be attended to, it will be found best to divide the whole into convenient parts, each part sending its proper number; and that the elected might never form to themselves an interest separate from the electors, prudence will point out the propriety of having elections often; because as the elected might by that means return and mix again with the general body of the electors in a few months, their fidelity to the public will be secured by the prudent reflexion of not making a rod for themselves. And as this frequent interchange will establish a common interest with every part of the community, they will mutually and naturally support each other, and on this (not on the unmeaning name of king) depends the strength of government, and the happiness of the governed.
11 Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz. freedom and security. And however our eyes may be dazzled with show, or our ears deceived by sound; however prejudice may warp our wills, or interest darken our understanding, the simple voice of nature and of reason will say, it is right.
12 I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature, which no art can overturn, viz. that the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered; and |
: Nov 02, 2007 Mr Bimbles 717-412-4342 info@dougstanhope.com www.dougstanhope.com
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Scientists have discovered a fully synthetic substrate that has the potential to grow billions of stem cells.
The findings could forge the way for the creation of “stem cell factories”—the mass production of human embryonic (pluripotent) stem cells that could provide an off-the-shelf product for clinical use in the treatment of the heart, liver, and brain.
For example, the damage from a major heart attack could cost you around five billion heart cells. Future stem cell treatments will require this number and more to ensure those cells are replaced and improve your chances of survival.
To solve the problem, researchers have been searching for polymers on which human pluripotent stem cells can be grown and differentiated in vast numbers—billions at a time.
“The possibilities for regenerative medicine are still being researched in the form of clinical trials,” says Morgan Alexander, professor of biomedical surfaces at University of Nottingham. “What we are doing here is paving the way for the manufacture of stem cells in large numbers when those therapies are proved to be safe and effective.”
[related]
Using a high throughput materials discovery approach, researchers discovered the human-made material, free from possible contamination and batch variability.
“The field of regenerative medicine has snowballed in the last five years and over the coming five years a lot more patients will be receiving stem cell treatments,” says Chris Denning, professor of stem cell biology.
“Clinical trials are still in the very early stages. However, with this kind of product, if we can get it commercialized and validated by the regulators it could be helping patients in two to three years.”
Conditions of the heart, liver, and brain are all under investigation as possible new stem cell treatments. People are already receiving stem cells derived from eye cells for eye disorders.
Source: University of NottinghamGetty Images
Liverpool's recent form has been hugely impressive. They've won nine straight matches in the Premier League, scoring 24 goals along the way at an average of 2.7 per game.
The big question for Manchester City this Sunday at Anfield, is how to stop Luis Suarez and Daniel Sturridge from continuing their rampant run and inflicting a potentially fatal blow to City's title challenge.
The key for Manuel Pellegrini will be blocking the halfway line—denying Jordan Henderson and Steven Gerrard the time they need to pick passes and set Liverpool's lightning-fast attackers in motion in the final third.
Yaya Toure and Fernandinho are the ideal players for the task. Both are world-class central midfielders with energy and dynamism. If deployed correctly, and providing they play to their potential, the combination has the ability to frustrate Liverpool and starve Suarez, Sturridge and Co. of the balls they usually feed off.
Michael Regan/Getty Images
Toure and Fernandinho will just sit in front of City's back four. From there they can press and put Liverpool's midfield under the kind of pressure they're not usually used to. Only City and Chelsea—with Nemanja Matic, Ramires etc.—have holding midfielders of genuine Champions League class in England's top flight.
Liverpool have to face both between here and the end of the season.
Should they breach City's midfield pair, however, the pace of Sturridge and Suarez could be the difference. Martin Demichelis is second-to-none as a reader of the game, and performs very well against a certain type of forward, but is unquestionably vulnerable against dynamic movement. Liverpool bring that in abundance.
The key for Brendan Rodgers on Sunday is assuring his Liverpool team play to the tempo we've seen in their nine-game winning run. If they slow to continental pace, City could pick them off. Liverpool must bring a high-intensity game to Anfield and be bold.
Michael Steele/Getty Images
I don't expect Rodgers to shuffle his starting lineup. His most telling influence will likely come in-game—deciding which substitutes to use and whether to stick or go for broke should the game be in the balance with 25 minutes to play.
In Suarez, he has a striker as good as any we've seen in the Premier League. What's fascinating at this juncture of his career, is whether Suarez is now seeing Liverpool as his long-term future, or whether he's already thinking about a big move this summer after the World Cup.
My final word on this Sunday's game is in Liverpool's favour. Let's not forget they've already achieved their aim of a top-four finish. Anything more will just be the cream on the cake. There's a freedom in that that City don't enjoy.The news this week that Western Digital has begun shipping a new line of RE hard drives with a maximum capacity of 4TB is terrific for its target enterprise users. This new drive, which is filled with helium rather than air to significantly cut down on internal friction, increases capacity by about 40 percent at the same time it decreases power consumption by 23 percent, and could thus be an outstanding way for businesses to meet their ever-expanding storage needs. Whether consumers will get the chance to see much benefit from these developments is another issue entirely.
Like it or not, there just doesn’t seem to be a ton of advancement happening on the consumer hard drive front. The last big announcement along these lines that I can remember occurred several months ago, when Western Digital announced its latest 10,000 RPM VelociRaptor drive. I got one in, tested it, and thought it was terrific — for what it was. But what it is, and about all it can ever be, is a fast mechanical drive that costs $300 and is buried in the dust kicked up by even the slowest solid-state drive on its worst day.
Once upon a time, not that long ago, this didn’t matter much. Enthusiasts and the manufacturers who catered to them understood that both SSDs and traditional hard drives have their place: the former for booting and running important programs, the latter for housing pretty much everything else. Ordinary people were content with the slower speeds — after all, they didn’t know any better, and it’s not like there was (or, for that matter, is) anything really wrong with hard drive data access rates anyway.
But two things happened about a year ago that might have provided the one-two hammering likely to end the hard drive’s dominance for good. The first was the flooding in Taiwan Thailand that slowed down drive production for months and drove up costs so much that previously dirt-cheap storage became — gasp — expensive for the first time in recent memory. Because SSDs weren’t affected to the same degree, they became a lot more attractive to anyone looking to throw together a cost-efficient system. The outstanding speed was just a fortunate bonus.
The second occurrence was the advent of the ultrabook. The Intel-promoted, super-sleek laptops have strict storage and thickness requirements that don’t exactly exclude hard drives from inclusion, but also don’t encourage their use. Intended primarily for light, go-anywhere applications, ultrabooks (like their spiritual forbear, the MacBook Air) rely heavily on the cloud, so they can get away with the lower capacities that SSDs engender.
Add in the constantly accelerating move away from the desktop — even my mother, who hates typing on laptops almost as much as I do, told me this week that she’s considering ditching hers — and the picture looks like a bleak one: lots of systems, everywhere you look, but relatively little storage space that anyone actually owns.
Next page: “Power” users and the need for inexpensive storageA 67-year-old former advertising executive from Victoria is laying the groundwork for the world's first extreme sailing race through the Northwest Passage in July 2017.
"It is crazy and it's big," said race director Robert Molnar. "We shouldn't be able to do it, but because of climate change, we can."
Molnar, a Belgian-Canadian who comes from a family of sailors, sailed a section of the North Sea solo as a teenager and always dreamed of conquering big water.
It's not a walk in the park. Navigation is very complicated because of icebergs and weather. - Robert Molnar, race director
Now, for an entry fee of $50,000, and a total cost of $2.5 million per team, he's bringing that dream to a select group of extreme sailors looking for new frontiers.
The 14,000-kilometre race will see teams setting out from New York across the Arctic to Victoria with stops in Halifax; Nuuk, Greenland; Cambridge Bay, Nunavut; Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T. and Dutch Harbor, Alaska.
'It's crazy and it's big,' says race director Robert Molnar about the Northwest Passage. (STAR)
"It's not a walk in the park," he said of the Northwest Passage. "Navigation is very complicated because of icebergs and weather."
Ice difficult to forecast
Mathematical modelling, Molnar said, shows racers have "an 85 to 95 per cent chance of making it easily" through the passage, but ice conditions will ultimately be the deciding factor.
Molnar said the organization team plans to draw on the advice of NASA, coast guards and international sailing experts who have decades of experience in Arctic waters.
"We are talking with at least three captains who spent all their lives there," he said, adding that one is the captain of an icebreaker.
Environment Canada said it can't forecast beyond three months, but historically September sees the least amount of ice coverage in the Northwest Passage.
"We noticed a big drop in 1998 and since then we've had more below-average years than above-average years," said senior ice forecaster Jason Ross.
"If I had to put a guess, I would say the ice will be below average [in 2017], but we can't really tell for sure."
Growing number of adventurers
More people make their way through the Northwest Passage each year.
Last year, 30 adventure and pleasure crafts attempted the route, but every year some don't finish.
That was the case for Cameron Webb and Matt McFadyen. In 2013, the two had planned to sail and row their way from Inuvik, N.W.T., to Resolute Bay, Nunavut, in an open, deckless, five-metre row boat.
Boats are being specifically designed for the race to level the playing field. The vessels will be built in B.C. (STAR)
The pair ended their trip early in Cambridge Bay, because pack ice blocked their route.
"To me, [the race] is all in the lap of the gods," Webb said.
Even in good ice conditions, sand bars and rock reefs can wreak havoc on even the most experienced sailors, Webb said.
"They get changed every year, so there's no pattern," he said. "It can't be charted … so you are totally going on instinct."
Safety a top priority
Even if sailors run into trouble, help won't be far away. A safety boat, equipped with a crane, helicopter pad and doctors, will follow the teams.
To even the playing field, teams will be required to sail high performance boats that will be built in B.C. and designed specifically for the race. Teams will be required to lease or buy them at a cost of $800,000 to $1 million.
Maintenance crews will inspect the boats at each checkpoint to prevent problems at sea.
Organizers have also been in touch with insurance companies in Germany familiar with extreme sporting events.
Overall, the race will cost an estimated $30 million U.S., with much of the money coming from sponsors.
Bittersweet challenge
For Molnar, taking on the challenge is bittersweet.
"On one hand, I don't want to go because it's beautiful and pristine," he said. "On the other hand, it's being messed up big time and we are using sport in a healthy and environmentally friendly way to show the people something is wrong."
Molnar said teams will visit schools in several communities during their stopovers to talk about their voyage and the environment, and hope to raise awareness about climate change through the race.
He said three teams are confirmed so far and he's had interest from others in Germany, Spain, China, Brazil, Barbados, Canada and the U.S. for the other five spots available.
The organizing team is hoping to finalize the design of race vessels soon, with the hope of having the first boat in the water this fall, and finishing the fleet in 2016.By Danny Sjursen, a U.S. Army strategist and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He has written a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghostriders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. Originally published at TomDispatch.
“This… thing, [the War on Drugs] this ain’t police work… I mean, you call something a war and pretty soon everybody gonna be running around acting like warriors… running around on a damn crusade, storming corners, slapping on cuffs, racking up body counts… pretty soon, damn near everybody on every corner is your f**king enemy. And soon the neighborhood that you’re supposed to be policing, that’s just occupied territory.” — Major “Bunny” Colvin, season three of HBO’s The Wire
I can remember both so well.
2006: my first raid in South Baghdad. 2014: watching on YouTube as a New York police officer asphyxiated — murdered — Eric Garner for allegedly selling loose cigarettes on a Staten Island street corner not five miles from my old apartment. Both events shocked the conscience.
It was 11 years ago next month: my first patrol of the war and we were still learning the ropes from the army unit we were replacing. Unit swaps are tricky, dangerous times. In Army lexicon, they’re known as “right-seat-left-seat rides.” Picture a car. When you’re learning to drive, you first sit in the passenger seat and observe. Only then do you occupy the driver’s seat. That was Iraq, as units like ours rotated in and out via an annual revolving door of sorts. Officers from incoming units like mine were forced to learn the terrain, identify the key powerbrokers in our assigned area, and sort out the most effective tactics in the two weeks before the experienced officers departed. It was a stressful time.
Those transition weeks consisted of daily patrols led by the officers of the departing unit. My first foray off the FOB (forward operating base) was a night patrol. The platoon I’d tagged along with was going to the house of a suspected Shiite militia leader. (Back then, we were fighting both Shiite rebels of the Mahdi Army and Sunni insurgents.) We drove to the outskirts of Baghdad, surrounded a farmhouse, and knocked on the door. An old woman let us in and a few soldiers quickly fanned out to search every room. Only women — presumably the suspect’s mother and sisters — were home. Through a translator, my counterpart, the other lieutenant, loudly asked the old woman where her son was hiding. Where could we find him? Had he visited the house recently? Predictably, she claimed to be clueless. After the soldiers vigorously searched (“tossed”) a few rooms and found nothing out of the norm, we prepared to leave. At that point, the lieutenant warned the woman that we’d be back — just as had happened several times before — until she turned in her own son.
I returned to the FOB with an uneasy feeling. I couldn’t understand what it was that we had just accomplished. How did hassling these women, storming into their home after dark and making threats, contribute to defeating the Mahdi Army or earning the loyalty and trust of Iraqi civilians? I was, of course, brand new to the war, but the incident felt totally counterproductive. Let’s assume the woman’s son was Mahdi Army to the core. So what? Without long-term surveillance or reliable intelligence placing him at the house, entering the premises that way and making threats could only solidify whatever aversion the family already had to the U.S. Army. And what if we had gotten it wrong? What if he was innocent and we’d potentially just helped create a whole new family of insurgents?
Though it wasn’t a thought that crossed my mind for years, those women must have felt like many African-American families living under persistent police pressure in parts of New York, Baltimore, Chicago, or elsewhere in this country. Perhaps that sounds outlandish to more affluent whites, but it’s clear enough that some impoverished communities of color in this country do indeed see the police as their enemy. For most military officers, it was similarly unthinkable that many embattled Iraqis could see all American military personnel in a negative light. But from that first raid on, I knew one thing for sure: we were going to have to adjust our perceptions — and fast. Not, of course, that we did.
Years passed. I came home, stayed in the Army, had a kid, divorced, moved a few more times, remarried, had more kids — my Giants even won two Super Bowls. Suddenly everyone had an iPhone, was on Facebook, or tweeting, or texting rather than calling. Somehow in those blurred years, Iraq-style police brutality and violence — especially against poor blacks — gradually became front-page news. One case, one shaky YouTube video followed another: Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, and Freddie Gray, just to start a long list. So many of the clips reminded me of enemy propaganda videos from Baghdad or helmet-cam shots recorded by our troopers in combat, except that they came from New York, or Chicago, or San Francisco.
Brutal Connections
As in Baghdad, so in Baltimore. It’s connected, you see. Scholars, pundits, politicians, most of us in fact like our worlds to remain discretely and comfortably separated. That’s why so few articles, reports, or op-ed columns even think to link police violence at home to our imperial pursuits abroad or the militarization of the policing of urban America to our wars across the Greater Middle East and Africa. I mean, how many profiles of the Black Lives Matter movement even mention America’s 16-year war on terror across huge swaths of the planet? Conversely, can you remember a foreign policy piece that cited Ferguson? I doubt it.
Nonetheless, take a moment to consider the ways in which counterinsurgency abroad and urban policing at home might, in these years, have come to resemble each other and might actually be connected phenomena:
*The degradations involved: So often, both counterinsurgency and urban policing involve countless routine humiliations of a mostly innocent populace. No matter how we’ve cloaked the terms — “partnering,” “advising,” “assisting,” and so on — the American military has acted like an occupier of Iraq and Afghanistan in these years. Those thousands of ubiquitous post-invasion U.S. Army foot and vehicle patrols in both countries tended to highlight the lack of sovereignty of their peoples. Similarly, as long ago as 1966, author James Baldwin recognized that New York City’s ghettoes resembled, in his phrase, “occupied territory.” In that regard, matters have only worsened since. Just ask the black community in Baltimore or for that matter Ferguson, Missouri. It’s hard to deny America’s police are becoming progressively more defiant; just last month St. Louis cops taunted protestors by chanting “whose streets? Our streets,” at a gathering crowd. Pardon me, but since when has it been okay for police to rule America’s streets? Aren’t they there to protect and serve us? Something tells me the exceedingly libertarian Founding Fathers would be appalled by such arrogance.
*The racial and ethnic stereotyping. In Baghdad, many U.S. troops called the locals hajis, ragheads, or worse still, sandniggers. There should be no surprise in that. The frustrations involved in occupation duty and the fear of death inherent in counterinsurgency campaigns lead soldiers to stereotype, and sometimes even hate, the populations they’re (doctrinally) supposed to protect. Ordinary Iraqis or Afghans became the enemy, an “other,” worthy only of racial pejoratives and (sometimes) petty cruelties. Sound familiar? Listen to the private conversations of America’s exasperated urban police, or the occasionally public insults they throw at the population they’re paid to “protect.” I, for one, can’t forget the video of an infuriated white officer taunting Ferguson protestors: “Bring it on, you f**king animals!” Or how about a white Staten Island cop caught on the phone bragging to his girlfriend about how he’d framed a young black man or, in his words, “fried another nigger.” Dehumanization of the enemy, either at home or abroad, is as old as empire itself.
*The searches: Searches, searches, and yet more searches. Back in the day in Iraq — I’m speaking of 2006 and 2007 — we didn’t exactly need a search warrant to look anywhere we pleased. The Iraqi courts, police, and judicial system were then barely operational. We searched houses, shacks, apartments, and high rises for weapons, explosives, or other “contraband.” No family — guilty or innocent (and they were nearly all innocent) — was safe from the small, daily indignities of a military search. Back here in the U.S., a similar phenomenon rules, as it has since the “war on drugs” era of the 1980s. It’s now routine for police SWAT teams to execute rubber-stamped or “no knock” search warrants on suspected drug dealers’ homes (often only for marijuana stashes) with an aggressiveness most soldiers from our distant wars would applaud. Then there are the millions of random, warrantless, body searches on America’s urban, often minority-laden streets. Take New York, for example, where a discriminatory regime of “stop-and-frisk” tactics terrorized blacks and Hispanics for decades. Millions of (mostly) minority youths were halted and searched by New York police officers who had to cite only such opaque explanations as “furtive movements,” or “fits relevant description” — hardly explicit probable cause — to execute such daily indignities. As numerous studies have shown (and a judicial ruling found), such “stop-and-frisk” procedures were discriminatory and likely unconstitutional.
As in my experience in Iraq, so here on the streets of so many urban neighborhoods of color, anyone, guilty or innocent (mainly innocent) was the target of such operations. And the connections between war abroad and policing at home run ever deeper. Consider that in Springfield, Massachusetts, police anti-gang units learned and applied literal military counterinsurgency doctrine on that city’s streets. In post-9/11 New York City, meanwhile, the NYPD Intelligence Unit practiced religious profiling and implemented military-style surveillance to spy on its Muslim residents. Even America’s stalwart Israeli allies — no strangers to domestic counterinsurgency — have gotten in on the game. That country’s Security Forces have been training American cops, despite their long record of documented human rights abuses. How’s that for coalition warfare and bilateral cooperation?
*The equipment, the tools of the trade: Who hasn’t noticed in recent years that, thanks in part to a Pentagon program selling weaponry and equipment right off America’s battlefields, the police on our streets look ever less like kindly beat cops and ever more like Robocop or the heavily armed and protected troops of our distant wars? Think of the sheer firepower and armor on the streets of Ferguson in those photos that shocked and discomforted so many Americans. Or how about the aftermath of the tragic Boston Marathon Bombing? Watertown, Massachusetts, surely resembled U.S. Army-occupied Baghdad or Kabul at the height of their respective troop “surges,” as the area was locked down under curfew during the search for the bombing suspects.
Here, at least, the connection is undeniable. The military has sold hundreds of millions of dollars in excess weapons and equipment — armored vehicles, rifles, camouflage uniforms, and even drones — to local police departments, resulting in a revolving door of self-perpetuating urban militarism. Does Walla Walla, Washington, really need the very Mine Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP) trucks I drove around Kandahar, Afghanistan? And in case you were worried about the ability of Madison, Indiana (pop: 12,000), to fight off rocket propelled grenades thanks to those spiffy new MRAPs, fear not, President Trump recently overturned Obama-era restrictions on advanced technology transfers to local police. Let me just add, from my own experiences in Baghdad and Kandahar, that it has to be a losing proposition to try to be a friendly beat cop and do community policing from inside an armored vehicle. Even soldiers are taught not to perform counterinsurgency that way (though we ended up doing so all the time).
*Torture: The use of torture has rarely — except for several years at the CIA — been official policy in these years, but it happened anyway. (See Abu Ghraib, of course.) It often started small as soldier — or police — frustration built and the usual minor torments of the locals morphed into outright abuse. The same process seems underway here in the U.S. as well, which was why, as a 34-year old New Yorker, when I first saw the photos at Abu Ghraib, I flashed back to the way, in 1997, the police sodomized Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant, in my own hometown. Younger folks might consider the far more recent case in Baltimore of Freddie Gray, brutally and undeservedly handcuffed, his pleas ignored, and then driven in the back of a police van to his death. Furthermore, we now know about two decades worth of systematic torture of more than 100 black men by the Chicago police in order to solicit (often false) confessions.
Unwinnable Wars: At Home and Abroad
For nearly five decades, Americans have been mesmerized by the government’s declarations of “war” on crime, drugs, and — more recently — terror. In the name of these perpetual struggles, apathetic citizens have acquiesced in countless assaults on their liberties. Think warrantless wiretapping, the Patriot Act, and the use of a drone to execute an (admittedly deplorable) American citizen without due process. The First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments — who needs them anyway? None of these onslaughts against the supposedly sacred Bill of Rights have ended terror attacks, prevented a raging opioid epidemic, staunched Chicago’s record murder rate, or thwarted America’s ubiquitous mass shootings, of which the Las Vegas tragedy is only the latest and most horrific example. The wars on drugs, crime, and terror — they’re all unwinnable and tear at the core of American society. In our apathy, we are all complicit.
Like so much else in our contemporary politics, Americans divide, like clockwork, into opposing camps over police brutality, foreign wars, and America’s original sin: racism. All too often in these debates, arguments aren’t rational but emotional as people feel their way to intractable opinions. It’s become a cultural matter, transcending traditional policy debates. Want to start a sure argument with your dad? Bring up police brutality. I promise you it’s foolproof.
So here’s a final link between our endless war on terror and rising militarization on what is no longer called “the home front”: there’s a striking overlap between those who instinctively give the increasingly militarized police of that homeland the benefit of the doubt and those who viscerally support our wars across the Greater Middle East and Africa.
It may be something of a cliché that distant wars have a way of coming home, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Policing today is being Baghdadified in the United States. Over the last 40 years, as Washington struggled to maintain its global military influence, the nation’s domestic police have progressively shifted to military-style patrol, search, and surveillance tactics, while measuring success through statistical models familiar to any Pentagon staff officer.
Please understand this: for me when it comes to the police, it’s nothing personal. A couple of my uncles were New York City cops. Nearly half my family has served or still serves in the New York Fire Department. I’m from blue-collar, civil service stock. Good guys, all. But experience tells me that they aren’t likely to see the connections I’m making between what’s happening here and what’rsquo;s been happening in our distant war zones or agree with my conclusions about them. In a similar fashion, few of my peers in the military officer corps are likely to agree, or even recognize, the parallels I’ve drawn.
Of course, these days when you talk about the military and the police, you’re often talking about the very same people, since veterans from our wars are now making their way into police forces across the country, especially the highly militarized SWAT teams proliferating nationwide that use the sorts of smash-and-search tactics perfected abroad in recent years. While less than 6% of Americans are vets, some 19% of law-enforcement personnel have served in the U.S. military. In many ways it’s a natural fit, as former soldiers seamlessly slide into police life and pick up the very weaponry they once used in Afghanistan, Iraq, or elsewhere.
The widespread perpetuation of uneven policing and criminal (in)justice can be empirically shown. Consider the numerous critical Justice Department investigations of major American cities. But what concerns me in all of this is a simple enough question: What happens to the republic when the militarism that is part and parcel of our now more or less permanent state of war abroad takes over ever more of the prevailing culture of policing at home?
And here’s the inconvenient truth: despite numerous instances of brutality and murder perpetrated by the U.S. military personnel overseas — think Haditha (the infamous retaliatory massacre of Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines), Panjwai (where a U.S. Army Sergeant left his base and methodically executed nearby Afghan villagers), and of course Abu Ghraib — in my experience, our army is often stricter about interactions with foreign civilians than many local American police forces are when it comes to communities of color. After all, if one of my men strangled an Iraqi to death for breaking a minor civil law (as happened to Eric Garner), you can bet that the soldier, his sergeant, and I would have been disciplined, even if, as is so often the case, such accountability never reached the senior-officer level.
Ultimately, the irony is this: poor Eric Garner — at least if he had run into my platoon — would have been safer in Baghdad than on that street corner in New York. Either way, he and so many others should perhaps count as domestic casualties of my generation’s forever war.
What’s global is local. And vice versa. American society is embracing its inner empire. Eventually, its long reach may come for us all.Answer ALL the questions in order to see how normal you are! Learn more about the way humans think! Questions get progressively harder. You will find your results page at the end!
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The demonstrators were white and black, young and old. Some carried placards saying "Black Lives Matter." Almost all wore a black-and-white photograph of the slain 17-year-old around their necks.
Many also wore hoodies — a hooded sweatshirt that has come to symbolize solidarity with Martin, his family and others who some believe have been the victims of violent, institutionalized racism in America.
Martin was wearing a hoodie when George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain in Sanford, Fla., identified him as "a suspicious person" and later shot him after a tussle. Zimmerman was charged, but never convicted of a crime.
"Trayvon is not forgotten and his 17-year-old life is forever precious, treasured and valued," said the Rev. Elizabeth Goudy, pastor of the Metropolitan Community Life in Bethlehem, who organized the rally. She also noted the more recent deaths of Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Victor White III and "far too many others."
Metropolitan Community Church of the Lehigh Valley, along with numerous other organizations such as Bradbury Sullivan LGBT Center, LEPOCO, Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley and groups from Lehigh University and East Stroudsburg University held a "Hoodie Rally" to mark the five-year anniversary of the death of Trayvon Martin Sunday at Payrow Plaza in Bethlehem. Metropolitan Community Church of the Lehigh Valley, along with numerous other organizations such as Bradbury Sullivan LGBT Center, LEPOCO, Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley and groups from Lehigh University and East Stroudsburg University held a "Hoodie Rally" to mark the five-year anniversary of the death of Trayvon Martin Sunday at Payrow Plaza in Bethlehem. SEE MORE VIDEOS
"We gather today in solidarity and in commitment to a safer future for our young people of color," Goudy said. "We gather today to be loved and show care and respect."
Goudy called the demonstration a "hoodie rally," but also linked it to a growing wave of protests against President Donald Trump, saying it was part of a "holy resistance."
Throughout the demonstration, which lasted about an hour, speakers accused Trump of embracing "white nationalism" and practicing "dog-whistle politics," which refers to coded language that signals a specific group group but is unheard by most people.
"It is important for us to gather like this because we need to strike the tune for this nation to understand that we are not going to allow this country to become an ethno-nationalist nation," said the Rev. Larry Pickens, the ecumenical director for the Lehigh Valley Conference of Churches. "As long as we stick together, we can turn this thing around. It is time for us to take our country back."
The Rev. Gregory Edwards, the rally's keynote speaker from the Resurrected Life Community Church in Allentown, was even more pointed in his assessment of the Trump administration.
"If America is ever truly going to be America, it cannot be anchored in the mythologizing of a dream that really never was," Edwards said. "It cannot be rooted in the rhetoric of making America great again. Making America great will never occur by doing a U-turn back in time, or a reversion into the roles of separate but equal, back of the bus, Jim Crow, women last, homophobic, Islamophobic, stop-and-frisk, shoot first ask questions last, white supremacy or xenophobia."
Edwards called on demonstrators to continue to resist and protest.
"Dr. [Martin Luther] King said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it is bent toward justice," Edwards said. "To which I say that the arc of the universe may bend toward justice, but it doesn't bend by itself. It bends because of the never-ending pressure that's applied to it.
"And for Trayvon Martin … for our children, our future and our freedom, now like never before, it's time to apply pressure. The doctors ask me, 'Tell me where it hurts,' It hurts to bury our young, brilliant, bold, black boys and girls whose dreams die like grapes on the vine. It hurts."The analysts at P.H.I., a nonprofit research and consulting group, sift through federal data each year to see how the nation’s swelling corps of home care workers is |
far off,” Rodgers said this week. “I think there’s guys who would probably trade with me right now, kind of how they’re playing (and) how I’m playing. There’s plenty of guys that wish they had the kind of numbers I have. But we have to do a better job of finishing out games, and I’ve got to do a better job on third downs.”
McCarthy also looks at Rodgers’ season as relatively successful so far.
“I think Aaron, he’s had a solid year compared to the standard that he’s played to, but we’re a different team this year,” McCarthy said. “The system is built around making the quarterback successful. There’s a lot on his plate. He spoils you as a coach because you have to be disciplined to pull back just because he can do whatever you ask him. He understands run-blocking schemes, pass protections, he’s got a tremendous mental capacity.’
“But with that, you always fear, at least I always do, guard against giving the quarterback too much. We have to just keep battling and overcoming. I’m fully confident, I have great faith and belief in him more than I’ve ever had.
“He’s a special player, and our offense philosophy will never change, especially while he’s here.”
Follow Paul Imig on TwitterFor the first time, scientists have managed to demonstrate that ten times more ice melts in the summer months on the Antarctic Peninsula now than it did 600 years ago.
Antarctic, with the Antarctic Peninsula highlighted. [NASA]
The Antarctic Peninsula is the biggest and most prominent peninsula in Antarctica. It consists of a rugged mountain chain, which rises more than 2000 m high.
Unlike the majority of the continent, the ice on the peninsula experiences a degree of melting every summer. Over recent decades the amount of ice which has melted has been increasing.
It has been known for some time that temperatures across the Antarctic Peninsula have risen dramatically. Over the past fifty years there has been an increase of 2.8C, making this the most rapidly warming region in the Southern Hemisphere. This is over five times the global average and comparable to rapidly warming regions of the Arctic.
At the same time, around 25,000 km2 of ice have been lost from ten floating ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula. This is particularly significant as it takes a long time to replenish snow and ice in this part of the world.
With under 250 mm of precipitation per year, Antarctica is officially classed as a desert. In fact, some parts of the continent haven’t seen any rain or snow for many years. Across the Antarctic Peninsula, the snow and ice simply melts and refreezes. Currently the ice that is lost to melting far exceeds that which is replenished in a year.
The latest research, a joint project by the Australian National University and the British Antarctic Survery and published in Nature Geoscience, looks at a 364 m ice core, which was extracted from the northern tip of the peninsula. Visible layers of this tube of ice show where the ice melted, then refroze. By measuring the thickness of the layers and analysing the gases contained in the ice, researchers were able to determine the changes in temperatures in the region over the last 1,000 years.
The ice core demonstrated that the current level of melting was unprecedented in the last 1,000 years, and ten times more than it was 600 years ago.
The climate of Antarctica is hugely complex. Although there are record levels of glacier and ice melting, there also appears to be an increase in the sea ice in the surrounding waters.
Just seven months ago satellites captured images of more ice floating around the continent than at any other time in history.
The increase in sea ice is thought to be caused by the increased amounts of melting ice. This melted ice runs into the sea, but does not mix with the water already in the ocean. Instead the water forms a separate, colder, layer on the surface of the ocean. This can protect sea ice from coming into contact with the warmer seas below and therefore prevent it melting.
It is also thought that a change in wind direction could have increased the extent of sea ice. Winds can both physically moving the ice, and can cause the sea surface to warm or cool. The increase in sea ice is not uniform around the Antarctic coast line, therefore the winds are also likely to have had some effect.
With the complex climate of Antarctica, and the uncertainty of the future of the climate, it is difficult to predict what this latest study means for the continent.
It is believed that the continent will continue to warm rapidly, particularly in summer, increasing the vulnerability of the delicate ecosystem of the continent.
The global significance of this is difficult to assess. However, the warming of the Antarctic Peninsula is amongst the highest seen anywhere on Earth in recent times, and is a reminder of the rationality of climate change that can be expected in the future.In the tradition of Wale, Mark Ronson, and late DJ AM and Travis Barker, house music icon [artist id="2539409"]deadmau5[/artist] has been named as the house artist for the 2010 MTV VMAs. The mouse-head-wearing spinner will cue up songs all night during the September 12 event.
Deadmau5 (a.k.a. 28-year-old Toronto native Joel Zimmerman), who recently headlined a string of festivals from Coachella to Ultra Music and the Electric Daisy Carnival, is one of the most in-demand producers on the house music scene, and he'll join an already bursting roster of VMA performers that includes Kanye West, Drake and Best New Artist nominee Florence and the Machine.
"Dance wasn't always considered pop, and people like Lady Gaga and [David] Guetta and those guys really brought it out to the commercial market," he said about bringing his sound to the masses. "I'm just getting a lot more fans and God bless it, and that's the goal of being an artist is to get yourself heard by any means possible."
This year's VMAs — which air live from the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles at 9 p.m. (live ET, tape delayed PT) on September 12 — will also feature appearances by Nicki Minaj, Emma Stone, Penn Badgley, Trey Songz, Selena Gomez and Ne-Yo. Additional performers, presenters and a host will be announced soon.
In addition to being named the house artist, deadMau5 is also this week's MTV PUSH artist, meaning fans will have unparalleled access to his live performances, music videos, interviews and exclusive footage. Previous PUSH artists have included Jason Derulo, Trey Songz, Drake, Phoenix, Florence and the Machine, and 2 AM Club.
The 27th annual MTV Video Music Awards will be broadcast live from the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles on September 12 at 9 p.m. ET.It’s pretty widely accepted that the New Orleans Saints are enjoying big returns on their 2016 NFL Draft class. First round draft pick Sheldon Rankins combined for 10.5-sacks with newly re-signed free agent Nick Fairley at defensive tackle. Second round picks and Ohio State Buckeyes Michael Thomas (NFL-leading 92-catches, 1,137-yards, and 9 touchdowns among rookies) and Vonn Bell, a steady presence at safety, look great so far. Other rookies like David Onyemata and Daniel Lasco found their way into prominent roles.
But enough has been written about each of those guys. I’m putting the microscope over some Saints who have been working hard under the radar, patiently waiting for their shot in training camp. This is the same tier of talent that Willie Snead, Delvin Breaux, and Tim Hightower came out of. The odds are stacked against them, but don’t tell them that.
Drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers in the sixth round last year, Travis Feeney (6-foot-4, 226-pounds, 24-years old) initially tried to crack the roster as a backup and special teams contributor but couldn’t displace more experienced players like Vince Williams, Anthony Chickillo, Jarvis Jones, and James Harrison. Feeney was a college teammate of Saints fan-favorite Hau’oli Kikaha on the Washington Huskies and a leader of their defense, though multiple shoulder injuries shortened Feeney’s career and hurt his draft stock. A preseason concussion shut the door on Feeney’s chance of suiting up for the Steelers during the regular season.
Like your LBs to play physical? Here's your 6th rounder, Travis Feeney. #Steelers https://t.co/Rq0YOIzf41 — Alex Kozora (@Alex_Kozora) May 1, 2016
The Saints must have liked what they saw in a predraft visit, because they signed him off of the Steelers’ practice squad and onto their active roster late in the season. Feeney is a sleeper to see action at outside linebacker for the Saints thanks to his combined athleticism, football I.Q., and versatility (he played every linebacker spot and safety for the Huskies). Even with A.J. Klein and Manti Te’o signed as free agents and Craig Robertson and Dannell Ellerbe looking to return to starting jobs, keep an eye out for Feeney as someone to work their way into the rotation.Over 2,000 people have been evacuated from towns in southern Spain after huge wildfires spread to the Donana National Park, a UNESCO world heritage site.
People living in Moguer and Mazagon, located close to the inferno, have been evacuated by Spanish authorities as a precaution in light of the 64 deaths caused last week by a blazing wildfire in neighboring Portugal.
There have been no reports of injuries so far in Spain.
"The fire has entered in the limits of the reserve, and that is where we are focusing our efforts," Jose Gregorio Fiscal Lopez from the regional Andalusian authority in charge of the environment said as cited by The Deccan Chronicle.
The 50,000 hectare (123,550 acre) nature reserve is an important stop for migratory birds travelling from Africa to Europe and vice versa, in addition to being home to two highly endangered species, the Iberian lynx and the Iberian imperial eagle.
Drone footage shows aftermath of deadly Portugal forest fire https://t.co/7bPjNi94SGpic.twitter.com/2pCpM85aHn — RT (@RT_com) June 19, 2017
An ongoing heatwave, with daily temperatures reaching 39 degrees Celsius (102 degrees Fahrenheit), combined with shifting winds of up to 60 kph (37 mph) has exacerbated the wildfire threat across the Iberian peninsula.
Susana Diaz, the regional president of Andalusia, said "there's no risk to the population" but added that authorities “are not ruling out the human factor" as a possible cause of the fire.
Díaz also described the emergency services operation as "exemplary," as cited by El Mundo.
Hotel guests, local residents and 600 staff at the National Institute of Aerospace technology were all evacuated Sunday morning as the blaze continued to spread and over 60 firefighters and 21 air units were combating the blaze reports InfoLibre.
Four drones are being used to help monitor the spread of the fire and coordinate firefighting efforts.
Novedad #CampañaContraIncendios: 4 drones para vigilancia y seguimiento nocturno y sistema informático Hermes para gestión global de medios — Antonio Sanz Cabello (@antoniosanz) June 23, 2017
The Spanish Air Force has been heavily involved in the battle against the wildfires in central Portugal in recent weeks and resources may have to be reallocated if the blaze in southern Spain is not brought under control soon.TUSCALOOSA -- Linebacker Rashaan Evans has spent the entirety of fall camp with the inside linebackers -- a position move that occurred in the spring. And the junior has competed with Shaun Hamilton for a starting spot.
Having spent the first two years of his Alabama career as an edge rusher and quarterback spy, though, the move inside has called for some adjustments for Evans. He has had to learn to stop the run on a more consistent basis and drop into pass coverage, but the one aspect of his game that has benefitted the Auburn native is his speed to play sideline-to-sideline.
“I think that’s the reason Coach (Nick) Saban put me in that spot so we could be able to do things like that,” Evans said. “Right now, I’m loving it.”
In the spring game, Evans was the WILL linebacker with the second-team defense and recorded a game-high 17 tackles. He and sophomore running back Damien Harris collided a few times along the line of scrimmage, and that will be something Evans will have to get used to if this experiment proves to be a permanent one. His counterpart, Hamilton, is a sound run defender, having started at WILL in the team’s base defense in 2015.
One of the key components for Evans to improve as a run defender is for him to add some good weight. The 6-foot-3 linebacker said he currently weighs 230-231 pounds, but his ultimate goal is to weigh 240 pounds before the season.
Through six fall camp practices, an entire spring season, summer 7-on-7 workouts and offseason work on his own, Evans has spotted one of the biggest differences in defending the run inside compared to outside.
“Just being able to hold my gaps, little things like that,” Evans said. “Being able to have better eyes. That would probably be it. Just looking at my keys, really, to be honest with you. From outside linebacker to inside linebacker, you have a little more keys, more things you have to look at. That’s probably one of the biggest things I had to work on.”
Evans said he has benefitted from being around Reuben Foster and Hamilton, who are “great mentors” to him. “With them having experience at the position, it’s helped me a lot transition from outside linebacker to inside linebacker.”
Foster, who will be the Crimson Tide’s starting MIKE this fall, continues to provide advice for his fellow Auburn native.
“Just keep fighting, pushing through,” Foster said. “Don’t let the play that you don’t know get to you. Just keep pushing and run fast. He can bring a great enthusiasm. Great enthusiasm, agility, hard-hitting and leadership on the field.”
That enthusiasm was evident when Evans spoke with local reporters during fall camp. The former outside linebacker does not know where he will play in the season opener -- because he is leaving that up to Nick Saban.
“I’m just training with them right now, but wherever I am, wherever I have to be, I have to do my best,” Evans said. “It’s been great, man. Coach Saban put me in a position to kinda try out and basically, I’m still there for right now. Wherever he puts me, that’s what I have to do.”
(What's next for the Tide? Make sure you're in the loop by signing up for our FREE Alabama newsletter!)Huawei's Global Head Of Cyber Security Wants The Government 'To Have As Much Data As Possible'
from the thinking-it-through dept
In Der Spiegel's recent revelations about the far-reaching nature of the NSA's spykit, it mentions several US companies, Samsung from South Korea, and one from China -- Huawei. Like the others, Huawei denied any knowledge of the modifications to its products that Der Spiegel claims are used by the NSA to break into systems. This isn't the first time that the finger has been pointed at Huawei. Some years back, Huawei was accused of facilitating spying for the Chinese government, but after an 18-month investigation, no evidence was found of this. That fact allowed John Suffolk, Global Head of Cyber Security for Huawei and the former UK Government CIO, to enjoy the irony of Snowden's leaks about backdoors in US products: Huawei were investigated by the American Congress and we were given a "clean bill of health". Well as journalists and analysts said "lots of ifs buts and maybe's but no evidence of wrongdoing", or my favourite "a report for vegetarians, no meat", so in my definition no evidence of wrongdoing is a clean bill of health. Based on this lack of evidence of any wrongdoing, the American Congress said that Huawei should not be allowed into America, so based on all of these revelations [from Snowden], and there will be many more on America, should all other Governments ban American technology companies, especially Cisco and Juniper given their position in critical infrastructures? Perhaps triggered by the latest Der Spiegel article that mentions Huawei in the context of spying, Suffolk has another blog post on the subject. Discussing the Tailored Access Operations (TAO) that Der Spiegel revealed, he writes: Questioning the morality or legality of TAO misses the point. Since when did people operate in a moral vacuum? I seem to recall the "just following orders" excuse was rejected definitively some years ago. The morality and legality of TAO is precisely the point. Suffolk then goes on to explain: In relation to my views I am quite clear I want my Government to have as much data as possible. I want them to have the tools, techniques and resources to mine this data to stop a terrible event from occurring -- stopping one event is good enough for me. The alternative is we have to sift through the body parts once an event has occurred. Leaving aside both the false dichotomy (either total surveillance or terrorist carnage) and the implicit emotional blackmail (if you don't agree that the government should spy on everyone, any deaths will be on your head), it would seem that Suffolk hasn't thought this through.
"I want my Government to have as much data as possible," he writes. Really? So he's happy for CCTV cameras to be installed in every room in every building in the land -- because that's certainly extremely useful data for the government. It is quite likely that such CCTV footage, suitably analyzed using all those tools that Suffolk wants the government to have at its disposal, would lead to the occasional careless or incompetent terrorist being caught before any harm could be caused. And remember, even if this 24x7 CCTV surveillance of everyone in the country only stops "one event", that's still a good enough justification according to him.
I can't really believe Suffolk is advocating such an extreme approach, but it's where his logic leads. That's why there must be some proportionality in the government's efforts to keep us safe, and a weighing of what we would lose in terms of privacy and personal freedom if we allowed it to "have as much data as possible". If there isn't either, Suffolk's naïve acquiescence in maximalist surveillance opens the door to a deep and possibly long-lasting oppression far worse than extremely rare terrorist attacks whose impact pales into insignificance compared to dozens of everyday risks we accept without a moment's thought.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+
Filed Under: john suffolk, routers, security, surveillance
Companies: huaweiWritten by Arthur Touchot, CNN
This is part of a series dedicated to Baselworld 2016. Arthur Touchot is the European editor of watch website HODINKEE
Watches aren't made overnight. They may take months, and in some cases years, to put together.
With that in mind, the watches presented during Baselworld 2016 should not be viewed as the year's latest fads, but as a confirmation of trends that have slowly been developing over the past 24 months.
This year definitely felt calmer than previous editions, both in terms of attendance and in watch designs.
The big names in the industry went for the unspectacular but special, presenting collections which felt more focused and in-tune with the current demand for smaller, more affordable watches based on pure design.
Bigger Is (No Longer) Better
For years we've seen watches conquer our wrists, one inch after the next, slowly making their way onto our forearms.
But it seems the days of the 42-45 mm watches are coming to an end, as the attraction to smaller timepieces, driven by the popularity of vintage, continues to grow.
This week's most exciting pieces were definitely those which fit under the cuff. It just feels a lot more satisfying to catch a glimpse of a purely made watch, instead of feeling invaded by it.
This week's most exciting pieces were definitely those which fit under the cuff.
Men and women were unanimous in their approval of the new Tudor Black Bay 36 mm and its cousin at Rolex, the slightly larger 39 mm Explorer.
Hermès and Omega also appealed to both sides of the market. The Slim d'Hermès, which made a good first impression on us when it was released in 2015, returned in a limited edition of 100 pieces with a superb enamel dial.
Each Slim d'Hermès dial calls for eight hours of work as it employs "Grand Feu" enameling. Credit: Sandro Campardo
And Omega seemed to be following the exact same strategy with it's new Seamaster, which has found a nice compromise at 39.5 mm between the 37.5 mm and 42 mm models currently in production.
One of the smallest watches of the fair, the 33 mm NOMOS Tetra Nematik, was also an early favorite. Unusually it is actually much larger than the previous edition, which at 27 mm felt much too small, proving limitations on size go both ways.
Stainless Steel
"Steel remains fashionable." François-Paul Journe, speaking during the F.P. Journe Young Talent Competition ceremony, seemed hurt by his own admission.
The independent watchmaker, who is based in Geneva, has advocated the use of precious materials his entire career.
But on the first day of the fair, as the monumental news of Rolex's new stainless steel Daytona started spreading around the halls, even he recognized the everlasting appeal of steel.
In fact, several brands are turning towards it to push complicated timepieces that have so far interested but failed to convince larger audiences.
Two years after the release of a user-friendly red gold Dual Time, Girard-Perregaux debuted a cost-friendly version in stainless steel, with a really attractive white dial and elegant feuille hands.
Also presented in a 40 mm stainless steel for the first time, (also) with a white dial and feuille hands, is the Villeret Quantième Annuel GMT from Blancpain.
On top of having a second time zone indicator, it features an elegant annual calendar, which is an original combination of complications. Blancpain introduced it a few years ago in red and white gold, but this stainless steel version has the looks of the old for a fraction of the price.
Frédérique Constant Slimline Perpetual Calendar Credit: courtesy Frédérique Constant
Completing our podium of complicated watches in steel is the king of complications. Frédérique Constant simply blew us away when they unveiled a mechanical perpetual calendar, supposedly made in-house, which they've been able to price down to under $10,000. That's almost half the price of the next most affordable perpetual calendar.
Classic Three-Handed Watch
A timeless design, the three-hander is definitely making a comeback. That's right, watches that indicate only the hours, minutes, and seconds can be really exciting when they're well made, and we saw some great executions this week.
The Longines Railroad is inspired by "railroad grade" pocket watches. Credit: courtesy Longines
Coming all the way from Japan is Seiko's new Spring Drive 8 Day Power Reserve. Costing $55,000, you might be wondering why someone would pay that much for a classic dress watch. It's a special piece, with an absolutely stunning artisanal dial created by Seiko's Micro Artist Studio, and a long-lasting manufacture movement.
The German-made Senator Excellence by Glashütte Original, is another very attractive option under $10,000 (official pricing is €8,500). It too features a very interesting, single-barrel in-house movement capable of powering the watch for 100 hours.
And because Baselworld would not exist without the Swiss, we feel compelled to share the new Longines Railroad. Inspired by "railroad grade" pocket watches, it shows the time in a 24-hour format that's intuitive to use and pretty to look at. It's still a tool watch, but the dauphine hands and polished case add an elegant touch.Soviet-Era Abandoned Circus in Chisinau – Republic of Moldova
An abandoned communist-era circus, located in the middle of Chisinau, the capital city of The Republic of Moldova, is not exactly high on the bucket-lists of travellers around the world. But maybe it should be. The abandoned circus building ticks all the right boxes. Soviet. Mid-century. Concrete. Incredible design. And perhaps the local authorities of this former-USSR land-locked nation won’t like this – but the final check box is easy access.
The Republic of Moldova is a land-locked country, deep in Eastern Europe, wedged between Romania and Ukraine. The circus is located in the capital city – Chisinau. An independent nation since 1991, after surviving through seventy years of Russian communism. To this day, Moldova remains one of the poorest nations in Europe. It’s average income is comparable to nations that are frequently referred to as “third world”. This makes Moldova an interesting, authentic – and inexpensive – travel destination.
Abandoned Circus – Will the Soviet Architecture Go to Waste?
Located downtown, I visited the abandoned circus in Chisinau with an urban-exploration colleague of mine. Out the front, friendly teenagers sat, chatted, and enjoyed a drink, Inside, we came across a German tourist – actually a middle aged gent, visiting his son who was now based in Chisinau. Although the circus has been abandoned since 2004, the inside remains very intact, and we all had the same impression – that one day, the circus would be tidied up, and rise to it’s former glory as an entertainment icon of downtown Chisinau.
Originally constructed in 1981, the abandoned circus in Moldova is a statement to just how important, respected, and popular circus’s were during Soviet times. This is no simple canvas tent – this is an architectural statement, in a prime location, designed for permanently entertaining the masses.
Unfortunately for the locals, a revolution and political upheaval destroyed the economy, and this is one of the casualties. However, for intrepid urbex aficionados, this is one of the simplest, easiest, and most entertaining urban exploration sites in Moldova.
The only problem remains, getting to Chisinau.
The map above pinpoints the exact location of the abandoned circus in Chisinau. So, if you happen to find yourself in the area, do pop in. The architecture is pure communist-era brilliance, the circus is located close to the center of the city, and as an added bonus – inside, are some great oil paintings of circus bears. I love a good Moldovan circus bear.
Please enjoy the photo set of the abandoned circus in Chisinau, capital city of The Republic of Moldova.
If you have any updates on the abandoned circus, be sure to let us all know in the comments below.
And feel free to share this article, the more attention that is bought to Moldova, the better.
Enjoy.
Dr Hank Snaffler Jr.
BTW, I would love to send you the next dispatch, posted from some-where random around this planet (and you'll soon find out why YOMADIC email followers are my favourite followers): HP28 days ago I set myself the challenge of making money from a brand new online business.
Today my four-week challenge is over, and I’m excited to tell you that (in my opinion) the project has been a huge success.
Not only did the “startup” make money (not thousands, but a respectable amount given my constraints), but I also learned a whole new facet of selling online.
This is going to be a very detailed post of exactly what happened, so I’ll share some numbers first.
Sales: 5
Expenses: $99.75
Revenue: $450 (I had to stop selling on day nine so I could actually build the site)
Emails Sent: ~250
Full days worked: ~16
Time was undoubtedly my biggest expense, which I’ll cover in more detail at the end.
If you’re new to the challenge, you should know that I had the following rules in place:
I couldn’t use my name or connections in any way to promote the site
I couldn’t spend any money on advertising
I wouldn’t work on weekends, so my results were more replicable
I couldn’t offer any services based on skills that I already possess
Most challenging was that I vowed to build something that readers of Gaps could replicate without prior online experience.
I recommend setting time aside to read this update in its entirety, rather than just skimming certain sections.
My Original Idea for The Startup (This Isn’t What I Built)
As a podcast owner, I have a strange confession to make: I almost never listen to podcasts.
I’ve probably downloaded 10 podcast episodes in the past 18 months.
I understand how valuable podcasts are to millions of people – they hit record download numbers on iTunes in 2016 – but I rarely listen to them.
I’ll happily listen to an audiobook if I’m driving (there are dozens on my iPhone), but that’s primarily because I know what to expect.
The problem with business and marketing podcasts is that there’s so much ‘noise’ that I don’t know where to start. Each show has dozens or even hundreds of episodes to choose from.
If I could be convinced to become an active podcast listener, it would be because I was sure I was finding the signal, rather than the noise.
This simple “problem” is what I originally planned to tackle with my 28 day challenge.
My aim was to find the absolute best marketing podcasts that other people have published, condense only their very best shows, and then release them under my own brand.
The idea being that you could listen to Pat Flynn interview someone for an hour, or have that interview cut down into the best 10-15 minutes, and get similar value in a shorter period of time.
I believed the project would take off because a) many people are like me and want to save time and b) podcast owners could be introduced to a brand new audience.
There was just one problem: Would podcast owners really allow me to take their content and republish it on my own show?
Would my argument that they could be introduced to a new audience stand up in a cold email from a stranger?
I thought the idea was brilliant (Hello, Ego), but my success hinged on something that was ultimately out of my control.
To give myself a better chance of succeeding, I whipped up a quick landing page from a $12 template on Theme Forest.
I thought the name Recap Cast – suggested by my brother – was the perfect description of what I was planning to create.
I set-up the landing page so people could see this was a legitimate venture if they checked out the website in my email address.
Things were looking bleak when the first few email responses came back looking like this.
And many of them saying something like this.
They weren’t saying No. They just, understandably, wanted to know what I was going to do with their content before they agreed for me to use it.
To my great relief, a lot of people said Yes. Some even came up with a great slogan for the concept.
Being British I’m not familiar with Sportscenter, but I guess our equivalent would be “Match of the Day for Marketing podcasts”.
I loved that.
Without making this post too image heavy, enough podcasters were on board to make the project a success. I’ll explain in a second why I didn’t go ahead and build it.
HUGE thank you to the following people who gave a random stranger a chance.
Even though enough people said yes for me to go ahead and actually make this a real “startup”, I decided not to continue. There was a lingering feeling in the back of my mind that if I ever released this project – as much as I love the idea of it – you would be disappointed that I focused on the make money / marketing space for the challenge. With 1,000+ people tweeting about my case study, I felt an added responsibility to do something different. My friend Jon’s tweet just as I was starting (he didn’t know what I was building) further cemented my decision to abandon the original concept.
When you start reading a case study post, and find out the example is in the marketing/SEO niche. pic.twitter.com/ZSrAzOZZAv — Jon Cooper (@PointBlankSEO) February 16, 2017
I began the challenge a few days earlier than planned because I didn’t want the people who agreed (above), to potentially associate it with me and improve my results.
Just 48 hours before officially starting, I had to realign my focus.
The Second Idea for the Startup (I Also Didn’t Build This)
I really like the idea of condensed learning. Taking detailed subjects and converting them into more digestible media.
I’ve already shown it’s a concept which is making some businesses millions of dollars.
I randomly decided that I would take this same condensed podcast idea and target the personal finance industry.
I’ve never had much interest in personal finance (besides the making money part) but figured that if I was successful in the space, people wouldn’t be let down by the industry I had chosen.
Just as I was about to start reaching out to podcasters to see if I could condense their episodes, I came across another podcast doing something different.
Instead of condensing podcast episodes, they were simply reading aloud the best articles on that particular topic.
My first thought was “Damn, this is a much better idea. I can probably get far more content creators on board”.
Instead of asking people if I could edit content they’ve already produced, I could create a new audience for them through audio.
The guys behind Optimal Living Daily have three podcasts following this model which are all doing very well.
I don’t know if they ask for permission before recording an episode – I doubt it falls under fair use – but they produce so much content that I would be surprised if they did get permission each time.
Edit: Justin, the owner of the podcasts, said he does ask permission before recording each show.
I now had a new idea, and a new audience to target, but once again decided this was not the startup I wanted to build.
I was already one week into the challenge, but couldn’t picture myself creating content around a topic I didn’t really have much interest in.
The Third and Final Concept That I Absolutely Love (and Hope You Will, Too)
I was still set on the idea of creating a podcast based on reading the web’s best written content, if for nothing else that I could record a lot of shows, quickly.
The problem was that I just didn’t have any interest in the personal finance space.
The question I now had to answer was this: What articles do I love reading, outside of marketing, and would listen to if I had the choice?
While I founded one of the most popular personal development blogs many years ago, I don’t read much self-help content anymore. It tends to get repetitive after a while.
That being said, there was an article I read last year which reignited my interest in the subject.
That article was written by a man named Filipe Matos. Filipe had started a 21 day challenge of waking up a 4:30am each day, and documented the positive impacts it had on his life.
While waking up at 4:30am may not be that extreme to you, it was a challenge for Filipe as, like myself, he runs his own business so can wake up at any hour of his choosing.
I was so interested in this idea that I documented my own 30-day journey of waking up at 5am. 30 minutes later than Filipe, but for an extra nine days.
I absolutely love these kind of ‘life-hack’ articles that I could potentially replicate myself, but where could I find more of them?
DING. DING. DING.
As cliché as it sounds, I had a lightbulb moment.
I decided that I would find the absolute best personal development and personal growth articles from Medium.com – where I found Filipe’s original article – and turn them into spoken audio.
I had to check whether I needed some kind of agreement from Medium before going ahead, but their Terms of Service are pretty clear:
You own the rights to the content you create and post on Medium.
This meant I just needed to contact my favourite authors on the site and see if they would allow me to read their articles.
I would later contact around 50 Medium writers and request to read their content for the podcast. 36 of them replied emphatically, “Yes!”.
If I planned to publish three podcast episodes per week, that’s three months of updates taken care of.
Selling the Invisible: How I Made a $100 Sale in The First 11 Hours
As you can see from the dates in the emails above, the replies were received a few weeks into the case study.
From day one I was determined to generate revenue, even without a website or final strategy in place.
The most obvious way to make money with a podcast is to sell advertising within episodes, so that’s the monetisation angle I focused on.
The problem with selling advertising is that people want to know your download numbers and take a look at the show to make sure it’s relevant to their business.
Since I didn’t even have a website at this point, I also didn’t have download numbers to share.
I figured that I would have much better success selling ads on a podcast that didn’t exist, “I’m going to work hard to promote it”, than one which existed yet had no download numbers to speak of.
This is what I mean by selling the invisible.
I presumed that the only way I could sell sponsorship opportunities on a podcast yet to launch is if my offering was cheap.
The price point I had in mind was $50 for a 30-second mention at the end of a show.
The Email I Sent to 40 Personal Finance Bloggers
At this point I was still focused on building a podcast related to personal development and personal finance. I didn’t have the idea to read Medium articles until week two.
Since I couldn’t spend any money on advertising, the only way I could get in front of people was to email them.
I hoped that by showing I was willing to work hard to promote the show, people would just “throw 50 bucks my way” to support the venture.
I found 40 personal finance / development bloggers and sent them the following email.
The text I highlighted in green was really the only selling point I had. “I’ll work hard so you have less chance that you’re setting $50 on fire”.
I personalised the email by writing their name at the start, and mentioned what I think they could promote based on what they had on their site. In the example above, I mentioned the ‘action guides’ Lidiya sells.
Out of the 40 emails I sent |
"It's the social network and the trust," he said. "...and we have a very strong network. That's why we can have a thousand people involved in every release."
The emphasis on trust explains the difficulty of becoming involved in kernel development, because people can't sign on, submit code, and disappear. "You shoot off a lot of small patches until the point where the maintainers trust you, and at that point you become more than just a guy who sends patches, you become part of the network of trust," said Torvalds.
Ten years ago, Torvalds said he told other kernel contributors that he wanted to have an eight-week release schedule, instead of a release cycle that could drag on for years. The kernel developers managed to reduce their release cycle to around two and half months. And since then, development has continued without much fuss.
"It's almost boring how well our process works," Torvalds said. "All the really stressful times for me have been about process. They haven't been about code. When code doesn't work, that can actually be exciting... Process problems are a pain in the ass. You never, ever want to have process problems... That's when people start getting really angry at each other." ®Middle East Eye gained exclusive access to the operations room where the battle against Islamic State (IS) militants in Daraa, southwestern Syria, is being coordinated.
This joint operations room includes all factions of a wide coalition of the Free Syrian Army's Southern Front and representatives of the Army of Conquest, which includes both Ahrar al-Sham and the Nusra Front, al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria.
A Southern Front commander tells the assembled factions: "The Southern Front are the ones leading this fight and coordinating all the factions. Whoever is here to just fight for himself and not for our just cause can leave now.
"We must all fight together as one front."
The willingness of the Southern Front to cooperate with a group that includes Nusra fighters among its numbers appears to mark a softening of its stance towards a group that it last year publicly ruled out working with.
But Daraa is a long way from Nusra's stronghold in northern Syria, and sources told MEE that only a few of its fighters are present on the ground there and were therefore tolerated alongside others affiliated with the Army of Conquest, although they were not invited into the operations room.
Following the cessation of hostilities with government forces in late February, on 21 March, IS fighters and allied militias unleashed a major offensive in Daraa province, storming the towns of Tseel, Sahem Golan, Adwan, Tira, Sheikh Saad and Jileen.
The fighters staged public executions as they seized control, raising the black flag associated with IS and enforcing its strict ideology.
The Southern Front and the Army of Conquest mobilised in response and after more than a week of heavy fighting, they began to push the attackers back. In April, they regained control of each of the seized towns, eventually pushing the militants back into the Yarmouk basin.
Today, discussions are underway about coordinating efforts to fight IS and affiliated groups in the area.
Local activists said fighting between warring factions in western Daraa left behind dozens of dead and wounded civilians, including women and children. Over two months of clashes, residential areas were damaged by random missiles and heavy machine-gun fire.
After years of heavy fighting between Syrian government forces and opposition groups, the cessation of hostilities brokered in late February brought some respite for residents of Daraa, from near-constant battle to relative calm, and for the Free Syrian Army opposition, it has meant a change from fighting government troops to battling IS.
For civilians, the extended truce, a quiet broken only occasionally by shelling or barrel bombing, marks a welcome relief.
"We hope that the truce lasts in Syria. We are tired of war, killing and destruction," said Abu Jassim, a 43-year-old man who sells fruit and vegetables from a cart in Sida, in eastern Daraa province.
According to the Office of Documentation of the Martyrs of Daraa (ODMD), about 40 civilians were killed during the three-month truce in Daraa. Before the truce, it was not unusual for double that number to be killed in a month.
"Two full months after the truce was declared by the United Nations on 27 February 2016, the death toll dropped dramatically. In Daraa, the number of civilian dead was just 29 people from 27 February through 27 April," Abu Giyas Shara of the ODMD said.
"The absence of warplanes and helicopters is probably the main factor in the decline in the number of victims. Most of the people slain during the ceasefire were killed by artillery and missiles, mainly in Daraa city. If you compare Daraa province to the rest of Syria, there are fewer dead here since the ceasefire began because it has worked here. For the most part, Daraa province is calm," he told MEE.
Abu Jassim, the fruit and vegetable seller, agreed. "I was able to breathe again after the truce took effect. Life has started again here, despite the harsh conditions, and people have returned to the markets and shops."
But despite the ceasefire, battles between the rebel coalition and IS continue to rage.
Among those killed in recent clashes was a senior commander of the IS-allied Muthanna movement, Abu Omar Sawayq, who died on Sunday.
According to civilian activists living under IS control in the Yarmouk district, "an explosion of an improvised explosive device (IED) in the town of Shejerah in the countryside west of Daraa and under the control of Daash last Sunday led to the death of Muthanna second commander Abu Omar and his son and a number of others from the movement."
The same activists said Abu Omar Sawayq was primarily responsible for the assassinations that have taken place lately in Daraa province, including the killing of Sheikh Osama Yateem, president of the House of Justice Court in Daraa.
The Yarmouk Martyrs are accused of having declared an oath of allegiance to IS more than a year and a half ago. They control several villages in the Wadi Al-Yarmouk area in the countryside of western Daraa.
These villages - Alshajarah, Nafaah, Ain Thakar, Jamlah, Koayiah, Beiyt Irah, Marbah, Aabdyn and Quseir - in the Yarmouk Valley are located in an important strategic area on the border with Israeli-occupied Golan and Jordan.On July 20, hours after the horrific shooting in Aurora, Colorado, the Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama sent an email to supporters with the subject line "OUTRAGEOUS: Media Tries to Blame Tea Party for Colorado Shooting."
"We can't let the media get away with their attempts to smear the tea party," the email read, with a link to a Breitbart.com story claiming ABC News "tried to falsely blame the tea party for the Colorado massacre." (What actually happened is that in the scramble to ID the killer, ABC briefly noted it had found a profile of a man on a Tea Party website with the same name as the shooter and in the same city.) "Please help us fight back by supporting the most prominent tea party candidate in America right now -- conservative Republican Ted Cruz. CLICK HERE to CONTRIBUTE."
This brazen effort to raise money off of the Colorado shooting tragedy, taken alone, is disturbing. Even the Cruz campaign has called it "inappropriate." But what makes this fundraising appeal from the Tea Party Express-spinoff "Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama" even more egregious is that the dollars raised will disproportionately flow into the pockets of the group's leaders.
Latching on to Tea Party Energy
In 2009, as groups around the country were organizing what they called "tea parties" on tax day to protest government spending, Joe Wierzbicki, a senior associate at the right-wing political consulting firm Russo Marsh & Associates, developed a proposal for a "Tea Party Express" to latch onto the movement's energy.
His plan featured a "proper luxury coach wrapped in a 'tea party' graphical design" that would make stops in dozens of cities represented by vulnerable Democrats in Congress. Under the guidance of Wierzbicki and Russo Marsh's Sal Russo, the Tea Party Express soon developed into a major financial supporter of far-right candidates and a visible presence in the movement.
Wierzbicki, Sal Marsh, and their consulting firm Russo Marsh were among an array of Republican apparatchiks and deep-pocketed ideological interests to capitalize on the Tea Party's grassroots energy and help direct it towards propping up big business and the Republican establishment. But what makes Wierzbicki and Russo Marsh unique is the degree to which they capitalized on the Tea Party energy for personal financial gain.
In the runup to the 2010 midterms, a majority of the funds raised by Tea Party Express went to Marsh and his company for consulting fees and to pay for advertising and other expenses. "Political action committees must spend money to make money, typically hiring staff members from the organizers who created the group," the New York Times wrote at the time. "But it is less common for them to funnel most of their outside spending through a vendor controlled by a committee executive, as Mr. Russo has done."
The Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama (CDBO) formed in 2011 and appears to be operating from the same playbook, but with Wierzbicki at the helm. As the name suggests, CDBO's claimed purpose is to defeat President Obama, but their campaign activities thus far have largely focused on recall battles in Wisconsin. And their spending has disproportionately benefitted Wierzbicki and Russo Marsh.
73% of Funds Raised Go to CDBO Leaders, Consulting Firm
CDBO, a Political Action Committee (PAC) registered with the FEC, reports that it has raised $1,242,360 in the first half of 2012, much of it from small donors giving $50 or $100. (It has spent about the same amount during that period, $1,216,665.) CDBO seems to raise these funds through a steady stream of broad-based fundraising appeals like email blasts and online ads, which warn people of the dangers of a second term for President Obama, and suggest the best way to make Obama a one-term president is to donate to CDBO.
A recent CDBO telethon fundraiser featured guests telling viewers that the president plans to "build some kind of cult...in the public schools" and another saying that "what Obama may do next may prove fatal to the Republic" and that "to say that all you can do...is go and cast your vote is a dereliction of duty. What people need to do is pick up the phone and donate to your PAC." During the Wisconsin recall, CDBO raised money for its Wisconsin ads by asking people to "support Scott Walker, beat back Obama's minions and DEFEAT the RECALL."
In the post-Citizens United World, where Sheldon Adelson makes $20 million dollar donations to Super PACs, and Koch donor summit attendees pledge millions towards election spending, CDBO's small-dollar fundraising may seem quaint. And in contrast with the deep-pocketed donors whose political spending is likely intended to buy influence and curry favor with elected officials, it seems believable that the individuals who make $50 or $100 donations to CDBO are genuinely spooked by CDBO's anti-Obama fear mongering and send money to help the cause.
Unfortunately, it looks like these Tea Party donors are getting played. The majority (seventy-three percent) of the funds raised by CDBO in the first half of 2012 has gone to CDBO Executive Director Joe Wierzbicki, his consulting firm Russo Marsh, and CDBO Vice-President Ryan Gill. More than thirty-three percent of the dollars CDBO raised from the Tea Party faithful has gone into the pockets of Wierzbicki and Gill, largely for "fundraising commissions" or "consulting fees."
"DEFEAT the RECALL" and "win this one for 'The Gipper'"
Some of the first ads CDBO ran after forming in 2011 aired in Wisconsin to support Governor Scott Walker during protests over his plans to limit public sector collective bargaining. The group ran additional ads that summer to support Republican senators facing recall, praising Walker and the Republican senators for providing "the adult leadership Wisconsin needs to restore fiscal responsibility" and criticizing "Barack Obama's political allies" for "trying to recall the Republican senators" and ending with the message, "tell Barack Obama and his liberal hacks we reject their liberal intervention." CDBO Chairperson Lloyd Marcus boasted that the group spent $100,000 on their summer recall campaign.
The following spring, CDBO ran at least four ads on Wisconsin television to support Governor Walker in the runup to his June 5 recall election. The first two ads praised Walker and criticized Obama for "fiddling in Madison," but as the election drew near, the ads focused more exclusively on supporting Walker. One ad included CDBO President Mary Pearson (who lives in California) telling viewers "Governor Walker's reforms are working here in Wisconsin." Another ad featured Ronald Reagan's son Michael, who claimed that Walker is "getting people back to work in Wisconsin" and telling viewers to "win this one for 'The Gipper.'"
The ads were promoted through Facebook, Twitter, web ads, and email blasts, which asked for donations to help CDBO "support Scott Walker, beat back Obama's minions and DEFEAT the RECALL."
Funds Raised to Support Walker, but also Enrich CDBO Leaders
Because some of the ads attacked President Obama, a federal candidate, CDBO reported the expenditures to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Their filings for April and May of 2012 showed the group spending $59,748 on TV ads in Wisconsin, much of which went to Wierzbicki's consulting firm Russo Marsh, as well as a reported debt of $74,406 to the firm for prior independent expenditures in Wisconsin. Last year, CDBO also reported to the FEC that it spent $205,518 on advertising in Wisconsin; around three-quarters of that total was spent in August 2011, near the time of Wisconsin's Senate recalls, and the other quarter was spent in late 2011, as activists began circulating petitions for Walker's recall. Sixty percent of the total amount spent in Wisconsin in 2011 ($123,596) went to Wierzbicki's Russo Marsh.
Despite reporting at least some spending to the FEC, the total amount CDBO spent in Wisconsin or raised during that period is not known because the group never registered with Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board. Only expenditures relating to a federal candidate are reported to the FEC, but amounts raised and spent in support of state-level candidates are supposed to be reported to state election authorities. CDBO told the FEC that its ads in Wisconsin were in opposition to President Obama, without reporting that the same ads also supported Walker, and never disclosing to any election agency about the other ads that supported Walker exclusively. This means CDBO could have raised even more than what has been reported, and that even more of the funds raised might have gone into the pockets of Wierzbicki, Russo Marsh, or Gill.
In June, the Center for Media and Democracy filed a formal complaint against CDBO for apparently violating Wisconsin election law by failing to register with Wisconsin's elections board and disclose its funding and spending. The group has still not reported its expenditures.
Although CDBO has focused much of its activities on Wisconsin, it also waded into the special election in New York's 9th Congressional District last fall and ran ads opposing Mitt Romney in the GOP presidential primary called "Liberal Mitt's Latest Hits."
FEC Filings Show Wierzbicki, Other Officers Lining Their Pockets with Fees
A review of CDBO's filings with the FEC from January 1 through June 31 of this year demonstrate that the PAC's leaders are profiting significantly from the group's aggressive fundraising.
During that half-year period, Wierzbicki received $227,032 from CDBO (18.3 percent of what was raised). Of that total, he received $114,892 in fundraising commissions -- which means he took a 9.25 percent cut from the dollars raised during that period. He was also paid consulting fees. And he was reimbursed for travel and lodging, plus given several thousand for "Facebook advertising." His fees appear to be in addition to whatever salary he may earn as Executive Director of the organization.
Other CDBO leaders are also profiting from CDBO's aggressive fundraising. In just the first half of 2012, CDBO Vice-President Ryan Gill has received $183,468 in consulting fees, fundraising commissions, and payments for online advertisements, which is almost 15 percent of the total raised in that period.
Additionally, Russo Marsh & Associates, where Wierzbicki is a principal/partner, has been paid $500,504 for the first half of 2012, or 40.3 percent of the amount raised. This includes $164,368 in payments for blast fundraising emails (many of which support or oppose candidates but are not classified as independent expenditures), and $252,185 in payments for advertising, plus payments for travel and consulting fees.
"That kind of self-dealing raises red flags about possible lax oversight and excessive fees for the firms," campaign finance experts told the New York Times about the nearly identical relationship between Russo Marsh and the Tea Party Express in 2010.
Of the $1,242,360 raised so far in 2012, Wierzbicki has taken an 18 percent cut, Gill has taken 15 percent, and Russo Marsh has received 40.3 percent -- which, all together, means they took more than seventy-three percent of the total amount raised.
Cain, Palin Operating Similar Ruse
Former presidential candidate Herman Cain appears to be operating a similar scheme. The Washington Times reported last week that "Cain Connections," the Super PAC operated by Cain and his former campaign manager Mark Block, had been soliciting donations to support Governor Walker in his recall election, but never reported any expenditures on Walker's behalf or to support any other political causes or candidates. Sarah Palin's PAC did the same thing, raising $600,000 in the second quarter of this year, mostly from small donors, but giving only $15,000 (less than 3 percent) to support candidates, while spending $355,000 to mail out fundraising appeals that brought in those donations.
"Donors are deceived into giving to these organizations [without knowing that they are really] generating funds for the group's political operative leaders," Sheila Krumholz, Executive Director of the Center for Responsive Politics, told the Center for Media and Democracy.
Krumholz notes that groups like these have largely escaped scrutiny because focus is usually directed towards their funding, rather than how they disburse money. "Spending is often considered less worrisome than the source of a campaign's largesse," she says. Additionally, "the FEC doesn't require clear categorization [of expenditures], or disclosure of connections between groups or the likelihood of personal financial gain."
In any case, the average Tea Party supporter making a $50 or $150 CDBO contribution to fight back against the media's purported effort "to falsely blame the tea party for the Colorado massacre," or (as the group's name suggests) to defeat Barack Obama, would likely be disappointed to learn that a big percentage of their contributions are really going to support CDBO's political operative leaders.
"It's a ruse -- to line the pockets of the campaign or those associated with the campaign," Krumholz said of groups like CDBO.
Read more about the Center for Media and Democracy's complaint against CDBO for the group's activities in Wisconsin here.
CMD's Will Dooling contributed to this article.Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott addresses a news conference in Melbourne on Sept. 12 in this still image taken from handout video. (Australia Broadcasting Corporation via Reuters TV)
Australia's prime minister Tony Abbott is living in a tent this week. He has a secure laptop and a satellite phone and has been conducting meetings with national security aides using a "Skype-type" program, according to Australian news reports. He adopted this lifestyle on the same day that he announced his decision to deploy 600 military personnel to Iraq, as well as a number of fighter aircraft, to assist the Obama administration's war effort against the extremists of the Islamic State.
All the while, he was fulfilling an earlier promise: to spend one week a year among Australia's long-marginalized indigenous communities. This year, Abbott chose a remote town in Arnhem Land in Australia's vast Northern Territory, among the local Yolngu people.
Great to be in Arnhem Land - looking forward to the days ahead. pic.twitter.com/IozhB0zSTk — Tony Abbott (@TonyAbbottMHR) September 14, 2014
Like an ancient king on the march, his tent is pitched among those of aides and military staff near a town called Nhulunbuy, on Australia's far northern tip and near a supposedly sacred site where the iconic didgeridoo, an Aboriginal musical instrument, was first created. The prime minister's tent is without air conditioning; he is sleeping on a metal frame bed, shrouded in a mosquito net. The closest major city is Darwin, which is more than 600 miles to the east.
Abbott was greeted upon arrival by traditional dancers, and later visited an old bauxite mine and a timber mill, which have a few Aboriginal employees.
The temporary office of @TonyAbbottMHR at Gulkula in Arnhem Land pic.twitter.com/LBq8aTdMSU — Amos Aikman (@amosaikman) September 15, 2014
Despite being the descendants of Australia's oldest inhabitants, the country's indigenous peoples now make up only 2 percent of the country's population. They remain the most marginalized community in Australia, with high rates of unemployment, alcoholism and infant mortality.
For decades, Australian policy toward its indigenous communities was governed by neglect. In 2008, then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued an apology to "the indigenous peoples of this land" who have endured "the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss." Rudd made special reference to the history of the Stolen Generations, the thousands of indigenous children forcibly taken from their families by government and church authorities to be raised in orphanages or by foster families.
Some prominent Aboriginal leaders want to see a national referendum to amend the constitution, which still does not recognize Australia's indigenous peoples. Abbott believes it is too soon to hold such a vote: "It's more important that we get it right than we rush it, because the last thing anyone ought to want is to put a proposal of this nature to the people and have it fail," he said.
Abbott has styled himself as a "prime minister for Aboriginal affairs" and is keen to help uplift their communities, particularly by providing more jobs. But critics say he has done much to hurt Australia's indigenous citizens. The federal budget, released in May, cut some half a billion dollars from indigenous programs administered by the government, according to ABC News. Abbott was also criticized this year after making comments in which he suggested that the continent was "unsettled" prior to European arrival.LOS ANGELES >> A Glendale man and two other Iranian-Americans sued Petco Animal Supplies Stores Inc. Friday for allegedly refusing to sell goldfish to them as part of the celebration of the Iranian New Year.
Talin Sardarbegians filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court along with Camarillo residents Sam and Samira Mojabi. The suit alleges civil rights violations and a violation of the state Business and Professions Code.
The suit seeks unspecified damages and civil penalties of $2,500 for each violation.
A Petco representative did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment.
Goldfish have a special place in the Iranian New Year, known as Nowruz, celebrating the first day of spring. According to the complaint, Sardarbegians visited the Petco store in Van Nuys in March and the Mojabis went to the Petco location in Camarillo the same month. Each was denied when they tried to buy goldfish, the suit states.
“During this time, Petco stores specifically declined the sale of goldfish to Persians and those of Iranian background,” the suit alleges. “Specifically, Petco asked its patrons if they were of Persian descent and declined to sell the goldfish, no matter what explanations was provided to Petco,”
Petco and its management “sent out memorandum commanding its retail staff to decline the sale of such fish to Persians,” the suit alleges.
Denying those of Iranian and Persian background to buy goldfish for the celebration of the Iranian New Year is “illegal and repugnant,” the suit states. The complaint compares the practice to charging women and blacks higher prices for merchandise than men and whites, or to denying sales of items to gays that heterosexuals are allowed to buy.B.C. Corrections is warning the public about a high-risk sex offender released from prison in the Nanaimo area.
John Ambrose Seward, 27, was sentenced to five years in federal prison for a series of violent sexual assaults in Port Alberni between April and September 2009. He was released on Thursday.
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In a public notification, B.C. Corrections said Seward has “maintained a pattern of predatory and opportunistic violent sexual offending.”
Women between 15 and 55 years of age are at risk, the notification said.
Seward was convicted in 2010 of three counts of sexual assault and two counts of sexual assault with a weapon. He stalked his victims and the level of violence increased with each attack.
In one case, he dragged a sex worker into an alleyway and choked her.
In another assault, he forced a woman to perform a sex act at knifepoint as he threatened to kill her. Later that day, he stabbed an 18-year-old woman in the buttocks with a sharp object.
Seward is five-foot-seven and 161 pounds. He is aboriginal and has brown hair and brown eyes.
Under the conditions of his release, Seward is not allowed to be alone with anyone younger than 16, to possess or carry a weapon or imitation firearm, or to go to public parks, swimming pools, daycare centres, school grounds or playgrounds.
He also must abstain from alcohol or drugs and can’t enter any liquor store or business that sells alcohol.
Seward was ordered to provide his profile to the national DNA data bank and has a lifetime weapons ban. He will be listed on the federal sex-offender registry for 20 years.
B.C. Corrections asks anyone who sees Seward violating his conditions to call their local police department.Nuclear leak in New Mexico raises questions about cleanup
In this Feb. 24, 2014 photo, a member of the community speaks of the Feb. 14, 2014 radiation leak during a community meeting in Carlsbad, N.M. New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall says he will ask the Environmental Protection Agency to send air monitors to southeastern New Mexico following a radiation release from the federal government's underground nuclear waste dump near Carlsbad. Udall says he will send a letter Thursday requesting the portable monitors. Udall says the health and safety of the community and workers at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant are his top priority. The EPA has regulatory authority over the site and any airborne radiation releases. (AP Photo/Jeri Clausing) less In this Feb. 24, 2014 photo, a member of the community speaks of the Feb. 14, 2014 radiation leak during a community meeting in Carlsbad, N.M. New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall says he will ask the Environmental... more Photo: Jeri Clausing, Associated Press Photo: Jeri Clausing, Associated Press Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Nuclear leak in New Mexico raises questions about cleanup 1 / 3 Back to Gallery
Carlsbad, N.M. -- For 15 years the trucks have barreled past southeastern New Mexico's potash mines and seemingly endless fields of oil rigs, hauling decades worth of plutonium-contaminated waste to what is supposed to be a safe and final resting place a half mile underground in the salt beds of the Permian Basin.
But back-to-back accidents and a never-supposed-to-happen aboveground radiation release that exposed at least 13 workers have shuttered the federal government's only deep underground nuclear waste dump indefinitely. They have also raised questions about a cornerstone of the Department of Energy's $5 billion-a-year program for cleaning up legacy waste scattered across the country from decades of nuclear bomb making.
The problems also highlight a lack of alternatives for disposing of tainted materials like tools, gloves, glasses and protective suits from national labs in Idaho, Illinois, South Carolina and New Mexico.
With operations at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant on hold, so are all shipments, including the last of nearly 4,000 barrels of toxic waste that Los Alamos National Laboratories has been ordered to remove from its campus by the end of June. The presence of that waste, some of which was dug up from decades-old, unsealed dumps in the northern New Mexico mountains and is now stored outside with little protection, came to the public's attention three years ago as a huge wildfire lapped at the edges of the sprawling lab property.
U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., says getting the rest of the waste off the mesa before wildfire season begins is "paramount" but that it is too soon to know whether a temporary alternative site for storing the waste needs to be found.
Also on hold are tests to see if the dump can expand its mission to take more than so-called lower-level transuranic waste from the nation's research facilities, including hopes by DOE that it can ship hotter, liquid waste from leaking tanks at Washington state's Hanford nuclear waste site.
Government officials, politicians, the contractors that run the mine, and local officials all say it is too soon to speculate on what the short- or long-term impacts of the shutdown might be, or where else the toxic waste would go. And they emphasize that all the safety systems designed to react to worst-case scenarios like a ceiling collapse worked.
Still, no one yet knows what caused the first-known radiation release from the enormous rooms dug out of the 2,000-foot thick ancient Permian Sea bed. Eventually, they will be covered in concrete, with the intent of safely sealing the casks of mostly solid waste 2,150 feet underground.
But watchdog Don Hancock of the Southwest Research and Information Center says the pilot plant has now failed in its long-stated mission "to start clean, stay clean."
On Feb. 5, the mine was shut and six workers sent to the hospital for treatment of smoke inhalation after a truck hauling salt caught fire. Nine days later, a radiation alert activated in the area where newly arrived waste was being stored. Preliminary tests show 13 workers suffered some radiation exposure, and monitors as far as half a mile away have since detected elevated levels of plutonium and americium in the air. Ground and water samples are being analyzed.
Officials said they're confident the incidents are unrelated. And while they emphasize that the levels detected off-site are no more harmful than a dental X-ray, they have not been able to go underground, and have not directly answered questions about how contaminated the tunnels might be.A North Dakota woman reportedly will be the one handing out the tricks instead of treats like candy this Halloween when she gives letters to children if she deems them “moderately obese.”
Earlier this week, a woman named Cheryl called in to radio station WRIG and explained her plan.
“I just want to send a message to the parents of kids that are really overweight… I think it’s just really irresponsible of parents to send them out looking for free candy just ’cause all the other kids are doing it,” the woman said.
She also provided a copy of the letter to the station.
“You are probably wondering why your child has this note; have you ever heard the saying, ‘It takes a village to raise a child’?” the letter asks. “I am disappointed in ‘the village’ of Fargo Moorhead, West Fargo.”
“You [sic] child is, in my opinion, moderately obese and should not be consuming sugar and treats to the extent of some children this Halloween season,” the note continues. “My hope is that you will step up and parent and ration candy this Halloween and not allow your child to continue these unhealthy eating habits.”
After the news spread on social media, KVLY asked NDSU Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology Dr. Katie Gordon, who studies eating disorders, if the woman was doing more harm than good to self-conscious children.
“It’s just that kind of thing that for some kids, if they’re vulnerable, might trigger major problems,” Gordon pointed out, adding that it was wrong to judge a person’s health based on appearance alone.
“That’s not something that someone can judge- the health of someone- just by looking at them. I think that’s the main thing. Even if a child is overweight, they might be very healthy because of what they eat and how they exercise,” Gordon said. “It’s ineffective anyway because it’s not likely to help the kid.”
Watch this video from KVLY, broadcast Oct. 29, 2013.
Valley News Live – KVLY/KXJB – Fargo/Grand Forks
[Photo credit: Sad autumn baby boy holding basket with grapes via Shutterstock]ES News Email Enter your email address Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in or register with your social account
A callous thief has stolen a disabled man's specialist wheelchair worth £15,000 from outside a home in east London.
Dom Hyams, who works as a multimedia producer, was visiting a friend at a home in Lordship Park, Stoke Newington, this morning and left his wheelchair outside for a brief period.
But when Mr Hyams, who was born with a rare form of brittle bone disease, left his friends, he made the heartbreaking discovery his Balder F280 wheelchair had been stolen.
It is believed the wheelchair was taken sometime between 7.30am and 8am today.
The news of the theft was posted on Facebook and Twitter, with thousands of people sharing the post in a bid to track down the thief.
Mr Hyams wrote: "This morning my powered wheelchair was stolen from outside a friends house while I was inside. I was on Lordship Park in Stoke Newington, and it was stolen within a 30 minute window between 7.30am and 8.00am.
"Please share this as far and wide as possible, I am in shock but want to do all I can to track it down.
"As you know my wheelchair is my legs."
Mr Hyams currently works as an assistant producer at sports production company Sunset+Vine, as well as blogging at tinymanblog.com.
Among his projects, Mr Hyams worked on the London 2012 Olympics and is preparing to work on the games in Rio next year.
He also collaborated with the Department for Work and Pensions to help promote the disability confident campaign in 2013.
TV and radio presenter Clare Balding was among those to retweet the message.
Re last RT a friend of mine @domhyams has had his high tech wheelchair stolen in Stoke Newington. If you know anything please let him know — Clare Balding (@clarebalding) August 5, 2015
Australian comedian Adam Hills has also urged people to help reunited Mr Hyams with his wheelchair, posting: "Please help if you can."
Mr Hyams sister, Holly retweeted the message and added: "Please please help. Some low life has stolen my brothers wheelchair this morning and we MUST get it back."
A Metropolitan Police Service spokesman said officers were called to reports of a theft of a motorised wheelchair from Lordship Park at 8.14am.
The spokesman added no arrests had been made and enquiries are continuing.
Anyone with information about the Balder F280 wheelchair should call police on 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.'I Have Children Crying In The Classroom'
Enlarge this image LA Johnson/NPR LA Johnson/NPR
On a cold Friday morning, more than 50 people sit in the auditorium of the Benjamin Franklin Health Science Academy in Brooklyn. Many have small children fidgeting on their laps.
The families are here for a "Know Your Rights" forum on immigration hosted by U.S. Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-N.Y., and the local school district. Given the new, intensified immigration enforcement priorities announced by the Department of Homeland Security in February, the purpose is to help people understand their legal rights with regards to asylum, applications for citizenship and more.
A representative from Mayor Bill de Blasio's office speaks, followed by representatives of legal-assistance and community groups. During the Q&A, one woman broke into tears as she described, in Spanish, her fears of deportation.
There are many tears these days, says the woman who initiated this event, the school's parent coordinator, Christian Rodriguez.
"I have children crying in the classroom, crying in my office," she says. "When I ask them, 'Why are you crying?' They have expressed to me that they don't want their moms to be apprehended and taken away from them. It's something heavy on my heart."
Rodriguez has been the parent coordinator at this pre-K through 8th grade school ever since New York City's Department of Education created the position at schools citywide in 2003. Before that, she worked in Velazquez's office.
Enrollment in this school, on the Williamsburg/Bedford-Stuyvesant border of Brooklyn, is more than 80 percent Hispanic. Rodriguez says the families here come primarily from Mexico, then the Dominican Republic, followed by elsewhere in Central America. "I am from Nicaragua and as an immigrant also, can relate to their suffering and the situation they are going through right now," she says.
Under new directives issued in February by the Trump administration, anyone with deportation orders already issued, and anyone convicted of even a minor crime like a traffic offense, can be targeted for immediate removal. This is a change from the Obama administration's policy, when suspected gang members and felons received the highest priority from law enforcement.
The attorneys and community workers at the event advised attendees to be prepared: Don't drive with burned-out taillights. Don't exceed the speed limit. If you have an attorney, carry his or her business card at all times. If ICE — Immigration and Customs Enforcement — comes to your home or stops you on the street, they are allowed to call themselves "police." But they can't come inside your home or car without a warrant unless you invite them in. You are allowed to ask for a warrant and to make them slip the warrant under the door.
An officer from |
’re like, ‘What, he can’t see that she’s a lesbian?’ or ‘He must be gay if he’s into a woman like that.’”
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On a winter afternoon at the Artist Studio NYC on Fifth Avenue, I watch as Dove’s breasts are taped down to flatten her chest. She is wearing a blank tank top and black and white boxer briefs stuffed with a sock in front. Amid all the stylists and photographers dashing around, fiddling with details, Dove stands on a large turning table with a blonde female model – about a head shorter than Dove – next to her. This is the set of a video campaign, to be shot by photographer and director Thorsten Roth, for Play Out, a brand of gender-neutral underwear started by Abby Sugar and Sylvie Lardeux.
Dove and the blonde model stare longingly into each other’s eyes as the large turning table slowly revolves and a video camera films them. Eventually the two kiss. “You told me I was going to be making out with a boy,” Dove teasingly yells at those on set.
Afterwards, Dove and I sit on the kitchen floor of the busy studio. “When I came on set today, the idea was to really create an environment in which people use their imaginations and they make a determination for themselves,” she says. “‘Is it a man? Is it a woman? Is it a lesbian? Is it a gay man? Is it someone who’s transgender?’”
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“I just model as all aspects of the human condition,” says Dove. “I model as every side of myself, every possibility.”
Bernd is a recent graduate of Columbia Journalism School. He writes for Mic.com’s style vertical and regularly contributes to GQ South Africa.Image copyright AFP Image caption Large rallies by security forces have been held in Xinjiang recently
China is in the midst of what it calls a "people's war on terror" in its far west. What sparked this latest campaign was a knife attack.
After five people were killed on 14 February in Xinjiang, home to China's Muslim Uighur minority, Beijing began an "all out offensive". It flew in thousands of armed troops to hold mass police rallies and deploy columns of armoured vehicles on city streets.
Xinjiang's Communist Party boss Chen Quanguo urged these forces to "bury the corpses of terrorists in the vast sea of a people's war".
Judging from the reaction on Chinese social media, at least some people approve.
"Terrorists will never be stamped out unless we weaken Muslim religious forces," urged one post on China's Twitter-like Weibo.
Then on Monday the so-called Islamic State released a video, which appeared directly to threaten China and which showed Uighur fighters training.
But the ethnic Uighur population of Xinjiang has no discernible voice. In the midst of an "all-out offensive" it is dangerous for them to speak up, unless to echo the government's message.
One contact in Kashgar told the BBC that the situation is "hypersensitive", with all business in the city closed down by night. He said members of his family are summoned to weekly meetings to demonstrate political allegiance.
"We are reliving the Cultural Revolution", he said.
Uighurs and Xinjiang
Image copyright AFP
Uighurs are ethnically Turkic Muslims
They make up about 45% of Xinjiang's population; 40% are Han Chinese
China re-established control in 1949 after crushing the short-lived state of East Turkestan
Since then, there has been large-scale immigration of Han Chinese
Uighurs fear that their traditional culture will be eroded
Who are the Uighurs?
So what lies behind China's biggest show of force in Xinjiang in nearly a decade?
The incident in Pishan on 14 February is the only deadly attack to be reported this year. Details are still scarce but there is no suggestion of the kind of outside involvement or large scale co-ordination which might explain such an enormous response.
Instead, unofficial reports suggest the trigger for the attack may have been something far more personal: the police punishment of a Uighur family who held a Muslim prayer meeting at home.
This is surely not the kind of scenario which requires the deployment of thousands of paramilitary reinforcements.
But the state controlled Xinjiang Daily newspaper has urged security forces to prepare "for a battle between good and evil, lightness and dark" and the region's Communist Party boss warned of "grim conditions" in the fight against terrorism.
Image copyright AFP Image caption As well as the firm hand of Beijing, Uighurs are involved in the running of their semi-autonomous region
So are conditions really grim?
Notwithstanding the video threat, outside Xinjiang, there has been no significant terrorist attack in China since 2014 and reported attacks in the region have been sporadic and small-scale.
By contrast, France has seen numerous terror attacks in recent years, including several major atrocities. But the French government did not declare a frontline, fly in thousands of troops or mount mass armed rallies on city streets.
It's hard to escape the conclusion that China is wielding a hammer to crack a nut. But Xinjiang's security forces are already well armed with every form of "nutcracker", including highly trained manpower, rapid response units, mobile police stations, surveillance cameras, helicopters, drones, satellite tracking of vehicles, biometrics and grid style management of every community right down to the individual household.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Police control and public surveillance is on the rise across China
So what explains the force?
It's possible that the current security situation in Xinjiang is worse than appears and that there are many attacks going unreported.
Or that China has a very different risk calculus from other countries and feels a hammer is the appropriate response to every nut.
A third possibility is that warning of "grim conditions" in counter-terrorism serves an unrelated purpose and the nut must be redefined as an existential threat to justify the hammer.
My feeling is that all three explanations play a part.
The first is the least significant.
It's hard to verify occasional unofficial reports of small scale attacks in remote parts of Xinjiang because it's extremely difficult and dangerous for local Uighurs to contact foreign reporters. But it's unlikely that the authorities could cover up a major atrocity even if they wished to.
The risk calculus is a much bigger factor. It's a sweeping generalisation unsupported by hard evidence, but in my experience Chinese citizens are risk averse.
They have a higher expectation than, for example, British citizens, that their government must keep them safe.
China's growing authoritarianism means there is no vocal constituency arguing that civil liberties are worth a certain price in national security. Besides which, low trust in official news sources makes Chinese society susceptible to rumour and panic.
So China's leaders have to be risk averse when dealing with a high density population, which is only grudgingly loyal in the first place and unlikely to be resilient to terror or tolerant of failure to prevent it.
In Xinjiang, recent attacks may be small, but Beijing needs to show its public that it is doing something about them, even if that something is ineffectual or worse, counter-productive.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption The region's security forces are already well trained and armed
Turning to the third possible motive for an "all-out offensive" against scattered enemies armed only with knives, China has powerful vested interests whose objectives are advanced by talking up the security threat.
The politicians involved want to strengthen their hand before a crucial Communist Party Congress in the autumn, the security services want to expand their bureaucratic empire, and the businesses producing surveillance equipment and software have money to make.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Ethnic riots in 2009 left nearly 200 dead and led to mass arrests, against which these women protested
Despite China's best efforts to cut off the routes of escape via Central and South East Asia, more than 100 Uighur fighters have made their way to Iraq and Syria. And now, IS is using footage from Xinjiang in its propaganda videos.
It's impossible to judge how far this would have happened without policies of religious and cultural repression in Xinjiang.
Banning beards and head scarves in public places, forcing Muslims to break their rules on fasting, demolishing mosques, micromanaging religious education, exacting outward shows of ideological loyalty serves to alienate Uighurs in Xinjiang.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Some Uighurs feel their distinct culture is under threat
In many countries terror triggers the impulse to repress and punish the community which appears to harbour the "terrorist". But other societies debate the dangers of alienation and the risk that those criminalised may become even more vulnerable to exploitation by extremists.
In 2014, making the case for an honest appraisal of the dangers of repression earned the Uighur academic Ilham Tohti a life sentence in prison.
The risk of demonising such mild dissent is to leave China's Uighurs only the voice of the separatist, the "terrorist" or the religious fundamentalist.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Despite relatively moderate activism, Uighur academic Ilham Tohti was jailed for life
At present, the cost of this silence is experienced only by Uighurs and by Han Chinese who live and work in Xinjiang. But this may change.
Already the technologies of an Orwellian police state are advancing across China. Security services have no inhibitions about accessing social media accounts and private financial records to build an increasingly complete picture of the lives of persons of interest.
A vaguely worded new anti-terror law and accompanying narrative of foreign threats justify every constriction of civil liberties and detention of human rights lawyers, labour activists, religious believers and feminists.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Most of the Uighur ethnic minority, which makes up about 45% of Xinjiang's population, practise the Muslim faith
Occasionally the Chinese public pushes back with complaints on social media about aggressive policing or miscarriages of justice.
And China does have traditions of soft power as well as hard - strains of Confucian paternalism in which a benign emperor rules through wisdom and natural authority, not through fear.
But in 2017, these strains are absent in Xinjiang. There's no significant pushback to the Communist Party message that the security of the state trumps the liberty of the citizen.
So China will go on failing to win the battle for hearts and minds in Xinjiang, and failing to convince the outside world that its offensive there is a clear-cut battle between good and evil.News Release (510) 486-5375 •
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The first genome-scale model for predicting the functions of genes and gene networks in a grass species has been developed by an international team of researches that includes scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), a multi-institutional partnership led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Called RiceNet, this systems-level model of rice gene interactions should help speed the development of new crops for the production of advanced biofuels, as well as help boost the production and improve the quality of one of the world’s most important food staples.
“With RiceNet, instead of working on one gene at a time based on data from a single experimental set, we can predict the function of entire networks of genes, as well as entire genetic pathways that regulate a particular biological process,” says Pamela Ronald, a plant geneticist who holds joint appointments with JBEI, where she directs the grass genetics program, and with the University of California (UC) Davis, where she is a professor in the Department of Plant Pathology and at The Genome Center. “RiceNet represents a systems biology approach that draws from diverse and large datasets for rice and other organisms.”
Rice is a staple food for half the world’s population and a model for monocotyledonous species – one of the two major groups of flowering plants. Rice is especially useful as a model for the perennial grasses, such as Miscanthus and switchgrass, that have emerged as prime feedstock candidates for the production of clean, green and renewable cellulosic biofuels.
Given the worldwide importance of rice, a network modeling platform that can predict the function of rice genes has been sorely needed. However, until now the high number of rice genes– in excess of 41,000 compared to about 27,000 for Arabidopsis, a model for the other major group of flowering plants – along with several other important factors, has proven to be too great a challenge.
Ronald is the corresponding author of a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that describes how JBEI researchers, working with researchers at the University of Texas in Austin, and Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea, overcame the challenge and developed a network that encompasses nearly half of all rice genes. The paper is titled “Genetic dissection of the biotic stress response using a genome-scale gene network for rice.”
“RiceNet builds upon 24 publicly available data sets from five species as well as an earlier mid-sized network of 100 rice stress response proteins that my group constructed through protein interaction mapping,” Ronald says. “We have conducted experiments that validated RiceNet’s predictive power for genes involved in the rice innate immune response.”
Ronald and her team also showed that RiceNet can accurately predict gene functions in another important monocotyledonous crop species, maize.
A RiceNet Website is now available that allows researchers from all over the world to use it. At JBEI, RiceNet will be used to identify genes that have not previously been known to be involved in cell wall synthesis and modification. JBEI researchers are looking for ways to increase the accessibility of fermentable sugars in the cell walls of feedstock plants.
“The ability to identify key genes that control simple or complex traits in rice has important biological, agricultural, and economic consequences,” Ronald says. “RiceNet offers an attractive and potentially rapid route for focusing crop engineering efforts on the small sets of genes that are deemed most likely to affect the traits of interest.”
Co-authoring the PNAS paper with Ronald were Insuk Lee, Young-Su Seo, Dusica Coltrane, Sohyun Hwang, Taeyun Oh and Edward Marcotte.
This research was supported in part by JBEI through the DOE Office of Science.
# # #
JBEI is one of three Bioenergy Research Centers established by the DOE’s Office of Science in 2007. It is a scientific partnership led by Berkeley Lab and includes the Sandia National Laboratories, the University of California campuses of Berkeley and Davis, the Carnegie Institution for Science, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. DOE’s Bioenergy Research Centers support multidisciplinary, multi-institutional research teams pursuing the fundamental scientific breakthroughs needed to make production of cellulosic biofuels, or biofuels from nonfood plant fiber, cost-effective on a national scale.
DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit the Office of Science website at http://science.energy.gov/
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world’s most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab’s scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. For more, visit www.lbl.gov.
Additional information:
For more information about the Joint BioEnergy Institute, visit the Website at www.jbei.org
For more information about the research of Pamela Ronald, visit her Website at http://indica.ucdavis.edu/
A user-interactive web tool for RiceNet-based selection of candidate genes is publicly available at http://www.functionalnet.org/ricenetGov. Chris Christie of New Jersey isn’t going to run. That’s too bad. He had a chance to rescue the Republican Party from its dash to the cliff and make President Obama a better leader, too.
Here’s why: When the G.O.P. presidential candidates were asked during their debate on Aug. 11 whether any of them would accept a budget deal that involved $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases — and they all said no — the Republican Party officially became a danger to itself and to the country.
The G.O.P. became a danger to the country because it announced, in effect, that it would not be a partner for the kind of Grand Bargain that many economists believe we need — something that provides more near-term investment in the economy that spurs job growth, combined with a credible long-term plan to increase tax revenues and trim entitlements so the country’s debt-to-G.D.P. ratio stays in a safe range. Such a Grand Bargain would simultaneously boost the economy and optimism by its economic logic and the mere fact of the two parties working together.
The G.O.P. became a danger to itself because, as Tyler Cowen, an economics professor at George Mason University, pointed out in this newspaper on Sunday: “Cutting $10 in spending for every $1 in tax increases would result in $9 in net tax reduction. That’s because lower spending today means lower taxes tomorrow, and limiting the future path of government spending does limit future taxes, as Milton Friedman, the late Nobel laureate and conservative icon, so clearly explained. Promising never to raise taxes, without reaching a deal on spending, really means a high and rising commitment to future taxes.”
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The G.O.P.’s refusal to contemplate any tax increase, added Cowen, “has brought what seems to be an extreme Democratic response: President Obama’s latest budget plan is moving away from entitlement reform and embracing multiple tax increases on the wealthy. We may be left with no good fiscal options.”
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Indeed, Obama’s decision to respond to G.O.P. extremism and the failure to conclude a Grand Bargain, by moving to the left rather than to the center, was a huge mistake. It means, as Cowen noted, that the country has no credible, long-term fiscal option before it now. Rather than shift back to his base with a weak fiscal plan, Obama should have taken his idea of a Grand Bargain to the country.Now that the Apple Watch is out, we're starting to get a look at these animated emojis that Apple has included in the Watch. They're down right hilarious, sometimes a little bizarre, and even just down right dirty. If you have an Apple Watch, here are the animated emoji's you can send to anyone that has an iPhone:
It starts out with a seemingly normal smile...
Then things start getting crazy
And then, out of nowhere... tongues
Some more tongues, this one lazy
And even more... now with their eyes closed
Not feelin the whole tongue thing?
Oh yea? Now you gonna get it...
...ANGER TONGUE!!!
Meanwhile the kid on the couch...
And then there's the friend having a bad trip
Another friend just staring...
5 minutes later...
And finally, the very creepy....smile and wink while sticking my tongue at you EmojiMany were puzzled when the story of an ABC News anchor’s three-month stint as a transgender woman broke earlier this week. The decision to transition is not one that should be made in haste, so what would prompt someone to essentially transition twice in one summer?
Well, “transient global amnesia,” if you ask Don Ennis. For others, the explanation is not as simple.
Not to be outdone by ABC News, the folks at HuffPo discovered Philip Porter, a man who says he lived 34 years as a transgender woman. He worked both as an NFL cheerleader and topless dancer before going through a “mid-life crisis” and “changing back” to his birth sex.
Porter says he felt more female than male for as long as he can remember, but didn’t have many options or resources while growing up in the ’70s. “Back then…we did not have Google, we did not have Internet — it was very difficult to find, you know, a professional doctor or psychologist who could hear my story.”
He eventually did find that doctor in Dallas, and began transitioning just two days after:
“I was in his office the next day, an endocrinologist office the day after that, and just began my life living as a female. And did that very successfully and very happily for 32 years — I was an NFL cheerleader and I was a topless dancer for many years.”
But 32 years later, Porter says his hormones became unbearable:
“I think part of it might be the mid-life crisis, where like you’re starting to have the hot flashes and be very uncomfortable and it’s like the hormones were having different effects on me. I just said ‘Ok, I’ll stop taking these for awhile but it’s not going to change back after 34 years of taking them.’”
But once he stopped taking his hormones, Porter says things did change:
“And after that, it just started happening. After about 6 months to 9 months being off of them, ‘you know, you never gave yourself a chance to sort of live as a male. What would that be like?’ And it kind of was something in my mind that started as just a little thought that kind of like snowballed. And you know, I mean that’s just kind of how it happened.”
Check out the full interview here.Danbury High School students walk out over immigrant slurs, Trump
Danbury High School students staged a walkout Thursday morning to protest authorities’ decision not to prosecute a man who taunted minority students after school Jan. 20. Danbury High School students staged a walkout Thursday morning to protest authorities’ decision not to prosecute a man who taunted minority students after school Jan. 20. Photo: Carol Kaliff / Hearst Connecticut Media Buy photo Photo: Carol Kaliff / Hearst Connecticut Media Image 1 of / 24 Caption Close Danbury High School students walk out over immigrant slurs, Trump 1 / 24 Back to Gallery
DANBURY — About 500 students walked out of Danbury High School Thursday morning to protest a decision not to prosecute a Trump supporter who taunted immigrant students as they left school one day last month.
Student organizer Iman Farah, 16, said that while the school principal had issued a statement deploring the Jan. 20 taunting incident, it was a “catch-all paragraph” that did not address student fears about their safety. The superintendent said nothing, she said.
What began as protest against the inauguration-day harassment became a rally about what students called President Trumps’s fear-mongering, his promise to deport undocumented immigrants, and the “radicalization” of his followers, who students feared would return and harass students knowing that the man who showed up at the high school on Jan. 20 was not penalized.
“Nothing happens to him?” asked Tyra Hodge, president of the high school’s Black Lives Matter organization. “What does that tell other radicals?... He said the whole school should be deported.”
As administrators tried to convince the crowd to go back inside more than an hour after the walkout, an undocumented student fought tears as he urged about 150 classmates still sitting on the football field’s bleachers to remain.
He said he has lived in constant fear since President Trump was elected. “I love this country like a second mother, but I wake up every morning and go to bed every night afraid,” he said.
Thursday’s walkout was the second student action of civil disobedience in a week. Last Thursday, some classes were half empty, students said, as many students stayed home for the national “A Day Without Immigrants” protest.
Deputy Superintendent William Glass said officials haven’t yet “crunched the numbers,” but “there was a noticeable increase in absenteeism that day.” Danbury has the largest high school in the state with about 3,000 students.
Save for snowball-throwing, the protest was peaceful, police and school officials said. Glass said his administrators, “of course,” wished students remained in class, but he was happy students “exercised their right to have their voices heard.”
School officials caught wind of the walkout late Wednesday night, but didn’t find any concrete plans on social media, “just rumors,” Glass said. Officials alerted teachers and other administrators, but made no effort to force the students to go back to class. When the walkout began, officials alerted all teachers and school security officers as well as police — some 12 officers were there.
“I’m pleased with how the administration handled it,” Glass said. “And I never cease to be amazed and delighted with the degree of respect shown by the students of Danbury high.”
Throughout the rally, Principal Dan Donovan repeatedly asked students to go back inside and to watch their language. “F— Donald Trump” was heard frequently.
At one point, Donovan walked with students on the football field and requested, name by name, that they return to school.
The Jan. 20 incident, which was caught on a video that quickly went viral, caused an uproar from local immigrant advocates.
In the video, an apparently intoxicated man showed up at Danbury High hours after President Trump’s inauguration and shouted obscenities at minority students, including “You’ll be out of the country, you f------ illegals.”
Police have said the man was punched in the face, but he declined to press charges against the students involved. Donovan, on Wednesday, told students what he knew about the incident and when he knew it. School officials only learned of the taunting later in the evening after the video had already gone viral, he said. When it happened, around 2:10 p.m. Jan. 20, officials first thought it was a car accident in the parking lot, he said.
After reviewing the video, police applied for an arrest warrant, but prosecutors declined to file charges.
Danbury State’s Attorney Stephen Sedensky said at the time the case was reviewed thoroughly by a prosecutor in his office.
“We reviewed all of the circumstances of the case and the behaviors of those involved and decided that a criminal prosecution was not appropriate,” he said at the time. Students Wednesday said the man should have been arrested by officers who were on the school grounds, and he definitely could have been charged with at least public intoxication or disturbing the peace.
All students, other than six organizers, were back in class by 11:15 a.m. on Thursday, Glass said.
In a meeting with the six organizers, Donovan said he was as surprised as students were that the man didn’t face charges. “It was all on video. I thought it was a slam dunk,” he told them.
The group then talked about their experiences as immigrants in America, and the principal chimed in.
“My family came from Ireland because of famine and no work,” Donovan said.
“We’re all immigrants,” 17-year-old Hodge replied. “Some of us just have more pigment in our skin.”
blytton@hearstmediact.com; 203-731-3411; @bglyttonTo read more on Star Wars: The Last Jedi, pick up the new issue of Entertainment Weekly on stands Friday, or buy it here now. Don’t forget to subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.
Rey’s family has become the “Rosebud” of Star Wars: Who are they? What’s their significance? How will that revelation shape her destiny?
The mystery was introduced in The Force Awakens when Daisy Ridley’s desert scavenger touched the ancestral Skywalker lightsaber and saw a series of visions, including a starship abandoning a much younger version of herself on the junkyard world of Jakku.
Now, The Last Jedi will finally resolve the question that fans have been debating for two years.
This article, obviously, won’t spoil anything. The theory I’m holding onto is still this one.
But in EW’s interview for our cover story on The Last Jedi, writer and director Rian Johnson did offer his thoughts on a related question: How much does Rey’s past matter — or is this a tangent fans have obsessed over unnecessarily?
“To me, it’s important insofar as it’s important to her,” Johnson says. “And I think it’s important to her in terms of what is her place in all of this? What’s going to define her in this story? She was told in the last movie that the answer’s not in the past; it’s looking forward. But she’s showing up on this island to talk to this hero from the past.”
Let’s just pause for a line from Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon For the Misbegotten: “There is no present or future — only the past, happening over and over again — now.”
If Rey understands her origin, it can be a map for her future, a guide to avoiding whatever fear or mistakes have come before. In that way, Johnson says Rey does need to know. (And so do we.)
“You can be told [‘the answer’s not in the past’], but I think she still has a lingering hope that she’s going to find the thing that’s going to say: This is where you belong. This is where you are. I think she still holds onto the thought that where she comes from will help define where she’s going.”
ONCE WAS LOST
ILM/© 2017 Lucasfilm Ltd.
Ridley says Rey will ultimately find the answer — and discover that it doesn’t matter that much. It won’t change who she is, or at least who she wants to be.
“You can always look for answers and that doesn’t mean that the rest of your life is so easy. It’s not like, oh, I know who my parents are so now everything falls into shape, especially in the Star Wars world,” the actress says.
Anakin Skywalker had a loving mother but became the galactic warlord Darth Vader. Luke and Leia are the children of Vader but have fought tirelessly for good and decency. Ben Solo was the son of Han and Leia, but lost his way and fell into darkness, like his grandfather before.
Family gives you the starting point, but the destination is a matter of choice.
Still, Ridley agrees that Rey needs to find out about her lineage, at least so she can stop wondering.
“Yes, it would potentially change her mind, or at least give her a little bit more peace in moving forward. But ultimately what’s coming is coming, and whatever abilities she has are there. So, personally, I think it’s less important than even she may think.”
One thing Ridley said to expect from The Last Jedi is that no one falls easily onto the good or bad side. There is always potential to change — for better and for worse.
“What’s wonderful is it’s not so cut and dry, who’s good and who’s bad and that’s not me saying, ‘Oh, my God, some people are gonna go bad,'” Ridley says. “There’s always room for bad people to make good decisions and vice versa. Again, that could be nothing to do with your parents and it could be everything to do with your parents.”
There’s also another new figure in the Star Wars saga who has uncertain origins, but fans haven’t latched onto theories about him the way they have with Rey.
FINN’S FAMILY MYSTERY
All we know about John Boyega’s ex-stormtrooper Finn is that he was expendable for the First Order, probably less valuable than the white armor he wore into battle. He was a child soldier, taken from wherever he was from and conscripted into their fascist military operation. He didn’t even have a name, just numerals and a number: FN-2187.
Will we find out more about Finn’s family?
ILM/© 2017 Lucasfilm Ltd.
“Yeah, definitely,” Boyega tells EW. “But it’s not explored in depth in Episode VIII. But he definitely has a past that is troubled. … I don’t know how all that’s going to play out.”
Sounds like more about Finn may be forthcoming in Episode IX. But the actor suggested that The Last Jedi will explore the character’s recent history.
“We will learn more about his past and where he came from, and potentially why he made the decision [to escape] that he made,” Boyega says. “I’m also very curious. The question that needs to be answered is why he decided to leave as a stormtrooper in the first place. We will find out just a little bit more about him.”
Even though they are separated for much of the film, Finn and Rey remain on somewhat parallel journeys of self-discovery.
“The big thematic push and pull in the movie is the past and what role the past has in moving us forward into the future,” Johnson says.
NEXT UP: Tales from the Dark Side — where will The Last Jedi find Kylo Ren and Captain Phasma? (And a mourning Chewie?)
Part 1 – Luke and Rey
Part 2 – Finn and Rose
Part 3 – Porgs and Caretakers
Part 4 – Snoke and the Praetorian Guard
Part 5 – Leia and Poe
Part 6 – Benicio Del Toro’s DJ
The Last Jedi is out in December.At the beginning of the third century war raged in Britain as the emperor Septimius Severus sought to reassert Roman power north of Hadrian’s Wall.
But unknown to the fighting cohorts and Caledonian tribes, at the same moment, in the far reaches of space, two stars were coming together in a cataclysmic explosion. Now 1,800 years later the light from that collision will finally reach Earth, creating a new star – nicknamed the “Boom Star” – in an incredibly rare event that is usually only spotted through telescopes.
Before their collision the two stars were too dim to be seen by the naked eye, but in 2022, the bright burning light from the red nova that was created will be visible to the naked eye in the constellation Cygnus.
What we’re talking about you might literally call the birth of a new star
“For the first time in history, parents will be able to point to a dark spot in the sky and say, ‘Watch, kids, there’s a star hiding in there, but soon it’s going to light up’,” said Dr Matt Walhout, from Calvin College, Michigan.
For around six months the Boom Star will be one of the brightest in the sky before gradually dimming. It is the first time scientists have ever predicted the birth of a new star and astronomers expect a race to be the first to spot it.
Dr. Robert Massey, of the Royal Astronomical Society, said: “What we’re talking about you might literally call the birth of a new star.
“The good news for people in the UK is that it is in the constellation Cygnus which is always above the horizon and is very high in the sky in the summer, so everyone will be able to see it.”
The forecast was made at a press conference Friday that coincided with the Epiphany, commemorating the visit of the Magi, who followed a newborn star to Bethlehem to witness the birth of Jesus.
The binary star system, named KIC9832227, is 1,800 light years away and comprises two suns which spin around each other every 11 hours.
In 2013, Larry Molnar and his team at Calvin College noticed that the orbital speed was decreasing. And doing so faster and faster.
It matched the data from another binary star which exploded in 2008 without warning. When experts went back over data from previous years they discovered that the crash could have been predicted.
Molnar said: “Observations of KIC9832227 show its orbital period has been getting faster since 1999 in the same distinctive way. We arrive at our predicted date by assuming the same process is happening here. The star is around 1,800 light years [away]. Hence if we are right about the upcoming outburst, it actually occurred 1,795 years ago, and the light from the outburst has been travelling toward us ever since.
He added that the case was “unique in that it is the first time anyone has predicted an explosion in advance”.
“It’s a one-in-a-million chance that you can predict an explosion. It’s never been done before.”
Walhout added: “If Larry’s prediction is correct, his project will demonstrate for the first time that astronomers can catch certain binary stars in the act of dying, and that they can track the last few years of a stellar death spiral up to the point of final, dramatic explosion.”Serial entrepreneur, investor, and overall Internet good guy Kevin Rose is stepping down from his role of general partner at Google Ventures. The Digg and Revision3 founder will be moving into a part-time role at the firm, and will be using all his spare time to embark on a whole new adventure building a mobile startup called North.
The return to entrepreneurship probably shouldn’t come as a huge surprise: After all, Rose has been all over the Internet for more than a decade building companies like Digg, Revision3, Pownce, and Milk. If anything, his two-and-a-half year stint as a venture capitalist at Google Ventures was more of an anomaly than these plans to found a new company.
Rose came to Google, and later Google Ventures, through the search giant’s acquisition of his last venture, Milk. That company was mostly a mobile design firm that sought to build and launch a series of products to the world and see what worked. But it was acqui-hired by Google shortly after the release of its first product Oink, which was a location-based mobile app for rating things in the real world. The folks at Milk joined Google’s design team and Rose soon after joined Google’s venture arm.
His newest venture will be called North, and will be focused on building a series of mobile and social products. In an interview with Rose, he told me the plan is to start with a small team of about three and to create a new product each quarter. And if one of those products becomes a hit, Rose says he’ll recruit a team and try to build a company around it.
If the model sounds familiar, that’s because it was kind of the idea behind Milk. But the world has changed since then, according to Rose. “The biggest thing that’s changed in the last three years is that back then we spent a lot of time spent building out the back end… But the scaling piece is a solved problem,” Rose told me.
Nowadays he says, a lean startup can work specifically on product and design, and leave the infrastructure side of things to someone else. He envisions North as a team that has one product person, one design person, and a full-stack engineer to get products going, while outsourcing much of the actual development work to trusted friends and colleagues.
Rose isn’t the only entrepreneur operating under that type of model: Uber and StumbleUpon co-founder Garrett Camp has Expa, Twitter founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone have Obvious Corp., and PayPal co-founder Max Levchin has HVF. In each case, those founders are operating on a model of incubating a portfolio of interesting products and then building teams around them.
As Rose heads back into the startup world, however, one might question his track record of success. After all, Digg grew fast |
ative policies would be pulverizing her in the polls. Trump needs to step up (and lately, it seems that he’s been doing just that).
Trump is a new to political campaigning. He’s new to conservatism. He’s a “baby Christian” as some have called him. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and that can be viewed as either a weakness or an opportunity. I choose to see it as a grand opportunity to point him in the right direction… to the right.
We’ve already seen examples of this. When attempting his leftward lurch on immigration, better known as “the softening,” he received push back from some of his supporters. Frankly, I didn’t think he received enough push back, but it worked. Within a week, he abandoned his toe-dipping into the realm of amnesty-that-shall-not-be-called-amnesty and returned to his original stance. Lately, he’s been hinting at a return to the left on the issue, for which we must continue to apply the pressure.
One does not have to join the #NeverTrump camp in order to oppose some of his policies, nor does one have to support all of his policies if they want him to win. It is imperative that we agree when he’s right and disagree when he’s wrong. He will be wrong on many issues; at heart, he’s still left-leaning and it shows in his proposed policies. If he is to be President, he cannot go down the road of big government and dramatically increased spending. If we say nothing, who will? The left? The Establishment? Only the grassroots and truly conservative politicians will be able to sway him away from any lingering liberal tendencies that are tugging at his heart.
Another major concern is the Supreme Court. Many who are reluctant supporters attribute the SCOTUS as their primary reason for supporting him over Clinton. There’s a problem that is so drastically under-reported that one might consider it to be a conspiracy. Shortly after releasing his amazing list of conservative judges he’d consider for the Supreme Court, he declared that it was just a starting point. Then, during the Republican National Convention in a closed-door meeting, he declared that he had many other names, “fabulous people,” as he put it, who were now on his list. Currently, there is one spot open. There’s a chance that as many as three more will come open in span of his Presidency. Why does he need more than the original 11? Why won’t he release those names? Why won’t he commit to appointing only conservative justices? Is he hedging his bets in case the Democrats take control of the Senate? Is he preparing to use SCOTUS nominations as bargaining chips? We don’t know and currently nobody is willing to ask.
Mark Levin might be the prototype for the type of conservative voice that can support Trump while still holding his feet to the conservative fire. He’s denounced Trump’s $7 trillion retreat on tax cuts. He’s called out his plans to expand government and dramatically increase the national debt. He’s highlighted nearly every liberal policy that Trump has proposed, a large list which seems to be getting bigger. However, he praised him on immigration. He praised the wall. He praised his willingness to act against terrorism and confront the Islamic State. He was #NeverTrump. Now, he’s voting for Trump. In lieu of the example set by so many Trump supporters from average voters to television pundits, Levin has chosen to endorse him with his vote while keeping his leftist policies in view.
Trump’s supporters have a dual-purpose this election year. They need to get him elected and they need to keep pushing him to the right against his leftward lurches. To do one and not the other is inviting the worst-case scenario: a “Republican” President who, in the name of bipartisanship and without the dissent of his constituents, pushes a liberal agenda without opposition.POLITICIANS are divided over PM Julia Gillard's decision to back Nova Peris as a candidate, with one critic calling the Olympian a "maid" who will "do the sheets and serve cups of tea".
The Northern Territory's Indigenous Affairs Minister Alison Anderson said the Prime Minister was "dragged kicking to preselect an Aboriginal person."
"I don't think Territorians know her, especially Aboriginal people out in remote Aboriginal communities," she said.
"And I don't think she understands the poverty and disadvantage of the remote Territory., The Northern Territory News reports.
She said Ms Peris would be treated like a "maid to do the sheets and serve the cups of tea".
Ms Anderson - who was a former NT Labor minister - said Aboriginal people were "welcome on the verandas of the Labor Party".
"The Prime Minister has said that we will have a maid inside the house."
Her claims come after Labor Party members in the Northern Territory are seething at the move to install the Olympian to replace Senator Trish Crossin at the next election.
Fallout from Prime Minister Julia Gillard's decision to go over the heads of the NT branch members of the party and "parachute" Ms Peris into the role continued on today.
Former deputy leader of the Northern Territory, Labor's Syd Stirling, said the move showed "breathtaking arrogance" and held the party in contempt.
"(NT ALP) members count for nought in the view of the prime minister, and that is something to be deplored," Mr Stirling told ABC radio.
Branch president of the ALP in Alice Springs, Rowan Foley, said he was "gutted" by the move and it remained to be seen whether Ms Peris would perform well as a politician.
"I am a little over duds being selected in the Labor Party," Mr Foley said.
The Labor Party's national executive has accepted Nova Peris as a member in the Northern Territory and says she can stand for preselection for first spot on the Territory's senate ticket.
The ALP's national secretary George Wright said the national executive met today to consider Labor's Senate preselection in the NT.
He said the executive resolved to reopen nominations for the position until 5pm (CST) on January 28.
They said a preselection ballot would be heard the next day "should this be required''.
Former chief minister of the NT, Paul Henderson, who lost power last year, said the prime minister's move was not the best decision that could have been made.
"At the end of the day there is a lot of rough and tumble in politics," he said.
"Ultimately it should be the rank and file members of the party who are allowed a vote."
Marion Scrymgour, an indigenous woman and former NT politician who had intended challenging Ms Crossin for preselection, said she thought her strong views on the federal government's intervention in Aboriginal communities had counted against her.
"If Canberra is afraid to have a person stand up in a robust way, have the debate on behalf of people in the Northern Territory, then I don't want to be part of that process," Ms Scrymgour told the ABC.
"I think it is disgraceful," she said.
Prominent Aboriginal sovereignty campaigner Michael Anderson condemned Ms Gillard's choice of Ms Peris.
"I do not have confidence in her ability to stand up for and fight the hard fight that is coming our way," he said in a statement.
"Ms Peris is only being used as a public relations exercise for Labor."
Mr Anderson, who founded the tent embassy in Canberra 40 years ago, said he feared that Ms Peris would be used as a show pony for the Labor party at an international level.
"Ms Nova Peris has not been involved in major political processes, rallies or otherwise. She has been missing in political action all the time," Mr Anderson said.
"I appeal to Ms Nova Peris to rethink this offer so as to ensure that she is not a puppet of Julia Gillard's Labor party, otherwise we need her to come out and simply say that just because she is Aboriginal she is not our voice."
The dumping of Northern Territory senator Trish Crossin to make way for star Labor recruit, has been described as brutal and "a night of the long knives against a senator".
Labor left co-convenor Senator Doug Cameron, a friend of Senator Crossin, said he was disappointed with Ms Gillard's interference in the NT Senate preselection process.
"If we have a problem in the Northern Territory with indigenous representation we should have been dealing with this six months ago," he told ABC Radio.
"We should be looking at how we attract talented Aboriginal people into the party, how we can make the party relevant to them."
He said it was not relevant to be "parachuting people in and saying that soothes our conscience in terms of Aboriginal representation."
"It's a short-term fix that belies a deeper problem," he said.
Senator Cameron described Prime Minister Julia Gillard's "captain's pick" as brutal and "a night of the long knives against a senator."
The Prime Minister astonished her own backbenchers when she torpedoed 15-year Senate veteran Trish Crossin, after previously failing to force scandal-plagued Dobell MP Craig Thomson from parliament.
One Labor MP described the move against Ms Crossin as revenge in return for the Senator's support of Mr Rudd.
"It is appalling, she seems to think that the party is her own little play thing, she is settling a score with someone who didn't support her in the leadership ballot, it stinks," the MP said.
The brutal and rare move against a sitting representative by a Labor leader was described by another Labor MP as an "iron lady" manoeuvre that Mr Thomson was spared because of the government's precarious House of Representatives numbers in the hung parliament.
Ms Peris, who as of yesterday was yet to join the Labor party, is set to become the first indigenous Labor representative in Federal Parliament, with an assured top place on the NT Senate ticket in what Ms Gillard described as a "captain's pick."
After Ms Gillard said she was "very troubled" the party was without Aboriginal representation, backbenchers accused her of hypocrisy and of putting political expediency ahead of principle.
Ms Peris today defended the prime minister's call.
"I think with the prime minister yesterday, I think she's handled it the way that she saw - the best way to do it," she told the Seven Network.
"I can't really get involved in the nuts and bolts of the party process but if you look at the Northern Territory, Labor lost its last election... there was lack of representation from Aboriginal women in the NT."
Ms Peris said she felt "honoured" to have been selected for her work in health and education rather than her high profile as an athlete.
"When I had the talks with Labor officials they said it wasn't what I'd done on the sporting field, with all due respect, it was actually what I had done at the national level with the community work and the amount of stuff with health, youth and education."
However, former NT education minister Marion Scrymgour, who was Australia's first indigenous female minister, had stuck up her hand to run against Ms Crossin for preselection for the Senate ticket.
She received a phone call from Ms Gillard letting her know the race was over.
Ms Scrymgour told the ABC that the prime minister would have her way, but the NT felt robbed of having its say.
"Nova has been away for a long time," Ms Scrymgour said.
"There are many issues up here, sure she's been backwards and forward... you're playing at a different level."
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said he welcomed more indigenous people in national politics but Ms Gillard had shown poor judgment.
"It's a good goal, getting more indigenous people into the parliament, but there are indigenous members of the Labor Party in the Northern Territory," he told Macquarie Radio.
The prime minister had sidelined a well-respected senator in Ms Crossin and overlooked Ms Scrymgour, who "may well have been able to win a preselection legitimately", he said.
"I don't want to pretend to be an expert on the rather murky machinations of the Labor party but I guess we've seen the prime minister involved in a political hit on Kevin Rudd, a political hit on Harry Jenkins, the former speaker, and now this political hit on Trish Crossin," Mr Abbott said.
Prominent indigenous Australian and former party elder Warren Mundine was set to be given Mark Arbib's vacant NSW Senate seat when he was shoved aside so Bob Carr could be parachuted in to become Foreign Affairs Minister at a time when the government was languishing in opinion polls.
"She had a lay down misere in support for Warren Mundine and she chose to put Carr up, he hasn't done a bad job but he hasn't turned the polls for her," one MP said.
"Warren's selection would have been the right thing to do."
Mr Mundine yesterday said he was delighted for Ms Peris and felt a "wrong had been righted" in the Labor Party after 112 years without an Aboriginal representative in Federal Parliament.
Ms Crossin, who was yesterday chairing the Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Peoples, was only told by Ms Gillard she was being replaced on Monday night.
"This action has been taken without consultation or negotiation with the NT branch of the ALP or my input," she said.
The Prime Minister and Labor Party figures, including National Secretary George Wright, had plotted for almost two months to use the National Executive to install Olympic Gold medallist Ms Peris in the top Senate spot for the NT.
It comes just five months after Labor was swept from power in the Northern Territory, indigenous voters abandoning Labor for the Country Liberal Party.
Ms Peris, who runs an academy for indigenous girls, said she was "very honoured and humbled."
Ms Gillard praised Ms Peris, saying that "Nova's selection is a matter of national significance".
Meanwhile, an expanded police investigation called by Kevin Rudd over his swearing YouTube video will hang like a "cloud" over the Prime Minister's office at the start of the parliamentary year, a Labor MP said yesterday.
Mr Rudd has identified possible new witnesses in what he believes was the theft of the footage and the unauthorised release of the video in which he unleashed a string of expletives in out takes of a message he was recording in Chinese.
- with AAPThis fabulously unpredictable postseason had to end up this way, with the Kansas City Royals and the San Francisco Giants -- the two wild-card teams -- in the World Series. It's the second all-wild-card matchup ever, the first in 2002.
It will be the Giants' third trip to the World Series in five years, and the Royals' first since 1985. This also will mark the first time in an uninterrupted season that two teams with fewer than 90 victories in the regular season will play in the World Series. But before anyone says neither team belongs, think again. The Royals are the first team ever to win its first eight games of a postseason, and the Giants are the most resourceful, inventive and tough-minded team we've seen in years.
Here are five questions.
Holland
How good is the Kansas City bullpen?
We have asked this in every series the Royals have played this postseason, and the pen just keeps getting better and better. It has a 0.96 ERA since the start of the ALDS. In Game 3 of the ALCS, the pen threw four perfect innings, the third time a team has ever done that in postseason history. The Royals have won four one-run games this postseason, a tribute mostly to the threesome of Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis and Greg Holland. This season, those three had 21 games in which they all pitched, and none of the three allowed a run. No other team had more than 16 such games from any threesome. That's why the Royals were 65-4 when leading after six innings during the regular season. Herrera and Davis have not allowed a home run this year. And advanced metrics tell us that of the past 100 batters the three have faced combined, there have been only five hard-hit balls.
Petit
How good is the San Francisco bullpen?
It has been terrific this postseason, posting an ERA under 2.00. The Giants might not have a threesome like Kansas City's, but anyone who saw the 18-inning game against the Nationals in Game 2 of the LDS knows how deep and versatile that pen is. In that game, Yusmeiro Petit, who set a major league record this year with 47 consecutive batters retired, threw six scoreless innings and struck out seven, the most ever in extra innings of any postseason game. Petit has pitched nine postseason innings, allowing no runs and two hits. Closer Santiago Casilla has been really good; he hasn't allowed a run in 17 consecutive postseason appearances. Left-hander Jeremy Affeldt has gone 19 straight appearances in the postseason without allowing a run. And another lefty, Javier Lopez, has gone 15 straight scoreless appearances in the postseason. The Giants appear to have a slight advantage because the best starting pitcher in the postseason has been Madison Bumgarner (1.72 ERA), who is pitching so deep into games that he keeps the pen fresh.
Cain
How good is the Kansas City defense?
We have asked this in every postseason series the Royals have played, and the defense just keeps getting better and better. In Game 2 of the LCS, outfielder Lorenzo Cain was the defensive star, making a great diving catch in right-center field, then two innings later as the right fielder, making a crucial running catch at the right-field line. In Game 3, third baseman Mike Moustakas made two highlight-reel plays, including an over-the-railing grab that teammate Jeremy Guthrie called "his gymnastics move. He gets on top of the balance beam, then slides into the crowd.'' In Game 4, Alex Gordon, the game's best defensive left fielder, made three nice running catches to help preserve a 2-1 win. And you know shortstop Alcedes Escobar, first baseman Eric Hosmer or catcher Salvador Perez is due for a night of Web Gems. That's what happens when you have six Gold Glove-caliber defenders.
Ishikawa
Exactly how do the Giants keep scoring enough runs?
It's puzzling but very impressive how they keep doing it. The Giants scored nine runs in four games of the LDS against the Nationals and won. They won the deciding Game 4 with three runs, which scored on a bases-loaded walk, an infield groundout and a wild pitch. In the LCS, they won Game 3 on a game-ending throwing error by Cardinals pitcher Randy Choate. They came from behind to win Game 4 in part because of two throws within four pitches by Cardinals first baseman Matt Adams in the sixth inning. After that game, they had scored 22 runs this postseason, 12 of which were scored without a hit. As our friend Jayson Stark pointed out, they entered Game 5 without a home run in 242 straight postseason plate appearances. Then, in Game 5, Joe Panik homered for the first two runs; he hit one homer in 269 at-bats this season. Pinch hitter Michael Morse hit his first since Aug. 15. And Travis Ishikawa ended the game, and the series, with a walk-off three-run homer -- the first walk-off homer of his career and the fourth walk-off homer ever to end an LCS, joining Chris Chambliss, Magglio Ordonez and Aaron Boone. And the last walk-off homer hit by a Giant to put them in the World Series came in 1951 when Bobby Thomson hit "The Shot Heard 'Round The World." "The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!"
Bochy
What do we make of the managers?
The Giants' Bruce Bochy is attempting to become the 10th manager to win three World Series. The other nine are in the Hall of Fame. He is one of 12 managers to manage 20 years, have a career winning record and win multiple World Series; 10 of the other 11 are in the Hall of Fame. That's where Bochy is headed. He is the master of staying calm, and he is one of the best in the game at using his bullpen.
Yost
The Royals' Ned Yost is not going to the Hall of Fame, but he has more wins than any manager in Royals history. And he is the only manager ever to win his first eight postseason games. It's not push-button managing by any means, but Yost has basically used the same starting lineup since he moved Alcedes Escobar to the leadoff spot, and Lorenzo Cain to the No. 3 hole, on Sept. 13. And when right fielder Norichika Aoki gets on base in the late innings of a close game, Yost pinch-runs speedy Jarrod Dyson, then keeps him in center field and moves Cain to right, creating the best defensive outfield in the game. And, of course, when he gets to the seventh with a lead, he brings in Herrera, Davis and Holland for an inning each.
As for head-to-head meetings this year, it doesn't matter a great deal, but Yost's Royals swept three games from Bochy's Giants in August. The Royals had a 2.00 ERA, averaged 5.3 runs per game and stole eight bases.
The pick: Royals in sevenOne of the greatest feelings you can experience as a bodybuilder is being “in the zone” or “on a roll.” It’s those times when your training habits are going so well that they almost seem effortless. I’m sure you’ve had the pleasure of encountering this special feeling, haven’t you? When we are training with such focus, intensity, and consistency, those periods of time easily make up for any of the pain, sacrifice, or deprivation that we must endure in order to accomplish our bodybuilding goals.
The fulfillment that you’ve earned by sticking with your passion for bodybuilding has benefits which have far more of an impact on you than just accumulating muscle mass. More often than not, that sense of accomplishment carries into other areas of your life as well. Your efforts seem to make you a happier and a more complete person. Being consistent with your plan gives you a sense of pride and mental toughness. The discipline that you regularly demonstrate almost becomes a part of your identity.
There’s nothing that can compare to the feeling of being in that zone, is there? If you are currently in that state of mind, congratulations! Be certain to appreciate these special times and, most importantly, enjoy them while they last! But being on a roll is the easiest part of bodybuilding.
No matter who you are or what you’ve accomplished in the past, you will invariably experience times when you are not so motivated to train. Your drive will undoubtedly wane from time to time. Among the questions that I am continually asked is how a person can keep himself motivated to train. And furthermore, when your motivation seems to dissipate, what can you do to pull yourself out of that downward spiral? Believe me, I know from personal experience that these times can be especially painful and frustrating. Your dedication and commitment for training has always been something that you’ve thoroughly enjoyed. But now, the thrill that you’ve been accustomed to experiencing seems to be all but gone. And even worse, the pain and anxiety of wondering if that fire inside you will ever be back can be excruciating! Will this pain, frustration, and lack of drive just go away on its own? Or will your motivation to train magically come back to you someday? If so, how soon? What if it doesn’t? Hey, you’ve seen people in your gym come and go over the years. Some of them lasted three days, some lasted three months, and some even lasted for three years. But, no matter how long they stuck it out, they are no longer training consistently today.
Will you become just another bodybuilding statistic? Will you be one of the many who couldn’t handle the ups-and-downs and twists and turns that come with this disciplined lifestyle? One thing is certain: You must take action! You can’t just assume you’ll miraculously get back to your normal self. You can’t just sit around and hope your desire returns. Oftentimes, taking the first step on your journey to get back on track is the toughest. You must develop the courage to take that first step as soon as possible so that you don’t suffer any long-term damage to your love for training.
What price could you pay for not taking immediate action? For starters, you’ll lose momentum. The people with the physiques that you admire most are usually the same people who maintain their emotional state of mind consistently throughout the years. They’ve had the ability to turn things around before they become major problems. Although they experience the same challenges that everyone else does, those problems never become pervasive and cause major damage to their bodybuilding experience. By not taking action, you risk the chance of feeling comfortable with the lowered level of intensity and, in doing so, stalling or even halting your progress. Weeks, months, or even years may come and go and you may find yourself wondering why you are not making progress. What you may not realize is that this complacency can gradually grow inside you like cancer and put a limit on what you can achieve. You can eventually lose some of the passion and excitement that you’ve felt in the past from your training efforts. Maybe you’ll lose it all if you don’t get the situation under control right away. You could possibly join the legions of people whom you’ve seen quit training altogether due to frustration.
There are also tremendous benefits that you stand to gain by taking action and rekindling your drive to train at the level that you are accustomed to. You gain power when you can successfully turn a bad situation into a good one. Life is full of challenges. When you’ve done what it takes to overcome a setback, you gain the confidence needed to handle other downtimes in the future. You can also gain a new appreciation for your training. Sometimes, all it takes is feeling really bad for you to appreciate those times in your past when you felt really good. By taking immediate control of your situation, you can gain the perspective that will allow you to enjoy bodybuilding at a much greater level than ever before. With this newfound strength and energy, working through the downtimes can serve as a catalyst that launches your training performance into the stratosphere!
Here Are Some Strategies That Can Help You Successfully Work Through The Downtimes That You May Experience:
1. Keep in mind that the feelings you’re going through are normal. Everyone’s level of motivation will wane on occasion. Don’t beat yourself up just because you’re going through a lull. Even the most respected bodybuilding champions in the world experience downtimes. The characteristic that makes them champions is what they actually do during those difficult periods of time. These individuals have the unique ability to take action, and fight through their difficulties. Look at these downtimes as an opportunity to awaken the champion inside you.
2. Put yourself into the “third person” and then view your situation. In other words, step out of yourself for a moment and examine your circumstances as a good friend would. It’s my belief that, when we feel that our challenges in life are unique to us, we have a much more difficult time dealing with them. When you allow yourself to become a little less emotionally attached to your predicament, you gain a better perspective. With the mindset of an objective friend who sincerely wants to help, what advice would you give? You can see that, with a more levelheaded approach, your problems will seem much less intimidating. They will become easier to manage.
3. Determine exactly what you think needs to happen and/or what feelings you need to experience in order to feel as though you’re in your groove again. Break your thoughts down—and be specific! Do you want to start by just getting into the gym as scheduled? Do you want to feel as though you’re giving 100 percent of your effort again? Would you be happy if that nagging injury was at least 80 percent back to normal? Is it that you need to conquer your challenge of managing to eat all six meals during the day as you did when you were at your best? Break the problem down! You’ll give yourself the best chance to get back in the zone if you have a clear understanding in your brain of what the zone is supposed to feel like. One of the biggest tragedies in bodybuilding comes when you’re winning the game but feel like you’re losing. Knowing exactly when you are winning—according to your own standards—is the best way to experience victory again.
4. Focus on a time in the future when you’ll be running on all cylinders again. Think of how great that will feel. Whatever you do, try not to dwell on the problems that you are experiencing today. I know it’s difficult when times get tough, but if you can allow yourself to feel the thrill of victory in the future, your moment-to-moment, day-to-day, and month-to-month thoughts and actions will actually be pulled in that direction. How you perceive what is happening in your life will determine your state of mind, what you actually do, and what you do not do. Remember, if you think tomorrow will be a brighter day or that it will be just another day filled with pain and frustration—you’re right in either case!
5. Put a time goal on when you expect to be going full tilt again. It’s true that Rome wasn’t built in a day, so you should understand that it may take a little time to get back where you want to be. If you do not put some pressure on yourself to get back to your normal level of training efficiency sooner rather than later, you’ll invite this slump to linger a lot longer than necessary. You may find it easier to set time goals like being back up to 80 percent by the end of the month, 90 percent by the end of next month, and 100 percent in three months.
6. Don’t start making excuses for yourself and, whatever you do, do not lower your standards during these difficult times! Lowering your expectations may alleviate some of your pain and frustration in the short term but, in the long run, such rationalizations will compromise your dreams! If you successfully resist the temptation to expect less from yourself, you may come back stronger and more determined to reach your bodybuilding goals than ever before.
7. Gain the confidence you need to get through these trying times by feeding off your previous success. Chances are that you’ve experienced some degree of a slump in the past. Think back to that time and draw from your experience. What did you do back then? What mindset did you adopt back then that helped you? If you’ve done it before, you can do it again. You may also want to ask someone you know and respect who has exhibited tremendous longevity, consistency, and perseverance how they’ve been able to do so. Use those examples of excellence to model their winning habits.
8. Keep plugging away! Persistence is the most common trait among those who appear to be successful. In reality, they are oftentimes just the people who have kept trying long after average people have given up. Persistence is the ability to believe, no matter how many times you’ve tried and failed in the past, the very next strategy that you implement could be the one that takes you to the next level. Who knows? Things that seem dreadful today could turn around with a simple change in your perspective or with a big break. You’ll never know, however, if you don’t keep trying.
9. Keep your guard up! When things do seem to start turning around, be certain not to let yourself get complacent. Just when you think you have a depressed state of mind licked, it has an uncanny ability to knock you back on your tail when you least expect it. Although it may seem that you’ve made it through the hard times, continue to do the things that made your situation better. The last thing you want is to have to pull yourself out of another downtime soon after turning your current situation around. You may find it much more difficult the next time around.
Isn’t it funny how life constantly offers us setbacks in one area of our lives or another? Be patient and work through your times of less-than-normal motivation. Time heals all wounds—both physical and mental. Everything happens for a reason—if you choose to look at it that way. Use your downtimes to empower you and make you mentally stronger in the future. Pain can oftentimes be a great motivator and your best friend. Think about it for a moment. You probably would not step up and make the necessary changes to develop an even better physique if you didn’t experience some rough times along the way. Turn your downtimes into opportunities that take your bodybuilding efforts to a higher level of achievement.
As your coach who has over 25 years of experience and a track record for winning, you only to emphasize what needs to emphasized. And ONLY what needs to be emphasized. That’s EXACTLY what I have done for you in my 13-hour audio seminar course Bodybuilding and Training MASTERY Step By Step “The Mindset and Actions of a Champion” that even comes complete with workbooks.
I’ve laid out everything for you in an organized and PRIORITIZED manner. This program teaches you how to WIN at your bodybuilding and training efforts. The massively important fundamentals of weight training, cardiovascular training, nutrition, nutritional supplementation, and the critical mental skills that you need are DRIVEN HOME to guarantee your SUCCESS!
Train Hard. Think Big.
Skip La Cour
P.S. Get the program today. I will NOT let you down.| by Jack Landau |
Just under two weeks ago we last checked in on the construction of the new pedestrian bridge soon to re-connect the main section Cadillac Fairview's Toronto Eaton Centre with the Hudson's Bay/Saks Fifth Avenue building to the south. At the time of our last update in May, demolition was wrapping up on the original pedestrian bridge spanning Queen Street, as workers simultaneously continued the assembly of a new bridge on James Street just to the west.
New Eaton Centre bridge taking shape, image by Forum contributor MetroMan
Designed by UK-based architects Wilkinson Eyre, with Zeidler Partnership Architects serving as co-designer and Executive Architect on the project, the new bridge draws architectural inspiration from the two distinct styles of the buildings it will soon connect. At the north end, the bridge will connect with the 1970s glass and steel aesthetic of the Eaton Centre, through narrow metal ribs and plenty of glass. To the south, the bridge's shape and materiality gradually transition to address the arched opening above the Queen Street entrances of Saks Fifth Avenue and Hudson's Bay, switching to a rounder shape while minimizing the glazing and increasing the side of the steel ribs. Recent photos of the steel assembly on James Street show that the bridge's striking shape has become apparent. All of the bridge's steel ribs will eventually be clad in the etched bronzed panels.
New Eaton Centre bridge taking shape, image by Forum contributor MetroMan
The photos also offer insight into how the new bridge will be moved into place. It has been noted in this Forum post that the bridge is being assembled with its north end to the south, and vice versa. With the bridge positioned this way, the completed structure will need to be pivoted during its last transport by temporary crane.
New Eaton Centre bridge's future south end, image by Forum contributor MetroMan
With the former bridge now removed from the buildings, crews are in the process of finalizing demolition work of the its former connections. Yesterday afternoon, crews could be seen breaking off a concrete beam that was used to hold up the north end of the old bridge. The new north end of the bridge will land slightly east of the former bridge, and work in this area has required the installation of scaffolds over the mall's south entrance.
Demolition at north end of former bridge, image by Forum contributor MetroMan
A rendering depicting the completed bridge shows what we can expect upon completion. With the Eaton Centre among the most visited attractions in the city, this bridge will play a prominent role as both a functional piece of pedestrian infrastructure, and a new landmark over Queen Street.
New Eaton Centre bridge, image courtesy of Cadillac Fairview
Additional information and renderings can be found in our Eaton Centre Database file, linked below. Want to get involved in the discussion? Check out the associated Forum thread, or leave a comment using the field provided at the bottom of this page.Elias Diaz C • PIT Out of action RotoWire
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upon to do anything. When does the doctrine of intrinsic value serve as a guide to what man should do? Only when man comes to attach value to something. Then it is invoked to deny him the value he seeks. For example, the intrinsic value of the vegetation et al. is invoked as a guide to man’s action only when there is something man wants, such as oil, and then, as in the case of Northern Alaska, its invocation serves to stop him from having it. In other words, the doctrine of intrinsic value is nothing but a doctrine of the negation of human values. It is pure nihilism.”
It is often held that man is an agent of destruction of nature, but isn’t man a part of nature? If a beaver is allowed to chop down trees, why should I not be allowed to?
Beyond the nonsense inherent in this doctrine, considering nature to have intrinsic value makes it impossible to rationally guide ourselves with respect to how to treat the environment. How are we supposed to behave if we cannot use nature for our own ends? And if we are allowed to use nature to further goals of man, then – if nature has intrinsic value and we can’t discriminate between various elements of nature – how are we to determine which environment-altering behaviors are kosher and which are not? We live in a world of scarcity, so some means of determining priorities is necessary.
Nature does not have intrinsic value. This doesn’t imply that the natural world doesn’t have value, of course, but rather that its value is related to the ends that nature can be used to achieve. I don’t intend to belabor this point philosophically; I just mean to point out that there is nothing immoral about man manipulating his natural environment to achieve his goals.
In fact, it seems that this is an inevitable result of existing. Humans act in order to achieve desired aims, and we use existing means, including that of the surrounding environment, in order to do so.
Despite this, an environmentalist might argue, it is still in man’s best interest to preserve the natural environment and avoid depleting the resources that we need in order to improve our lives. It’s certainly true that wasting resources is, well, wasteful. At any given moment, it is no doubt the case that there are only so many resources available for human use. But this static view ignores the fact that as human knowledge of the physical world increases (and as capital accumulates, allowing us to take advantage of this knowledge), the amount of resources available for our use increases….arguably, without a practical limit. George Reisman spells this out explicitly:
“And this brings me to what I consider to be the revolutionary view of natural resources that is implied in Menger’s theory of goods. Namely, not only does man create the goods-character of natural resources—by obtaining knowledge of their useful properties and then creating their useability and accessibility by virtue of establishing the necessary command over them—but he also has the ability to go on indefinitely increasing the supply of natural resources possessing goods-character. He enlarges the supply of useable, accessible natural resources—that is, natural resources possessing goods-character—as he expands his knowledge of and physical power over nature. The prevailing view, that dominates the thinking of the environmentalists and the conservationists, that there is a scarce, precious stock of natural resources that man’s productive activity serves merely to deplete is wrong. Seen in its full context, man’s productive activity serves to enlarge the supply of useable, accessible natural resources by converting a larger, though still tiny, fraction of nature into natural resources possessing goods-character. The essential question concerning natural resources is what fraction of the virtual infinity that is nature does man possess sufficient knowledge concerning and sufficient physical command over to be able to direct it to the satisfaction of his needs. This fraction will always be very small indeed and will always be capable of vastly greater further enlargement. … “Nature presents the earth as an immense solidly packed ball of chemical elements. It has also provided comparably incredible amounts of energy in connection with this mass of chemical elements. If, over and against this massive contribution from nature stands motivated human intelligence—the kind of motivated human intelligence that a free, capitalist society so greatly encourages, with its prospect of earning a substantial personal fortune as the result of almost every significant advance, there can be little doubt as to the outcome: Man will succeed in progressively enlarging the fraction of nature’s contribution that constitutes goods; that is, he will succeed in progressively enlarging the supply of useable, accessible natural resources.”
Consider the many resources we use today that wouldn’t have necessarily been considered resources many years ago. Petroleum wasn’t a natural resource until humanity made it one. The same is true of iron, aluminum, copper, bronze, zinc, gold, silver, and uranium. But even after discovering the goods-character of these resources, advances in technology have allowed us to mine with less effort or at greater depth, find more of the resource where it wasn’t previously visible, access the resource from previously inaccessible locations (offshore oil drilling, for instance), and so on.
The solution to the “problem” of limited resources is to increase the amount of resources, by improving the state of human knowledge and through capital accumulation to allow us to take advantage of this knowledge. Contrast this with the “solution” presented by environmentalists: use less stuff. How about instead of impoverishing us all, we invent ways to adapt to environmental change and the use of resources?
“If we destroy the energy base needed to produce and operate the construction equipment required to build strong, well-made, comfortable houses for hundreds of millions of people, we shall be safer from the wind and rain, the environmental movement alleges, than if we retain and enlarge that energy base. If we destroy our capacity to produce and operate refrigerators and air conditioners, we shall be better protected from hot weather than if we retain and enlarge that capacity, the environmental movement claims. If we destroy our capacity to produce and operate tractors and harvesters, to can and freeze food, to build and operate hospitals and produce medicines, we shall secure our food supply and our health better than if we retain and enlarge that capacity, the environmental movement asserts.”
If global warming is happening, we should develop more and better air conditioners. Instead, the environmentalists would have us destroying industrial civilization, condemning millions or billions to starvation and death.
As alluded to earlier, environmentalists have a habit of catastrophizing the impact of environmental issues, and of ignoring the consequences of their proposed policy fixes.
“Consider, for example, the recent case of Alar, a chemical spray used for many years on apples in order to preserve their color and freshness. Here, it turned out that even if the environmentalists’ claims had actually been true, and the use of Alar would result in 4.2 deaths per million over a seventy-year lifetime, all that would have been signified was that eating apples sprayed with Alar would then have been less dangerous than driving to the supermarket to buy the apples! (Consider: 4.2 deaths per million over a seventy year period means that in any one year in the United States, with its population of roughly two hundred and fifty million people, approximately fifteen deaths would be attributable to Alar! This is the result obtained by multiplying 4.2 per million times 250 million and then dividing by 70. In the same one-year period of time, approximately fifty thousand deaths occur in motor vehicle accidents in the United States, most of them within a few miles of the victims’ homes, and undoubtedly far more than fifteen of them on trips to or from supermarkets.) Nevertheless, a panic ensued, followed by a plunge in the sale of apples, the financial ruin of an untold number of apple growers, and the virtual disappearance of Alar.”
Contrast this with the miracle of the market.
“Famine has been ended, because the industrial civilization so hated by the environmentalists has produced the greatest abundance and variety of food in the history of the world, and created the transportation system required to bring it to everyone. This same hated civilization has produced the iron and steel pipe, and the chemical purification and pumping systems that enable everyone to have instant access to safe drinking water, hot or cold, every minute of the day. It has produced the sewage systems and the automobiles that have removed the filth of human and animal waste from the streets of cities and towns.”
Governments Are The Largest Polluters
One of the great ironies of environmentalism is that its proponents’ solutions always seem to involve government action. And yet they routinely ignore the god-awful record that governments have as stewards of the environment.
In fact, the US federal government is the largest polluter on the planet, but state governments are pretty bad too. The US Department of Defense is the largest contributor to this pollution. Military bases, of which there are a gazillion, pollute their locations heavily, which causes serious health issues among soldiers and their families. During wars, the government has leveled forests using chemicals and big machines. The US government is also the 4th largest greenhouse gas emitter in America, trailing only behind energy companies. But the environmental impact of the government goes beyond directly polluting:
“The federal government provides subsidies to many activities through direct transfers as well as through the provision of free or below-cost access. For example, recreational activities in the national forests and parks are heavily subsidized; most users pay low (or no) fees. Such subsidies encourage people to “consume” more of those public resources than they would be likely to in a market system. In addition, subsidies for favored providers of environmental amenities tend to squeeze out private alternatives. Other well-known subsidies that can unintentionally degrade the environment include agricultural subsidies, grazing subsidies, and water and hydropower project subsidies, among others. Unfortunately, the political process finds it almost impossible to deal honestly with the issue of subsidies. Only free markets are able to assess the full costs of resource use. Until property rights-based policies are instituted, environmental issues – from waste disposal to wetlands protection – will be poorly managed.”
There are also massive subsidies to Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), which leads to environmental issues with excess manure. The government botches the management of forest fires by letting deadwood accumulate, leading to massive blazes.
Just recently, the EPA, which is supposed to be protecting the environment, dumped millions of gallons of toxic waste into the Animus River in Colorado, which may have been done intentionally for money! Predictably, leading environmentalist groups have been covering for the EPA on this one, even though they vehemently attack private companies for far less.
Some additional examples would be instructive. Take Seattle’s Ravenna Park. It was once privately owned and well-preserved. But the local government was afraid that it wouldn’t continue to be preserved, so they took over and then proceeded to let it fall into disrepair.
“At the turn of the twentieth century it [Ravenna Park] was a privately owned park that contained magnificent Douglas firs. A husband and wife, Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Beck, had developed it into a family recreation area that, in good weather, brought in thousands of people a day. Concern that a future owner might not take proper care of it, however, caused the local government to “preserve” this beautiful place. The owners did not want to part with it, but the city initiated condemnation proceedings and bought the park. But since they had no personal property or income at stake, local officials allowed the park to deteriorate. In fact, the tall trees began to disappear soon after the city bought it in 1911. A group of concerned citizens brought the theft of the trees to officials’ attention, but the logging continued. Gradually, the park became unattractive. By 1972 it was an ugly, dangerous hangout for drug users. The Becks, operating privately at no cost to taxpayers, but supported instead by user fees, had done a far better job of managing the park they had created.”
The BP Gulf Oil Spill
In April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico began gushing oil into the ocean, and wasn’t successfully capped for 87 days, with about 5 million barrels of oil discharged in total. The company that owned this rig, BP, was trashed by environmentalists and the media in the aftermath of this tragedy. What they ignore is the crucial role of government regulations that made this spill so much more likely. Of course, much of this legislation was likely the result of oil industry lobbying, so the corporate-state nexus is really the blameworthy institution here, not merely the government.
How did regulation help lead to the worst accidental oil spill in history? The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 established a measly $75 million liability cap on oil spills, which created an immense moral hazard by reducing the risk to oil companies while drilling, and reducing their incentive to ensure the safety of their actions. Without a cap like this, oil companies would be responsible for the full cost of the damages that they cause, which would make them far more cautious and safety-prone.
It gets worse. Why was BP drilling in such a deep area to begin with? Wouldn’t it be far safer to drill closer to the surface? Unfortunately, oil companies are often barred from exploring less risky oil-rich areas.
“Because most private lands have been explored, public lands offer the most potential for oil and gas development. However, the NIMBY [“not in my back yard”] principle has significantly restricted development on those lands. According to 2008 Energy Department figures, nearly 80% of potentially oil-rich offshore lands are off limits to oil and gas development, and 60% of onshore lands are.”
You see, politicians don’t like those unsightly oil rigs near their territory, so they explicitly disallow it.
“I’ve seen the total number of platforms estimated at around 4,000, with up to 100 drilling rigs operating at a time. One of the interesting things to me about this map is that it shows no rigs in the eastern part of the Gulf of Mexico. It turns out this is due to a moratorium on drilling first put in place by President Bush in 1990. In 1998, President Clinton extended the moratorium until 2012. So, one government intervention has resulted in a situation in which drilling operations are constrained west of the border between Alabama and Mississippi, with a concentration of drilling off the coast of Louisiana.”
And then there are the federal subsidies (“royalty relief”) for drilling in deep waters rather than water closer to shore. These subsidies result in a five-fold increase in the incentive for companies to drill in deep water rather than shallow water.
It’s not just in America where mismanagement of land and regulation causes issues with oil spills. In Nigeria, for instance, state ownership of oil assets has led to repeated spills.
Love Canal
My favorite example that demonstrates the ineptitude of governments with respect to the environment is the infamous Love Canal fiasco. Investigative reporter Eric Zuesse documented the whole story here, but I’ll provide a summary.
The Love Canal was a site in upstate New York that was owned by Hooker Chemical Co., which they used as a dumping site for toxic chemicals (the Army was also dumping toxic waste at Love Canal, but for some reason people only blame Hooker). The Niagara Falls Board of Education desperately wanted to own this land to build a school on, but Hooker did not want to sell it. Nevertheless, the BoE used their power of eminent domain to threaten Hooker with seizing the land, so it was ultimately sold to the government for one dollar. The sell was done specifically so that there would be a contractual record where Hooker could spell out the dangers of building on this land for all future owners (if the land were seized by eminent domain, Hooker would have been free of liability for the chemicals anyways, so it was with the public good in mind that they sold instead). Hooker made it very clear to the BoE that there were chemicals underground and that no building should take place on that site beyond mere surface construction (like a park). When the BoE tried to sell the site to real estate developers in 1957, Hooker came to those meetings and forcefully advised against it. Ultimately, Niagara Falls ended up building a school on this land anyways, disturbing the chemicals and letting the seep into the community that was soon built there.
“Practically every level of government has been involved over the years in violating either the Canal’s walls or the protective clay cover that Hooker says it had laid four feet thick on top of its wastes. Even the New York State Department of Transportation, which now shares major responsibility for remedial work on the Canal with New York’s Department of Health and the federal Environmental Protection Agency, ripped into the Canal in 1968, at the southern end where Hooker had done most of its dumping. In the construction of an expressway and the moving of Frontier Boulevard northward, chemicals were contacted, and Hooker was requested to, and did, cart away 40 truckloads of chemical wastes. Just as Hooker had worried in 1957, as time passed the possible hazards of construction on the property had been put totally out of mind.”
Such ineptitude! But the narrative about what occurred at Love Canal was that a greedy corporation took advantage of and poisoned a community.
“Despite the popular myth that Love Canal is the result of a single corporation’s greed and heartlessness, the actual explanation is far more complex. It’s clear to anyone who digs into this matter that Hooker may well have been the only party to the affair to behave responsibly. Hooker chose an exceptionally fine chemical dumpsite; it ceded the dump to the School Board under circumstances in which the threat of condemnation was real and the reality of condemnation was already under way for adjoining properties; it warned the School Board that the chemicals could kill and insisted that the Board pass this warning on to any subsequent owner of the property; it urged the Board not to construct the school or any other buildings directly over the Canal; it protested the prospect of any subsurface construction on the Canal. These warnings were repeatedly ignored, however, by the governmental bodies involved in desecrating this chemical tomb: the School Board itself, the City Planning Board, the city engineer, and the state Department of Transportation. In addition, other governmental agencies have been busy spreading misinformation about the Canal: the Niagara County Health Department, the state Department of Health, the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the US Department of Justice.”
And the icing on the cake is that the EPA has since then positioned private industry as blameworthy and the government as the savior. They need to justify their existence somehow.
Socialism And The Environment
Environmentalists, as I said before, always seem to think that environmental protection requires an expansion of government. If this were true, one might expect that socialist countries would have a sterling record of environmental stewardship, right? Luckily, since the fall of the Soviet Union, we have plenty of case studies to verify that this is not the case.
Before diving into these examples, let’s reflect for a moment on why socialism might prove to be a poor economic system from an environmental perspective. In the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, there were explicit protections for the environment both at the legal and ideological level. However, without a profit motive operating, industrial managers were not sensitive to economic incentives to protect the environment. Ed Dolan describes several ways in which the socialist system leads to economic harm:
“Where there are property rights, there is always an owner to resist trespass, whether by people on foot or noxious chemicals wafting through the air. True, the legal system doesn’t work perfectly. Sometimes owners can’t adequately protect their rights, but the rights are there. Furthermore, where there is widespread ownership of at least small scraps of property, respect for the property rights of others also becomes widespread, although, alas, not universal.”
Private property is central to the reason why markets protect the environment better than government, but there are also political realities that make socialist countries ignore environmental concerns.
“In a socialist system, producers have a stronger grip on the levers of political power. After all, as state enterprises, they are not mere lobbyists—they are themselves a part of the government structure. For example…there were protests in the Soviet Union when paper mills first started dumping waste into Lake Baikal. However, the protesters themselves were always one government institution, say, the Limnological Institute of the Academy of Sciences, working against another, in that case the Ministry of Timber, Paper, and Woodworking. Sometimes the protesters were able to exploit personal rivalries within the government in order to plant articles in government newspapers, but in the end, they always lost. The whole incentive system of the Soviet economy, from the Politburo down to the local plant manager, was focused on just one thing: meeting the impossibly demanding production targets of the Five Year Plan. The environment always lost.”
For a thorough account of why socialism tends to destroy the environment, I recommend reading this paper by Peter Hill (1992). Under socialism, there is no incentive to prevent waste, which leads to excess consumption of resources.
“The general inefficiency of production under socialism is another indicator of the lack of incentives to prevent waste. Czechoslovakia consumes about three times the energy of the average western nation per unit of output. In the former Soviet Republics manufacturing uses four times as much energy per unit of GNP as in the United States. Chemical plants in the Soviet Union for many years emitted large amounts of a potent pollutant, fluorine, into the atmosphere. Despite numerous studies by engineers that showed that the fluorine could be recovered at a profit and sold to other enterprises, the plant managers found it easier to continue to pollute. There was no effective system in place whereby a manager was rewarded for taking such cost reducing and environment improving actions.”
While free markets certainly would not have a perfect record with respect to preventing waste and protecting the environment, they would be far superior to socialist incentives. If the theoretical account of socialism’s environment failings is damning, the real life experience is catastrophic. Thomas DiLorenzo (1992) has done research on this, which I will now draw upon.
Soviet Union
In the Soviet Union (which, again, had extensive legal protections for the environment), central planning proved devastating for the natural world. The Aral and Caspian seas were destroyed, as Soviet authorities diverted water away from them for other projects, and hundreds of factories dumped untreated chemical wastes into them. This sort of industrial prioritization was common.
“A typical example of the environmental damage caused by the Soviet economic system is the exploitation of the Black Sea. To comply with five-year plans for housing and building construction, gravel, sand, and trees around the beaches were used for decades as construction materials. Because there is no private property, “no value is attached to the gravel along the seashore. Since, in effect, it is free, the contractors haul it away. This practice caused massive beach erosion which reduced the Black Sea coast by 50 percent between 1920 and 1960. Eventually, hotels, hospitals, and of all things, a military sanitarium collapsed into the sea as the shoreline gave way. Frequent landslides–as many as 300 per year–have been reported.”
Toxic waste was dumped into rivers and destroyed these ecosystems because there was no private property.
“Effluent from a chemical plant killed almost all the fish in the Oka River in 1965, and similar fish kills have occurred in the Volga, Ob, Yenesei, Ural, and Northern Dvina rivers. Most Russian factories discharge their waste without cleaning it at all. Mines, oil wells, and ships freely dump waste and ballast into any available body of water, since it is all one big (and tragic) “commons.” … “Islands of alkaline sewage have been observed floating on the lake, including one that was 18 miles long and three miles wide. These “islands” have polluted the air around the lake as well as the water in it. Thousands of acres of forest surrounding the lake have been denuded, causing such erosion that dust storms have been reported. So much forest land in the Lake Baikal region has been destroyed that some observers reported shifting sands that link up with the Gobi Desert; there are fears that the desert may sweep into Siberia and destroy the lake.”
Arguably the worst of these cases was the Volga River. So much oil was dumped into this river that smoking had to be banned for sailors on ships traversing it – not for paternalistic health reasons, as in the West, but because throwing spent cigarette butts overboard would cause raging fires.
Of course, let’s not forget the Chernobyl disaster.
“The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the world’s worst, caused not just by operating errors but by a reckless design that provided no containment vessel in case of accident. The nuclear accident that had been considered the world’s worst up to that time also occurred in the Soviet Union, the 1957 explosion of a waste storage pond at the Mayak nuclear weapons complex.”
The Soviets also killed at least 45,000 humpback whales between 1946 and 1986. Why? To satisfy obscure line items in five year plans. Barely 30% of these whales were actually used, and the remainder were left to rot.
China
Chinese cities are well-known to have a thick layer of smog covering them.
“The Chinese state’s arrogation of all pollution litigation to its own courts is a clear collectivization of environmental property rights — most notably rights to air and property surfaces, most of which are covered in soot after a few years of operation. The state’s subsequent, systematic refusal to enforce property owners’ claims against pollution damages to the serviceability of their air and the appearances of their structures’ outward surfaces, then, constitutes a redistribution of these collectivized rights to “dirty” industries and other heavy polluters.”
Massive industrial projects initiated by the socialist government in China also led to serious environmental issues.
“China’s current Three Gorges Dam has displaced over a million people and flooded 13 cities, 140 towns and 1,350 villages. There’s no way the capitalists of Wall Street could compete with that flooding.”
Water pollution is another serious issue:
“An official report showed that 90% of all environmental protests in 2012 were linked to water pollution. It found that 57.3% of the groundwater in 198 cities in 2012 was ‘bad’ or ‘extremely bad’. One third of rivers and 75% of lakes are seriously polluted, and around 1,000 lakes have disappeared. Unsafe drinking water is being used by 320 million people, and 190 million are sick every year due to water pollution.”
Central planning has led to massive environmental destruction of forests and waterways in China.
“According to the Worldwatch Institute, more than 90 percent of the trees in the pine forests in China’s Sichuan province have died because of air pollution. In Chungking, the biggest city in southwest China, a 4, 500-acre forest has been reduced by half. Acid rain has reportedly caused massive crop losses. There also have been reports of waterworks and landfill projects severely hampering fish migration. Fish breeding was so seriously neglected that fish has largely vanished from the national diet. Depletion of government-owned forests has turned them into deserts, and millions of acres of grazing and farm land in the northern Chinese plains were made alkaline and unproductive during the “Great Leap Forward.””
Poland
The Polish people under communism did not fare much better.
“According to the Polish Academy of Sciences, “a third of the nation’s 38 million people live in areas of ecological disaster.” In the heavily industrialized Katowice region of Poland, the people suffer 15 percent more circulatory disease, 30 percent more tumors, and 47 percent more respiratory disease than other Poles. Physicians and scientists believe pollution is a major contributor to these health problems. … “Half of Poland’s cities, including Warsaw, don’t even treat their wastes, and 41 animal species have reportedly become extinct in Poland in recent years. While health statistics are spotty — they were not a priority of the Communist government–available data are alarming. A recent study of the Katowice region found that 21 percent of the children up to 4 years old are sick almost constantly, while 41 percent of the children under 6 have serious health problems.”
Coal mining caused major issues because property rights were not respected, and the health of the land did not need to be taken into account by the socialist planners.
“Continuous pumping of water from coal mines has caused so much land to subside that over 300,000 apartments were destroyed as buildings collapsed. The mine sludge has been pumped into rivers and streams along with untreated sewage which has made 95 percent of the water unfit for human consumption. More than 65 percent of the nation’s water is even unfit for industrial use because it is so toxic that it would destroy heavy metals used by industry.”
Czechoslovakia
Here’s a summary of the environmental devastation that occurred in communist Czechoslovakia:
“Because of the overuse of fertilizers, farmland in some areas of Czechoslovakia is toxic to more than one foot in depth. In Bohemia, in northwestern Czechoslovakia, hills stand bare because their vegetation has died in air so foul it can be tasted. One report describes the Czech countryside as a place where “barren plateaus stretch for miles, studded with the stumps and skeletons of pine trees. Under the snow lie thousands of acres of poisoned ground, where for centuries thick forests had grown.” There is a stretch of over 350 miles where more than 300,000 acres of forest have disappeared and the remaining trees are dying. A thick, brown haze hangs over much of northern Czechoslovakia for about eight months of the year. Sometimes it takes on the sting of tear gas, according to local officials. There are environmental laws, but they aren’t enforced. Sulfur in the air has been reported at 20 times the permissible level. Soil in some regions is so acidic that aluminum trapped in the clay is released. Scientists discovered that the aluminum has poisoned groundwater, killing tree and plant roots and filtering into the drinking water.”
East Germany
East Germany is a classic case of socialism, and particularly, the issues that socialism has wrought for the environment. Note that West Germany did not have nearly so egregious exploitation of the environment.
“Much of the East German landscape has been devastated. Fifteen to 20 percent of its forests are dead, and another 40 percent are said to be dying. Between 1960 and 1980 at least 70 villages were destroyed and their inhabitants uprooted by the government, which wanted to mine high-sulfur brown coal. The countryside is now “pitted with moon-like craters” and “laced with the remains of what were once spruce and pine trees, nestled amid clouds of rancid smog.” The air in some cities is so polluted that residents use their car headlights during the day, and visitors have been known to vomit from breathing the air. Nearly identical problems exist in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia. Visiting scientists have concluded that pollution in Central and Eastern Europe “is more dangerous and widespread than anything they have seen in the Western industrial nations.””
Colin Grabow adds:
“An estimated 44 percent of East German forests were damaged by acid rain — little surprise given that the country produced proportionally more sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide, and coal dust than any other in the world. In some areas of East Germany the level of air pollution was between eight and twelve times greater than that found in West Germany, and 40 percent of East Germany’s population lived in conditions that would have justified a smog warning across the border. Only one power station in East Germany had the necessary equipment to clean sulphur from emissions.”
Even the greatest excesses of the Western world and capitalism can’t compare with the extreme environmental devastation brought on by socialism. So why do environmentalists continue to promote big government policies? And why are so many environmentalists also socialists?
Private Property As A Solution
“[Those] who wonder what all the fuss is about when environmentalists raise alarms about the effects of acid rain on the forests react with outrage when the neighbour’s dog performs squatus smellibus on their own front lawns. It may be said that this is different—after all, the front lawn is private property— but this is precisely the point. If the same dog-owning neighbour happens to own an industrial plant that dumps a chemical effluent on some remote forest land, we have little reaction, even if we know about it. After all, the forest land isn’t our private property. It’s government land. The question is, how do we ensure that the protective reactions of private property ownership will leap to the aid of the forest in the same way that they protect front lawns? The answer is that as long as we persist in the myth of public ownership, it will be very difficult.” – Walter Block
The United States doesn’t have a great record as an environmental steward, and many environmentalists will seize upon this to argue that privatization and free markets are to blame. Environmental costs of business are externalities – companies that pollute are not required to pay the cost of their pollution, so the pollution is subsidized.
Without a doubt, this is true today. However, it was not always like this in America. There used to be legal ways to internalize those externalities and to make polluters responsible for the damage they caused. This was the case when private property rights were more respected and legally protected in America, a reality that changed in the mid-1800s. Walter Block discusses the old system:
“Up to the 1820s and 1830s, the legal jurisprudence in Great Britain and the U.S. was more or less predicated upon the libertarian vision of non-invasiveness. Typically, a farmer would complain that a railroad engine had emitted sparks which set ablaze his haystacks or other crops. Or a woman would accuse a factory of sending airborne pollutants to her property, which would dirty her clean laundry hanging on a clothesline. Or someone would object to the foreign matter imposed in one’s lungs without permission. Almost invariably, the courts would take cognizance of this violation of plaintiff’s rights. The usual result during this epoch was injunctive relief, plus an award of damages.”
This respect for private property had positive effects from an environmental standpoint. In fact, these positive effects are essentially the flip-side of the negative impact of socialism.
“First of all, there was an incentive to use clean burning, but slightly more expensive anthracite coal rather than the cheaper but dirtier high sulfur content variety; less risk of lawsuits. Second, it paid to install scrubbers, and other techniques for reducing pollution output. Third there was an impetus to engage in research and development of new and better methods for the internalization of externalities: keeping one’s pollutants to oneself. Fourth, there was a movement toward the use better chimneys and other smoke prevention devices. Fifth, an incipient forensic pollution industry was in the process of being developed. Sixth, the locational decisions of manufacturing firms was intimately effected. The law implied that it would be more profitable to establish a plant in an area with very few people, or none at all; setting up shop in a residential area, for example, would subject the firm to debilitating lawsuits.”
Clearly, these incentives would lead to far superior environmental outcomes. Unfortunately, the legal climate in America soon changed.
“But then in the 1840s and 1850s a new legal philosophy took hold. No longer were private property rights upheld. Now, there was an even more important consideration: the public good. And of what did the public good consist in this new dispensation? The growth and progress of the U.S. economy. Toward this end it was decided that the jurisprudence of the 1820s and 1830s was a needless indulgence. Accordingly, when an environmental plaintiff came to court under this new system, he was given short shrift. He was told, in effect, that of course his private property rights were being violated; but that this was entirely proper, since there is something even more important than selfish, individualistic property rights. And this was the “public good” of encouraging manufacturing.”
Since then, America has never turned back. Legal protections for victims of pollution have not been reinstated, and unfortunately, it doesn’t look like they will be anytime soon. Nevertheless, a regime of private property rights that includes consistent enforcement is the solution to the environmental problem. Environmentalists, unfortunately, do not have a good understanding of how private property rights work, as evidenced by their rhetoric surrounding environmental issues:
“Even when the term “rights” is employed by ecologists in what is seemingly its more traditional, negative sense, as, for example, when environmentalists write of “the right to live free from pollutants” it is often so used without any regard to the context in which these rights are situated. When one refers to “the right to a smoke-free environment,” as numerous spokesmen of the anti-smoking campaign often do, surely it makes sense to ask “of just whose environment are we speaking?” While I might indeed have such a right to demand of others that they not smoke on my property, have I the same right when it comes to the property of others? But even put in such bald form, the majority of environmentalists would argue that, in most cases, I would indeed have such a right. Such rights obtain, they argue (and in this they are by no means alone), because most private property is not, in reality, private at all, since members of the public (either all members of the public, as is the case with, say, a department store, or certain specific members of the public, as is the case with a business office) are invited onto the property. By virtue of this fact, nominal private property is transmuted into commonly owned property, the disposal of which can justifiably be determined by political means. Indeed, most environmentalists have extended this notion of public ownership to the whole of the natural world. They write of the “common heritage of all humanity” and of “sharing the world’s resources equitably.” It is as if each of us, when born, inherits our pro rata share of all the wealth of the world, the land and the oceans of the earth, and all that is on, above, or below it, without regard to the prevailing ownership of these resources.”
Because today’s system is so far removed from a system of private property rights, thinking about environmental issues this way requires a paradigm shift. Instead of thinking about pollution as a crime against “the environment,” we need to think of it as a conflict between human beings.
“Pollution is…not about harming the environment but about human conflict over the use of physical resources. Generally formulated, a pollution or environmental problem arises when individual or group A and individual or group B are simultaneously attempting or planning to use resource X for conflicting purposes. Unless emissions into the air, discharge into a river, or the extraction of fish from the ocean give rise to such a conflict then there is no economic, i.e., efficiency problem. Humans cannot harm the environment. Instead, they can change the environment in such a way that it harms others who might be planning to use it for conflicting purposes.”
Conflict, in this sense, is essentially a dispute over the rights to use a given resource. The conflict arises when peoples’ plans |
in my pyjamas wearing those thin hotel slippers). It was almost winter in England.
My mother’s story goes like this: she found a local fixer in Manila, which she paid a little over P100,000 (or £1,400) for a one way ticket to anywhere. She was told she only gets three shots. She first applied for Australia and Canada, for which she got rejected by both embassies. United Kingdom was her last shot. The fixer found out that an International Club delegation from Manila was going to Scotland for a conference. My mom had to take seminars and in the end, her oath as a club member to make it all look legitimate.
They faked a business permit in Taguig completely set up with phone numbers, so a person would answer to confirm she is indeed a wealthy businesswoman attending a conference, and not a poor single mother from the province looking to enter the UK. Her tourist visa was approved, so she flew to Scotland, hung around the delegation’s hotel for a day, packed her bags and took the train to London.
Helpers and Caregivers of the World
The rest was history. She did what she had set out to do: sweep the floors of London mansions, clean bathrooms and take care of British children. And she didn’t do it in just one household. She did it in two, sometimes three, or how many her time would allow her. She would find kind employers along the way, one a famous restaurateur in London, and they would help her obtain a work visa.
Eventually she would meet my step father, marry him, and become a British Citizen.
It is a story heard many times around the world, a story said in codes, to avoid the judgment of neighbors who would raise eyebrows at the idea of being a yaya.
But it is a story I am proud to tell.
It was around 2001 when then-Prime Minister Tony Blair boosted the UK’s National Health Service or NHS, opening the doors to thousands of Filipino nurses and caregivers. From being a helper, my mother would join the NHS. So did a lot of other mothers and fathers, which allowed them to raise their families and build a life in England, giving birth to second generation British-Filipinos — a generation I would have belonged to had I stayed when my mother petitioned me.
So many movies have been made to tell this story. Ever since I turned 18, I have wanted to tell a different version. One with less crying, less drama; one that truthfully and accurately tells the story of Filipinos who became caregivers, like my Mother. That it’s not such a bad thing. Through it my sister and I were able to live good lives, the kind of life that did not require either of us to do what she did for work.
It’s clear now why she had to labor for over 20 years in a foreign land. It was to give us a choice.
Migration of the Young
It is also the new emerging demographic for the 2.2 million OFWs today — young people with a choice.
In 2011, 23.6% or the biggest cut of the OFWs were people aged 25 to 29. Why are these young people still choosing to migrate? I met 25-year-old Abys Maureen Delicano through the Internet. We were connected by a friend because she read my essay on why I chose to stay in Manila rather than live in London.
She is an accountant in a Shipping and Cargo Company in Sharjah, UAE and she has been there for over two years: “I never wanted to become an OFW. OFW na ang Tatay ko, alam ko kung gaano kahirap na lumaki nang walang magulang.” (I never wanted to become and OFW. My father was an OFW and I know how difficult it is to grow up without a parent.)
But her father had reached the end of his contract in UAE and was set to come home for good. Her mother is a housewife, and one sibling is still in High School: “‘Yung P15,000 na suweldo ko sa Pinas, nagiging P12,000 na lang dahil sa tax, hindi na kasya,” says the CPA from Mexico, Pampanga. (My P15,000 monthly income would be cut down to P12,000 because of tax, and we could no longer live with just that.)
At 23, Abys put herself up for the responsibility. She applied for jobs in UAE and when an opportunity came, she packed her bags and left. “Now I’m the official breadwinner,” Abys said, “I look at my batch mates’ Facebook photos and I see how they’re enjoying their youth, working for just themselves, traveling, feeling ko parang nagmadali ata ako.” (I felt like I rushed through my life)
At that point in our conversation, I felt like she was talking about me, someone who’s enjoying her youth, working for just herself, traveling, and taking her time.
I asked her what drew her to my essay.
“You had the guts to choose a life in the Philippines over a good life in London, at sana may sapat din akong lakas ng loob para gawin yun.” (I hope I’m also brave enough to do what you did.) But between the two of us, she’s the brave one. I relish the comforts of Manila thinking about nothing but making my dreams come true. But she chose to fight, leaving everything that was familiar and safe, not just for her dreams but for the dreams of her entire family.
Beside her I am a coward.
The Price You Pay for Leaving
As young Filipinos become more and more empowered, there is this rhetoric about nationalism that demands the young ones to stay and contribute. I respect that rhetoric; I am part of that rhetoric.
But Abys represents a side of the conversation that is important to discuss. My mother didn’t have a choice but to clean bathroom floors. Abys has a choice and she chose to pursue her profession in UAE rather than pour all her talent here. There is a changing of contexts, but the root problem remains the same: as a country, we still struggle to provide quality lives to our people.
A problem that is so deep-rooted even the most educated, most talented young people don’t find the opportunities here sufficient enough to stay. A problem so deep-rooted that the talented young photographer Xyza Cruz Bacani would work years as a helper in Hong Kong before the world could notice her haunting images.
A problem so deep-rooted that Abys’ father who worked abroad so his children wouldn’t have to, still ended up seeing her off to the airport to follow the same path he did, even when he had given her a college degree and that thing that my mother gave me: a choice.
When Pope Francis visited the Philippines last week, he made several mentions of OFWs, calling their contribution “neglected” in front of the President himself and all his Cabinet Secretaries when he delivered a speech at the Malacañang Palace.
Later that day, he would face families at the MOA Arena, with a core message of Humanae Vitae and the Sanctity of Marriage, but still remembering to pay tribute to the “families who had to be separated by migration, their search for employment, and financial problems straining their households.” I ask Abys of this strain. She said her mother never fails to call or message her everyday, even if it’s just to say Good night or I love you. She did, however, lose a boyfriend because of the long distance.
The strain is the most difficult part to tell in our family’s story. Over the years we have grown so much apart that it’s easier to love each other now from a distance. My sister and I will admit that it will be challenging for us to live together again. My mother and I can barely last a week under the same roof.
It’s a dysfunctional kind of relationship, but one that has weathered so many storms, with wounds, bruises, and all to proudly show for it.
Changing Perspectives
Last June when I was visiting England, my mom, my sister and I were approached by a man inside a pub in London, asking if we were Filipinos. He would later ask us if we were willing to take care of his aging mother. My sister, an English and Philosophy graduate from the University of Dundee, felt so insulted. I told her to look at the bright side: that at least we weren’t asked if we were willing to be his bride.
What I should have told her is that being asked to take care of people is never an insult. After all, we may just be the best yayas of the world. Saudi journalist Rawan Radwan searched three years to find her Filipina yaya Marie Ning, and would travel to the countryside in Nueva Ecija to simply hug her — and say thank you.
When veteran Philippine documentarist Howie Severino covered the pro-democracy rallies in Hong Kong last October, he observed a change of character among the teenagers leading the protests — the young ones were more polite, vibrant and determined than the young once he had met many years ago in his many visits to the country.
This generation, he wrote, is a generation raised by Filipina yayas.
We lent our mothers and sisters to the world, and as a result, we raised good children all over. Isn’t that a proud battle scar? But I get my sister, too. Sometimes it gets tiring having to live with that reputation. And that is where people like Abys bear a responsibility — the responsibility to change perspectives on behalf of all Filipinos around the world. “Lagi kong ginagalingan kasi parang kargo ko ang maitaas ang tingin nila sa mga Pilipino,” Abys said. (I always have to be the best in my field because I feel like I carry the burden of raising the bar for Filipinos)
Greatest Contribution
In this year’s Ms. Universe pageant, the top 5 candidates were asked this question: “What is your country’s greatest contribution to the World?” Ms. USA boasted of their financial aids, Ms. Colombia discussed lessons of perseverance and Ms. Jamaica answered Bob Marley. Had Ms. Philippines been in the top 5, I would expect no less than this answer —
That our actresses and actors are bringing London West End into a new era, our fashion designers are changing the face of American Couture, that we supply Europe’s Health Care Workers, Middle East’s engineers, Asia’s teachers, we are the drivers in the war zones in Iraq, we are the seafarers in oceans where there are pirates, we are the peacekeepers in Golan Heights and that our missionaries are risking their lives everyday in Sierra Leone and Guinea fighting Ebola.
We take care of everyone, and I guess in that sense, whether one is a nanny or a helper like my mother or a professional like Abys, we really are the Yayas of the World.
Our greatest contribution to the world is our people. We gave the world our greatest assets, so selflessly, so bravely, so proudly. The story before was that Filipinos seek the help of other countries for a better life.
The story has changed.
Other countries seek the help of Filipinos for a better society. It is both a point of pride and a challenge for everyone of us, especially our leaders, that this is still a work in progress. Somebody has to step back and examine where we are and how we got here. It began in the 1970s when unemployment in the Philippines was at its peak, and there was a rising demand for blue collar workers in the Middle East and in Asia.
Former President Ferdinand Marcos would then sign the Labor Code into law, creating provisions that promoted overseas employment. At that time, it was the Government’s response to an emergency, and they were successful. In just a decade, the number of employed Filipinos boomed, more than 300,000 of them were overseas.
Our economy would come to enjoy the millions of dollars in remittances, and we would proclaim our OFWs heroes. From being a temporary solution, we have now fully embraced that Filipinos have to leave the country just to give their loved ones quality lives.
As the world discusses the issue on migration, much is said about the countries that take them in, but few on the countries that let them go. No Philippine President after Marcos attempted to dilute policies promoting overseas employment. We created two national agencies to help Filipinos who want to leave: the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) and the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA).
Our Department of Labor and Employment surveys the world for countries it can send laborers to, and through the state-mandated K-12 curriculum, the Department of Education trains students to be better fit for jobs abroad.
This story also needs to change. Families need to be kept together, and above all societies, ours should be the ones to benefit first from its own people. It has been a pleasure sharing our mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters with the world.
But we hope they come home soon.
[Entry 64, The SubSelfie Blog]
Editor’s Note: Yaya is a Filipino term for a househelp, nanny or maid. This was later republished on GMA News Online.
About the Author:
Lian Nami Buan is the Associate Editor of SubSelfie.com. She leads the #SubStory and #TanawMindanao segments of the website. She also produces special reports for State of the Nation with Jessica Soho. She wants to shift focus to human rights, particularly indigenous people, women and migration. Whenever she has money, she travels to collect feelings for writing material. Journalism 2010, UST. Read more of her articles here.
AdvertisementsTake a moment to look at yourself in the mirror. I want you to really examine your features—the curves, lines and shapes that make up your face. How broad is your chin? Narrow, or wide? How big is your mouth in comparison? Or your nose? Do you have strong, prominent eyebrows? How close are they together?
Or, more simply, what color are your eyes?
In a study published today in PLoS ONE, researchers from from Charles University in the Czech Republic had 238 participants rate the faces of 80 students for trustworthiness, attractiveness, and dominance. Not surprisingly, they found that the three measures correlated well with each other, with faces rating high on one scale rating high on the other two. Female faces were generally more trustworthy than male ones. But that's wasn't all. A much more peculiar correlation was discovered as they looked at the data: brown-eyed faces were deemed more trustworthy than blue-eyed ones.
It didn't matter if the judge was male or female, blue-eyed or brown-eyed. Even accounting for attractiveness and dominance, the result was the same: brown-eyed people's faces were rated more trustworthy. There was some evidence of in-group bias, with blue-eyed female faces receiving lower ratings from brown-eyed women than from blue or green-eyed ones, but this difference didn't drive the phenomenon. All the participants, no matter what eye color they had or how good-looking they thought the face was agreed that brown-eyed people just appear to look more reliable.
The real question is why? Is there a cultural bias towards brown eyes? Or does eye color really correlate somehow with personality traits like accountability and honesty? Does eye color really matter that much?
To find out, the scientists used computer manipulation to take the same faces but change their eye colors. Without changing traits other than hue of the iris, the researchers swapped the eye colors of the test faces from blue to brown and vice versa. This time, the opposite effect was found. Despite the strange correlation to eye color, the team found that eye color didn't affect a photo's trustworthiness rating. So it isn't the eye color itself that really matters—something else about brown-eyed faces makes them seem more dependable.
To get at what's really going on, the researchers took the faces and analyzed their shape. They looked at the distances between 72 facial landmarks, creating a grid-like representation of each face. For men, the answer was clear: differences in face shape explained the appeal of brown eyes.
Shape changes associated with eye color and perceived trustworthiness, from the grid-based facial shape analysis done by the researchers. Note the similarities between the shapes of brown-eyed faces and trustworthy ones.
"Brown-eyed individuals tend to be perceived as more trustworthy than blue-eyed ones," explain the authors. "But it is not brown eyes that cause this perception. It is the facial morphology linked to brown eyes."
Brown-eyed men, on average, have bigger mouths, broader chins, bigger noses, and more prominent eyebrows positioned closer to each other, while their blue-eyed brethren are characterized by more angular and prominent lower faces, longer chins, narrower mouths with downward pointing corners, smaller eyes, and more distant eyebrows. The differences associated with trustworthiness are also how our faces naturally express happiness—an upturned mouth, for example—which may explain why we trust people who innately have these traits.
Although the trend was the same for female faces, researchers didn't find the same correlation between trustworthiness and face shape in women. This result is puzzling, but female faces were overall much less variable than male faces, so it's possible the statistical analyses used to test for correlation were hampered by this. Or, it's possible that something else is in play when it comes to the trustworthiness of female faces. The researchers hope that further research can shed light on this conundrum.
Given the importance of trust in human interactions, from friendships to business partnerships or even romance, these findings pose some interesting evolutionary questions. Why would certain face shapes seem more dangerous? Why would blue-eyed face shapes persist, even when they are not deemed as trustworthy? Are our behaviors linked to our bodies in ways we have yet to understand? There are no easy answers. Face shape and other morphological traits are partially based in genetics, but also partially to environmental factors like hormone levels in the womb during development. In seeking to understand how we perceive trust, we can learn more about the interplay between physiology and behavior as well as our own evolutionary history.
Citation: Kleisner K., Priplatova L., Frost P. & Flegr J. (2013). Trustworthy-Looking Face Meets Brown Eyes., PLoS ONE, 8 (1) e53285. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0053285(Bastien Inzaurralde,Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
Growing up in the 1980s, Brian Brown was taught to think of the communist Soviet Union as a dark and evil place.
But Brown, a leading opponent of same-sex marriage, said that in the past few years he has started meeting Russians at conferences on family issues and finding many kindred spirits.
Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, has visited Moscow four times in four years, including a 2013 trip during which he testified before the Duma as Russia adopted a series of anti-gay laws.
“What I realized was that there was a great change happening in the former Soviet Union,” he said. “There was a real push to re-instill Christian values in the public square.”
A significant shift has been underway in recent years across the Republican right.
On issues including gun rights, terrorism and same-sex marriage, many leading advocates on the right who grew frustrated with their country’s leftward tilt under President Barack Obama have forged ties with well-connected Russians and come to see that country’s authoritarian leader, Vladimir Putin, as a potential ally.
The attitude adjustment among many conservative activists helps explain one of the most curious aspects of the 2016 presidential race: a softening among many conservatives of their historically hard-line views of Russia. To the alarm of some in the GOP’s national security establishment, support in the party base for then-candidate Donald Trump did not wane even after he rejected the tough tone of 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, who called Russia America’s No. 1 foe, and repeatedly praised Putin.
[Inside Trump’s financial ties to Russia and his unusual flattery of Vladimir Putin]
The burgeoning alliance between Russians and U.S. conservatives was apparent in several events in late 2015, as the Republican nomination battle intensified.
(The Washington Post)
Top officials from the National Rifle Association, whose annual meeting Friday featured an address by Trump for the third time in three years, traveled to Moscow to visit a Russian gun manufacturer and meet government officials.
About the same time in December 2015, evangelist Franklin Graham met privately with Putin for 45 minutes, securing from the Russian president an offer to help with an upcoming conference on the persecution of Christians. Graham was impressed, telling The Washington Post that Putin “answers questions very directly and doesn’t dodge them like a lot of our politicians do.”
The growing dialogue between Russians and U.S. conservatives came at the same time experts say the Russian government stepped up efforts to cultivate and influence far-right groups in Europe and on the eve of Russia’s unprecedented intrusion into the U.S. campaign, which intelligence officials have concluded was intended to elect Trump.
Russians and Americans involved in developing new ties say they are not part of a Kremlin effort to influence U.S. politics. “We know nothing about that,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said. Brown said activists in both countries are simply “uniting together under the values we share.”
[Here’s what we know so far about Team Trump’s ties to Russian interests]
It is not clear what effect closer ties will have on relations between the two countries, which have gotten frostier with the opening of congressional and FBI investigations into Russia’s intrusion into the election and rising tensions over the civil war in Syria.
But the apparent increase in contacts in recent years, as well as the participation of officials from the Russian government and the influential Russian Orthodox church, leads some analysts to conclude that the Russian government probably promoted the efforts in an attempt to expand Putin’s power.
“Is it possible that these are just well-meaning people who are reaching out to Americans with shared interests? It is possible,” said Steven L. Hall, who retired from the CIA in 2015 after managing Russia operations for 30 years. “Is it likely? I don’t think it’s likely at all.... My assessment is that it’s definitely part of something bigger.”
Interactions between Russians and American conservatives appeared to gain momentum as Obama prepared to run for a second term.
At the time, many in the GOP warned that Obama had failed to counter the national security threat posted by Putin’s aggression.
But, deep in the party base, change was brewing.
G. Kline Preston IV sits at the desk in his office in Nashville, with a portrait off George Washington painted by a Russian artist on the wall behind him. (Kyle Dean Reinford/For the Washington Post)
At least one connection came about thanks to a conservative Nashville lawyer named G. Kline Preston IV, who had done business in Russia for years.
Preston said that in 2011 he introduced David Keene, then the NRA’s president, to a Russian senator, Alexander Torshin, a member of Putin’s party who later became a top official at the Russian central bank. Keene had been a stalwart on the right, a past chairman of the American Conservative Union who was the NRA’s president from 2011 to 2013.
Neither Keene nor Torshin responded to requests for comment. An NRA spokesman also did not respond to questions.
Torshin seemed a natural ally to American conservatives.
A friend of Mikhail Kalashnikov, revered in Russia for inventing the AK-47 assault rifle, Torshin in 2010 had penned a glossy gun rights pamphlet, illustrated by cartoon figures wielding guns to fend off masked robbers. The booklet cited U.S. statistics to argue for gun ownership, at one point echoing in Russian an old NRA slogan: “Guns don’t shoot — people shoot.”
A page from a Russian pamphlet written by Alexander Torshin. The pamphlet advocates for gun rights. (Obtained by The Washington Post)
Torshin was also a leader in a Russian movement to align government more closely with the Orthodox church.
“The value system of Southern Christians and the value system of Russians are very much in line,” Preston said. “The so-called conflict between our two nations is a tragedy because we’re very similar people, in a lot of our values, our interests and that sort of thing.”
Preston, an expert on Russian law whose office features a white porcelain bust of Putin, said he had told Tennessee friends for years not to believe television reports about the Russian leader having journalists or dissidents killed.
Preston was an international observer of the 2011 legislative elections in Russia, which sparked mass street protests in Moscow charging electoral irregularities. But Preston said he concluded that the elections were free and fair.
By contrast, Preston said he and Torshin saw violations of U.S. law — pro-Obama signs posted too close to a polling place — when Torshin traveled to Nashville to observe voting in the 2012 presidential election.
Mementos from various trips to Russia decorate the G. Kline Preston IV's office. (Kyle Dean Reinford/For the Washington Post)
In Russia, Torshin and an aide, a photogenic activist originally from Siberia named Maria Butina, began building a gun rights movement.
Butina founded a group called the Right to Bear Arms, and in 2013 she and Torshin invited Keene and other U.S. gun advocates to its annual meeting in Moscow.
The event, where about 200 people gathered at Moscow’s convention center, included a fashion show in which models donned “concealed carry” garments with built-in pockets for weapons.
One American participant, Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, recalled that Torshin and Butina took him and his wife out for dinner and gave them gifts that displayed research into their interests — exotic fabric for Gottlieb’s wife, a needlepoint enthusiast, and for Gottlieb, commemorative stamps that Torshin received as a member of the Russian legislature.
Maria Butina attends a rally on handgun legalization in 2013. (Anton Novoderezhkin/ZUMAPRESS.com)
“They wanted to keep communications open and form friendships,” Gottlieb said.
Butina, now a graduate student at American University in Washington, told The Post via email that her group’s cause is “not very popular” with Russian officials and has never received funding from the government or from the NRA. She said she has never worked for the government and added that she and the American activists she has befriended simply share a love of gun rights.
“No government official has EVER approached me about ‘fostering ties’ with any Americans,” she wrote.
Hall, the former CIA officer, said he was skeptical. He said he did not think Putin would tolerate a legitimate effort to advocate for an armed citizenry, and asserted that the movement is probably “controlled by the security services” to woo the American right.
When Torshin and Butina attended the NRA’s 2014 annual convention, their profiles as scrappy Russians pushing for gun rights were rising. Butina attended an NRA women’s luncheon as a guest of one of the organization’s past presidents.
Interviewed by the conservative website Townhall, Butina called the NRA “one of the most world famous and most important organizations” and said that “we would like to be friends with NRA.”
While Russians are allowed to own shotguns, Butina said her group hoped to reverse a ban on carrying handguns.
That year’s turbulent events — in which Russia’s incursion into Ukraine prompted the Obama administration to enact strict sanctions against Moscow — illustrated the Russians’ alliance with U.S. gun advocates.
Butina argued in a Russian interview that firearm sellers in her country, including the popular Kalashnikov, were among the “most impacted” by sanctions, which specifically blocked its assets.
In Washington, the NRA’s lobbying arm blasted the order, saying that such restrictions have “long been used by the executive branch as a means of unilaterally enacting gun control.”
[Trump vows to come through for NRA]
Relationships between Russians and American conservatives seemed to blossom in 2015, as the Republican presidential race geared up.
Butina posted social-media photos showing how she and Torshin gained access to NRA officials and the U.S. politicians attending events. That April, Butina toured the NRA’s Virginia headquarters, and she and Torshin met Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), then a leading White House contender, at the NRA annual convention. Torshin told Bloomberg last year that he had a friendly exchange with Trump at the 2015 convention and sat with his son Donald Jr. at an NRA dinner the following year.
Walker’s spokesman said the encounter was brief, as speakers mingled with attendees before their remarks. A senior White House official said Trump may have briefly interacted with Torshin at the 2015 convention but did not recall. At the next year’s event, the official said Torshin briefly greeted Donald Jr. at a restaurant.
In June 2015, as Trump announced his candidacy, Butina wrote a column in the National Interest, a conservative U.S. magazine, suggesting that a Republican in the White House might improve U.S.-Russia relations.
She wrote that Republicans and Russians held similar views on oil exploration and that cultural conservatives would identify with Putin’s party and its aggressive take on Islamic terrorism.
Butina that summer immersed herself in U.S. politics. In July, she showed up in Las Vegas at FreedomFest, a meeting of libertarians where Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a rival for the GOP nomination, were speaking.
In his office, G. Kline Preston IV displays a flag reading "Our President Putin" that was given to him in the streets on Russia's last presidential election day. (Kyle Dean Reinford/For the Washington Post)
She made her way to a microphone during Trump’s speech and asked in accented English, “What will be your foreign politics, especially in the relations with my country?”
It was the first time Trump had been asked about Russia as a candidate.
“I know Putin and I’ll tell you what, we get along with Putin,” he said.
Trump would go on to repeatedly praise the Russian president as a strong leader.
But Trump, who at the time was considered a long shot for the nomination, echoed a sentiment then bubbling up from some corners of the conservative grass roots — that Putin was a potential friend.
That was the takeaway for Graham, the North Carolina-based evangelist, after his November 2015 Kremlin meeting with Putin.
The last time Graham had visited Moscow, with his father, Billy Graham, in the 1980s, the practice of religion was prohibited. On this trip, he said, conditions for Christians in Russia remained difficult. But Graham recalled that Putin listened as he described evangelical Christianity and the challenges facing Christians around the world. Putin explained that his mother kept her Christian faith even during the darkest days of atheistic communist rule.
“He understood,” Graham said of the Russian leader.
Putin offered to help Graham organize an international conference on Christian persecution in Moscow, Graham said. Instead, a Russian delegation is expected when the conference takes place in May in Washington, Graham said.
At the end of 2015, Butina welcomed a delegation to Moscow that included Keene, by then a member of the NRA board, as well as top NRA donors. The group also included a rising star in GOP politics, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who went on to be a campaign surrogate for Trump and has been mentioned as a contender for a high-level job at the Department of Homeland Security. Clarke did not respond to requests for comment.
The group toured a gun manufacturing company and met with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who was among the officials sanctioned by the White House following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Keene told the Daily Beast, which first reported the meeting, that the interaction with Rogozin was “non-political” and consisted of touring the headquarters of a shooting group that Rogozin chairs.
In 2011, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, right, State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov, left, and Federation Council Deputy Chief Alexander Torshin attend a presentation ceremony of state awards in the Kremlin. (Konstantin Zavrazhin/Getty Images)
After Trump’s victory, Torshin returned to the United States with a delegation of prominent Russians to attend the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington in February. In addition to his gun-rights work, Torshin also had helped build a similar prayer breakfast in Moscow from an obscure monthly event a decade ago into one more resembling the annual ritual in Washington.
Putin now sends an annual greeting to the Russian event, a recognition of its value in allowing “Russian and American guests to come together under one roof in order to rebuild the relationship between the two countries that has degraded under the administration of President Obama,” said breakfast organizer Peter Sautov in an email.
Torshin, accompanied by 15 Russian church and government officials, requested to meet the new president before Trump spoke at the event, according to people familiar with the arrangement.
But they said the meeting was canceled as reports surfaced from Spanish authorities alleging that Torshin led an organized crime and money-laundering operation. Torshin has not been charged and denied wrongdoing in an interview with Bloomberg, which first reported the allegations.
A White House official said the requested meeting was never confirmed in the first place. The proposed meeting was first reported by Yahoo.
That night, Torshin gathered for a festive dinner at a Capitol Hill restaurant with conservative thought leaders who have supported warmer ties with Russia.
“There has been a change in the views of hard-core conservatives toward Russia,” a participant, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), said in an interview. “Conservative Republicans like myself hated communism during the Cold War. But Russia is no longer the Soviet Union.”
Andrew Roth in Moscow and Alice Crites and Karoun Demirjian in Washington contributed to this report.PRETORIA (Reuters) - Eight South African policemen have been arrested on suspicion of murder after dragging a man tied to the back of a police truck through a busy Johannesburg street in an incident broadcast around the world, a government watchdog said on Friday.
The video-recorded treatment of the Mozambican taxi driver has further damaged the reputation of the police force in South Africa where more than 1,200 people a year die in police custody.
“They will answer to a charge of murder when they appear in court on Monday,” Moses Dlamini, spokesman for the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID), told Reuters.
Mido Macia, 27, was found dead in detention with signs of head injuries and internal bleeding, according to an initial post-mortem report released by the IPID police watchdog.
The video of Tuesday’s incident shows Macia scuffling with police, who subdue him. He is then bound to the back of a pick-up truck by his arms before the vehicle drives off in front of scores of witnesses in the east Johannesburg area of Daveyton.
Related Coverage South African policemen arrested, due to face murder charges
“We would like to assure the country and the world that what is in the video is not how the South African Police Service in a democratic South Africa goes about its work,” Commissioner Riah Phiyega told a news conference.
Before the arrests, she said the eight officers had been suspended and the station commander would be removed from his duties.
President Jacob Zuma and opposition politicians have condemned the incident, which was broadcast nationwide on Thursday.
“The visuals of the incident are horrific, disturbing and unacceptable. No human being should be treated in that manner”, Zuma said.
Police told media they had detained Macia after he parked illegally, creating a traffic jam, and then resisted arrest.
Slideshow (8 Images)
The incident is the latest in a series of scandals to hit South Africa’s police force, already dogged by a reputation for brutality, corruption and incompetence.
The lead detective in the murder case against Olympic and Paralympic star Oscar Pistorius was removed from the investigation last week when it emerged he was facing seven attempted murder charges for allegedly opening fire on a minibus full of passengers.
Police shot dead 34 striking workers at a platinum mine in August last year - the deadliest security incident since apartheid ended in 1994.I was moved to tears this week when I learned about Alyssa Peterson, a devout 27 year-old Mormon woman from Flagstaff, Arizona, who killed herself on September 15, 2003, just 25 days after arriving in Tal Afar, Iraq, to serve as a counter-intelligence interrogator.
(Alyssa is featured in a campaign by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, covered here at RD last week.)
Peterson, who grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona and served a Mormon mission in the Netherlands, joined the Army as an Arabic language specialist.
Two days after she arrived at the Tal Afar air base prison, Peterson’s unit was ordered to apply “enhanced interrogation techniques” she considered inhumane and torturous.
Alyssa said she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t be two people. She couldn’t be herself—a devout Mormon, a person of faith—while implementing torture.
She was officially reprimanded for showing “empathy” to Iraqi detainees and reassigned to another unit. Days later, she shot herself with her service rifle.
Every Mormon should know the story of Alyssa Peterson because her story affirms that our tradition has the power to inspire its members to “dare to be different,” as the familiar Mormon slogan goes: to hold to our principles even when it is difficult or unpopular.
And every Mormon should know the story of Alyssa Peterson because she exemplifies a powerful departure from the familiar Mormon take on human rights, nationalism, and morality.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stresses to members the importance of respecting established governments and laws of the nations where they live. American Mormons have traditionally been an especially nationalistic group, stressing our loyalty to the United States government even at times in our history when that government has failed to protect our lives and our interests.
Some observers have suggested that these emphases on nationalism, unquestioning obedience, and respect for hierarchy have made Mormons an ideal fit for government agencies like the CIA.
(Indeed, in some Latin American countries, the Church has been perceived as a CIA front, a perception that has brought harm to the Church and ended the lives of Mormon missionaries. From 1984 to 1990, leftist guerillas attacked 193 Mormon chapels in Chile. A total of five Mormon missionaries—two American, three Peruvian—were killed by leftist guerillas in South America in 1989, 1990, and 1991.)
The globalization of the Church brings new pressures to our concept of who we Mormons are and what constitutes moral and humane behavior in the contemporary world.
We are now a religious tradition that is home not only to Russell Pearce, the author of Arizona’s immigration law SB 1070, but also to Anglo and Latino Mormon activists opposing the law on human rights grounds.
Our Mormon tradition has produced Jay Bybee—a lifelong Mormon and returned Mormon missionary who served in Chile during the Pinochet coup—who supervised and signed the 2002 “Torture Memos” effectively authorizing the United States’s shameful |
the lives of women and their families in many ways," Atkins said in a statement.
But critics say they're concerned the new law could undermine women's health.
"This bill is not about helping women, it is specifically designed to trivialize what an abortion is, and its risks,'' said Anissa Smith, spokeswoman for the California ProLife Council. "Reducing the medical standards for abortion... defies logic for those who say they care about women."
The Most Rev. Gerald Wilkerson, president of the California Catholic Conference, said even though California makes up 12% of the nation's population, it's also where 29% of abortions take place.
"The often repeated mantra of those supporting abortions rights is that abortions ought to be safe, legal and rare," Wilkerson said. "With this change in California's law, abortions are merely legal -- no longer safe and rare."
Brown also signed six other health-related bills Wednesday, including one that repeals parts of the California Building Standards Code that treat primary clinics differently depending on whether the clinics provide abortion services.
Against the grain
California's decision bucks a trend of stiffer abortion laws across the country.
Texas passed a new law this year that bans abortions after 20 weeks of gestation; requires abortion clinics to upgrade facilities to become ambulatory surgical centers; tightens usage guidelines for the RU486, the so-called "abortion pill"; and requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of their clinics.
Planned Parenthood filed a federal lawsuit last month seeking to overturn parts of the new Texas law -- specifically, the parts about doctors needing hospital admitting privileges, usage controls on RU486 and the upgrades to clinics.
In July, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed a law requiring all abortion clinics be held to the same standards as outpatient surgical centers.
Also in July, a North Dakota judge delayed the implementation of a new state law that threatened to shut down the state's only abortion clinic by requiring doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles.
The North Dakota law also requires those physicians to have "staff privileges to replace hospital on-staff physicians at that hospital."Breaking down one of the most difficult types of trash, this incredible working incubator turns sterilized plastic remnants into nutritional biomass humans can consume and digest, in short: food. Texture, taste and flavor depend upon the strain of fungus, but reportedly can be quite strong as well as quite sweet.
Livin Studio, an Austrian design group known for innovative work on insect farms, has built a working model of this growth sphere (dubbed the Fungi Mutarium) that takes parts of mushrooms usually left uneaten and grows them into fresh snacks.
From the creators: “We were working with fungi named Schizophyllum Commune and Pleurotus Ostreatus. They are found throughout the world and can be seen on a wide range of timbers and many other plant-based substrates virtually anywhere in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas and Australia. Next to the property of digesting toxic waste materials, they are also commonly eaten. As the fungi break down the plastic ingredients and don’t store them, like they do with metals, they are edible.”
In terms of the process, “Fungi Mutarium is a prototype that grows edible fungal biomass, mainly the mycelium, as a novel food product. Fungi is cultivated on specifically designed agar shapes that the designers called FU. Agar is a seaweed based gelatin substitute and acts, mixed with starch and sugar, as a nutrient base for the fungi. The FUs are filled with plastics. The fungi is then inserted, it digests the plastic and overgrows the whole substrate. The shape of the FU is designed so that it holds the plastic and to offer the fungi a lot of surface to grow on. “
For now, the digestion is a relatively slow process, taking up to a few months for a set of cultures to fully mature, but by the standards of plastic biodegrading in nature this is still an extraordinary feat. The team continues to work with university researchers to make the process faster and more efficient. “Scientific research has shown that fungi can degrade toxic and persistent waste materials such as plastics, converting them into edible fungal biomass.”
This novel application comes just a few years after a group of Yale students discovered a species of fungi on a trip to Ecuador as part of a Rainforest Expedition and Labratory led by a molecular biochemist (with findings subsequently published in the Journal of Applied and Environmental Biology). Even in the absence of light and air, the species they examined thrived in landfill environments, suggesting potential near-future and larger-scale solution for existing waste sites as well.“Too Big To Jail” — US Refuses To Charge HSBC Because It Could Hurt The Financial System
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As it turns out, the rumors were true — HSBC escaped prosecution for money laundering because the behemoth bank was “too big to jail.”
A U.S. Congressional report, entitled “Too Big to Jail: Inside the Obama Justice Department’s Decision Not to Hold Wall Street Accountable,” found officials in the U.K. applied the economic threat combined with the warning of “market turmoil” to ensure HSBC wouldn’t be subject to prosecution for rather serious allegations.
Among a multitude of other findings, according to the report’s Executive Summary [all emphasis has been added]:
Senior DOJ leadership, including Attorney General [Eric] Holder, overruled an internal recommendation by DOJ’s Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section to prosecute HSBC because of DOJ leadership’s concern that prosecuting the bank would have serious adverse consequences on the financial system […] Attorney General Holder misled Congress concerning DOJ’s reasons for not bringing a criminal prosecution against HSBC.
Chaired by U.S. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, the Committee on Financial Services initiated a study in March 2013 concerning the Department of Justice’s incongruent decision not to prosecute the London-based bank, nor its executives or employees, for laundering drug cartel money.
From the beginning, the Committee encountered “non-compliance” in efforts to obtain “relevant documents” from both the DOJ and Dept. of the Treasury, “necessitating the issuance of subpoenas to both agencies.” In fact, it took the Committee three full years from its initial request for information to ultimately procure the necessary items for review, and records from the Treasury show the DOJ “has not been forthright with Congress or the American people concerning its decision” not to prosecute the Big Bank.
As the summary noted further:
“Attorney General [Loretta] Lynch and Secretary [of the Treasury Jack] Lew remain in default of their legal obligation to produce the subpoenaed records to the Committee,” and, in fact,
“DOJ’s and Treasury’s longstanding efforts to impede the Committee’s investigation may constitute contempt and obstruction of Congress.”
Due to the palpable threat of “global financial disaster” should the U.S. proceed with indicting HSBC or complicit employees — an advisement reiterated by the U.K.’s chief financial minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne to then-Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke — the DOJ chose not to proceed with charges, obfuscating the truth of its motivations to all but insiders.
Further, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) — the U.K.’s regulator of all financial services — “hampered” U.S. government investigations and “influenced” the DOJ’s ultimate decision to refrain from prosecution.
Though HSBC settled for $1.92 billion, no criminal charges were ever filed against the entity or any of its employees.
A letter from Osborne to Bernanke in which then-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was copied warned prosecuting a “systemically important financial institution” like HSBC “could lead to [financial] contagion” and pose “very serious implications for financial and economic stability, particularly in Europe and Asia.”
Holder rejected recommendations from less senior staff to charge HSBC because of its “systemic importance” to global financial markets. The report continues:
Rather than lacking adequate evidence to prove HSBC’s criminal conduct, internal Treasury documents show that DOJ leadership declined to pursue AFMLS’s recommendation to prosecute HSBC because senior DOJ leaders were concerned that prosecuting the bank ‘could result in a global financial disaster’ — as the FSA repeatedly warned.
With both politicians and the public critical of the settlement in lieu of prosecution, rumblings at the time posited HSBC might indeed be ‘too big to jail’ — rumors the Committee proved true.
As Zero Hedge pointed out, in Holder’s testimony over the matter before Congress in 2013, the AG claimed certain financial institutions would be difficult to prosecute due to their bloated influence over global financial markets. In later attempts at clarification, which the Committee found to be misleading, Holder told Congress:
If we find a bank or a financial institution that has done something wrong, if we can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, those cases will be brought.
That statement proved mendacious, as well, considering Treasury documents recommended criminal prosecution — and even the settlement, with its “deferred prosecution agreement,” found evidence of criminal wrongdoing by HSBC.
HSBC understaffed and handicapped required ‘anti-money laundering’ controls, allowing the bank to launder $881 million for the Mexican Sinaloa and Colombian Norte del Valle drug cartels — as well as violating U.S. sanctions against Iran, Libya, Burma, Sudan, and Cuba — according to the DOJ’s settlement with the too-big-to-jail bank.
As the BBC reported, both HSBC and U.S. regulatory officials declined comment on the report.
Damning though the Committee’s findings may be, prosecution remains unlikely for the same reasons it escaped prosecution in the first place. Essentially, the report proved — despite criminal wrongdoing as insidious as supporting major drug cartels and catering to states considered enemies of the United States — certain Big Banks are literally Too Big to Jail.
Help Us Be The Change We Wish To See In The World.Déformation professionnelle ( French: [defɔʁmasjɔ̃ pʁɔfɛsjɔnɛl]) is a tendency to look at things from the point of view of one's own profession or special expertise, rather than from a broader or humane perspective. It is often translated as "professional deformation" or "job conditioning", though French déformation can also be translated as "distortion". The implication is that professional training, and its related socialization, often result in a distortion of the way one views the world.[1] Nobel laureate Alexis Carrel observed, "Every specialist, owing to a well-known professional bias, believes that he understands the entire human being, while in reality he only grasps a tiny part of him."[2]
As a term in psychology, it was likely coined by the Belgian sociologist Daniel Warnotte[3] or Russian-American sociologist Pitirim Sorokin.[citation needed]
See also [ edit ]This post is part of the F# Advent Calendar in English 2015 project. Check out all the other great posts there! And special thanks to Sergey Tihon for organizing this.
Hi something fun and not too technical for end the year!
As everyone knows, the favorite instrument of Santa Claus is Ukulele! So let's play some music, and especialy some Ukulele!
First thing first, let's create functions for notes. We start with C at octave 0, and have a progression by half tones.
So C is 0, D is 2, E is 4.
Since there is only a half tone between E and F, F is 5.
F is 7, A is 9, B is 11, and we reach next octave at 12, which is C 1 :
1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: 7: 8: 9: open System let n = 12 * n let n = n + 2 let n = n + 4 let n = n + 5 let n = n + 7 let n = n + 9 let n = n + 11
For sharps and flat, lets define two functions that had and remove a half tone
1: 2: let n = n + 1 let n = n - 1
We can now create names for each note :
1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: 7: 8: 9: 10: let = > > let = > > let = > > let = > > let = > > let = > > let = > > let = > > let = > > let = > >
There is no E sharp or F flat because it is F and E respectively, same thing for B and C...
Will create a structure with a custome comparison/equality that doesn't take the octave into account by using a 12 modulus, this will prove usefull to work with chords:
1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: 7: 8: 9: 10: 11: 12: 13: 14: 15: 16: 17: 18: 19: 20: 21: 22: 23: 24: 25: 26: 27: 28: 29: 30: 31: 32: 33: 34: 35: 36: 37: 38: 39: 40: 41: 42: 43: 44: 45: 46: 47: 48: 49: 50: 51: 52: [< Struct >] [< CustomComparison >] [< CustomEquality >] [< StructuredFormatDisplay ( "{Display}" ) >] type Note ( note : int ) = member __. Note = note override __. ( ) = note % 12 override __. other = match other with | :? Note as other -> note % 12 = other. Note % 12 | _ -> false static member names = [| "C" "C#" "D" "D#" "E" "F" "F#" "G" "G#" "A" "A#" "B" |] member __. Display = let name = Note. names. [ note % 12 ] let octave = note / 12 " %s %d " name octave override this. ( ) = this. Display interface IEquatable < Note > with member __. other = note % 12 = other. Note % 12 interface IComparable < Note > with member __. other = ( note % 12 ) ( other. Note % 12 ) interface IComparable with member __. other = match other with | :? Note as other -> ( note % 12 ) ( other. Note % 12 ) | _ -> 1 static member ( + ) ( string : Note, fret : int ) = Note ( string. Note + fret ) let = List. map Note
A Ukulele has 4 strings.
The funy thing is that the 1st one is higher than the second one, where on most string instruments strings are in progressive order.
This is simply due to the limited size of the Ukulele, a low first string would not sound good, so it is adjusted to the next octave.
This gives use the following:
1: let strings = [ 4 ; 4 ; 4 ; 4 ]
Instead of hard-encoding ukulele chords, we will compute them!
So a bit of theory about chords.
Chords are defined by their root note and the chord quality (major, minor).
The chords start on the root note, and the chord quality indicates the distance to other notes to include in the chord.
On string instrument, the order and the height of the actual notes are not really important for the chord to be ok. So we can use a note at any octave.
Now, let's define the chord qualities.
First, Major, uses the root note, 3rd and 5th, for instance for C, it will be C, E, G, which gives intervals of 0, 4 and 7 half tones from root.
1: 2: 3: let = > > Set. ofList let n = [ n ; n + 4 ; n + 7 ]
Then, Minor, uses the root note, the lower 3rd and 5th. For C it will be C, E flat, G, so intervals of 0, 3 and 7 half tones for root.
1: let n = [ n ; n + 3 ; n + 7 ]
The 7th adds a 4th note on the Major:
1: let n = [ n ; n + 4 ; n + 7 ; n + 11 ]
As on a gitare, a ukulele has frets, places where you press the string with your finger to change the tone of a string.
0 usually represent when you don't press a string at all, and pinching the string will play the string note.
When pressing fret 1, the note is one half tone higher, fret 2, two half tone (or one tone) higher.
So pressing the second fret on the C 4 string give a D 4.
Our first function will try pressing on frets to find frets for notes that belong to the chord
1: 2: 3: 4: 5: let chord ( string : Note ) = [ 0.. 10 ] |> List. filter ( fun fret -> Set. contains ( string + fret ) chord ) |> List. map ( fun fret -> fret, string + fret )
The result is list of pair, (fret, note) that can be used on the strnig
The second function will explore the combinaison of frets/note and keep only those that contains all notes of the chords.
Ex: for a C Major chord, we need at least a C, a E and a G.
using frets 0 on string G, 0 on string C, 3 on string E, and 3 on string A, we get G, C, G, C.
All notes are part of the chord, but there is no E... not enough. 0,0,0,3 is a better solution.
The function explore all possible solution by checking notes on string that belong to the chord, and each time remove a note from the chord. At the end, there should be no missing note.
At each level sub solutions are sorted by a cost. Standard Ukulele chords try to place fingers as close to the top as possible. So lewer frets are better.
The cost function for a chords is to sum square of frets. If there is any solution, we keep the one with the lowest cost.
1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: 7: 8: 9: 10: 11: 12: 13: 14: 15: 16: 17: let rec chord missingNotes solution stringFrets = match stringFrets with | [ ] -> if Set. isEmpty missingNotes then Some ( List. rev solution ) else None | string :: tail -> string |> List. filter ( fun ( _, note ) -> chord |> Set. contains note ) |> List. choose ( fun ( fret, note ) -> chord ( Set. remove note missingNotes ) ( ( fret, note ) :: solution ) tail ) |> List. sortBy ( fun s -> List. sumBy ( fun ( fret, _ ) -> fret * fret ) s ) |> List. tryHead
making a cord is now simple.
Compute the note in the chord using quality and root.
For each string, map possible frets the belong to the chord, then filter it.
1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: 7: let = let chord = ( 4 ) strings |> List. map ( chord ) |> chord chord [ ] |> Option. get
We can now try with classic chords:
1: let CM =
and the result is:
[(0, G 4); (0, C 4); (0, E 4); (3, C 5)]
Now C minor:
1: let Cm =
which is exactly what you can find on a tab sheet:
[(0, G 4); (3, D# 4); (3, G 4); (3, C 5)]
1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: 7:
To print chords, we will simply use pretty unicode chars, and place a small 'o' on the fret where we should place fingers:
1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: 7: 8: 9: 10: 11: 12: 13: 14: 15: let chord = let n frt = if n = frt then "o" else "│" let chord n = chord |> List. map ( > > n ) |> String. concat "" "┬┬┬┬" [ 1.. 4 ] |> List. map ( chord ) |> String. concat "
┼┼┼┼
" |> "%s"
Let's try it
1: |>
It prints
┬┬┬┬ ││││ ┼┼┼┼ ││││ ┼┼┼┼ │││o ┼┼┼┼ ││││
Another one
1: |>
and we get
┬┬┬┬ ││││ ┼┼┼┼ │o│o ┼┼┼┼ ││o│ ┼┼┼┼ ││││
We can also play chords using NAudio.
You can find NAudio on nuget.org
For simplicity I will use the midi synthetizer:
1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: 7: 8: 9: 10: 11: 12: 13: 14: #r @"../packages\NAudio\lib
et35\NAudio.dll" open NAudio. Midi let device = new MidiOut ( 0 ) MidiOut. DeviceInfo 0 let ( m : MidiMessage ) =. Send m. RawData let note volume = MidiMessage. StartNote ( note, volume, 2 ) |> let note volume = MidiMessage. StopNote ( note, volume, 2 ) |> let n = System. Threading. Thread. Sleep ( n : int )
Now we can define a function that will play a chord.
The tempo is used as a multiplicator for a the chord length.
Longer tempo means slower.
For better result we introduce an arpegio, a small delay between each note. Don't forget to remove this time from the waiting length...
The direction indicate if the cords are strumed Up, or Down. In the Up case we reverse the chord.
1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: 7: 8: 9: 10: 11: 12: 13: 14: 15: 16: 17: 18: 19: 20: type Direction = Dn of int | Up of int let tempo arpegio ( chord, strum ) = let strings, length = match strum with | Dn length -> chord, length | Up length -> List. rev chord, length strings |> List. iter ( fun ( _, ( n : Note ) ) -> n. Note 100 ; arpegio ) let arpegioLength = List. length chord * arpegio ( length * tempo - arpegioLength ) strings |> List. iter ( fun ( _, ( n : Note ) ) -> n. Note 100 )
To strum a chord, we give a list of length, and a chord, and it will apply the cord to each length:
1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: let strm chord = let repeatedChord = strm |> List. map ( fun _ -> chord ) List. zip repeatedChord strm
Now here is Santa Clause favorite song, Get Lucky by Daft Punk.
First the chords :
1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: 7: 8: 9: let luckyChords = [ //Like the legend of the Phoenix, // All ends with beginnings. // What keeps the planets spinning, ( ) // The force from the beginning. ]
Then strum, this is the rythm used to play the same chord, it goes like, Dam, Dam, Dam Dala Dam Dam:
1: 2: let luckyStrum = [ Dn 4 ; Dn 3 ; Dn 2 ; Dn 1 ; Up 2 ; Dn 2 ; Up 2 ]
and the full song :
1: 2: 3: let getLucky = luckyChords |> List. collect ( luckyStrum )
And now, let's play it :
1: 2: 3: 4: getLucky |> List. replicate 2 |> List. concat |> List. iter ( 130 25 )
And the tab notations for the song!
1: 2: luckyChords |> List. iter
┬┬┬┬ ││││ ┼┼┼┼ │ooo ┼┼┼┼ ││││ ┼┼┼┼ o│││ ┬┬┬┬ ││││ ┼┼┼┼ ooo│ ┼┼┼┼ ││││ ┼┼┼┼ ││││ ┬┬┬┬ │o││ ┼┼┼┼ o│o│ ┼┼┼┼ ││││ ┼┼┼┼ ││││ ┬┬┬┬ o│││ ┼┼┼┼ │││o ┼┼┼┼ ││││ ┼┼┼┼ │o││
I hope this small thing was entertaining and that it'll get you into ukulele!
For excercise you can:
implements more chords
Better printing
add more liveliness and groove by adding some jitter to the strum...
add the lyrics for Karaoke!
try with other songs!
try the same for a 6 string gitar!
Now it's your turn to rock!
namespace System
val C : n:int -> int
val n : int
val D : n:int -> int
val E : n:int -> int
val F : n:int -> int
val G : n:int -> int
val A : n:int -> int
val B : n:int -> int
val sharp : n:int -> int
val flat : n:int -> int
val Cd : (int -> int)
val Db : (int -> int)
val Dd : (int -> int)
val Eb : (int -> int)
val Fd : (int -> int)
val Gb : (int -> int)
val Gd : (int -> int)
val Ab : (int -> int)
val Ad : (int -> int)
val Bb : (int -> int)
Multiple items
type StructAttribute =
inherit Attribute
new : unit -> StructAttribute
--------------------
new : unit -> StructAttribute
Multiple items
type CustomComparisonAttribute =
inherit Attribute
new : unit -> CustomComparisonAttribute
--------------------
new : unit -> CustomComparisonAttribute
Multiple items
type CustomEqualityAttribute =
inherit Attribute
new : unit -> CustomEqualityAttribute
--------------------
new : unit -> CustomEqualityAttribute
Multiple items
type StructuredFormatDisplayAttribute =
inherit Attribute
new : value:string -> StructuredFormatDisplayAttribute
member Value : string
--------------------
new : value:string -> StructuredFormatDisplayAttribute
Multiple items
type Note =
struct
interface IComparable
interface IComparable<Note>
interface IEquatable<Note>
new : note:int -> Note
override Equals : other:obj -> bool
override GetHashCode : unit -> int
override ToString : unit -> string
member Display : string
member Note : int
static member names : string []
...
end
--------------------
Note ()
new : note:int -> Note
val note : int
Multiple items
val int : value:'T -> int (requires member op_Explicit)
--------------------
type int = int32
--------------------
type int<'Measure> = int
val __ : inref<Note>
val other : obj
val other : Note
property Note.Note: int
val name : string
property Note.names: string []
val octave : int
val sprintf : format:Printf.StringFormat<'T> -> 'T
val this : inref<Note>
type IEquatable<'T> =
member Equals : other:'T -> bool
Multiple items
type IComparable =
member CompareTo : obj:obj -> int
--------------------
type IComparable<'T> =
member CompareTo : other:'T -> int
val compare : e1:'T -> e2:'T -> int (requires comparison)
Multiple items
val string : Note
--------------------
type string = String
val fret : int
val notes : (int list -> Note list)
Multiple items
module List
from Microsoft.FSharp.Collections
--------------------
type List<'T> =
| ( [] )
| ( :: ) of Head: 'T * Tail: 'T list
interface IReadOnlyList<'T>
interface IReadOnlyCollection<'T>
interface IEnumerable
interface IEnumerable<'T>
member GetSlice : startIndex:int option * endIndex:int option -> 'T list
member Head : 'T
member IsEmpty : bool
member Item : index:int -> 'T with get
member Length : int
member Tail : 'T list
...
val map : mapping:('T -> 'U) -> list:'T list -> 'U list
val strings : Note list
val quality : (int list -> Set<Note>)
Multiple items
module Set
from Microsoft.FSharp.Collections
--------------------
type Set<'T (requires comparison)> =
interface IReadOnlyCollection<'T>
interface IComparable
interface IEnumerable
interface IEnumerable<'T>
interface ICollection<'T>
new : elements:seq<'T> -> Set<'T>
member Add : value:'T -> Set<'T>
member Contains : value:'T -> bool
override Equals : obj -> bool
member IsProperSubsetOf : otherSet:Set<'T> -> bool
...
--------------------
new : elements:seq<'T> -> Set<'T>
val ofList : elements:'T list -> Set<'T> (requires comparison)
val M : n:int -> Set<Note>
val m : n:int -> Set<Note>
val M7 : n:int -> Set<Note>
val findFrets : chord:Set<Note> -> string:Note -> (int * Note) list
val chord : Set<Note>
val filter : predicate:('T -> bool) -> list:'T list -> 'T list
val contains : element:'T -> set:Set<'T> -> bool (requires comparison)
val filterChord : chord:Set<'a> -> missingNotes:Set<'a> -> solution:(int * 'a) list -> stringFrets:(int * 'a) list list -> (int * 'a) list option (requires comparison)
val chord : Set<'a> (requires comparison)
val missingNotes : Set<'a> (requires comparison)
val solution : (int * 'a) list (requires comparison)
val stringFrets : (int * 'a) list list (requires comparison)
val isEmpty : set:Set<'T> -> bool (requires comparison)
union case Option.Some: Value: 'T -> Option<'T>
val rev : list:'T list -> 'T list
union case Option.None: Option<'T>
Multiple items
val string : (int * 'a) list (requires comparison)
--------------------
type string = String
val tail : (int * 'a) list list (requires comparison)
Multiple items
val string : value:'T -> string
--------------------
type string = String
val note : 'a (requires comparison)
val choose : chooser:('T -> 'U option) -> list:'T list -> 'U list
val remove : value:'T -> set:Set<'T> -> Set<'T> (requires comparison)
val sortBy : projection:('T -> 'Key) -> list:'T list -> 'T list (requires comparison)
val s : (int * 'a) list (requires comparison)
val sumBy : projection:('T -> 'U) -> list:'T list -> 'U (requires member ( + ) and member get_Zero)
val tryHead : list:'T list -> 'T option
val chord : root:(int -> 'a) -> quality:('a -> Set<Note>) -> (int * Note) list
val root : (int -> 'a)
val quality : ('a -> Set<Note>)
module Option
from Microsoft.FSharp.Core
val get : option:'T option -> 'T
val CM : (int * Note) list
val Cm : (int * Note) list
val print : chord:(int * 'a) list -> 'b
val chord : (int * 'a) list
val fret : ('c -> 'c -> string) (requires equality)
val n : 'c (requires equality)
val frt : 'c (requires equality)
val line : (('c * 'd) list -> 'c -> string) (requires equality)
val chord : ('c * 'd) list (requires equality)
val fst : tuple:('T1 * 'T2) -> 'T1
Multiple items
type String =
new : value:char[] -> string + 8 overloads
member Chars : int -> char
member Clone : unit -> obj
member CompareTo : value:obj -> int + 1 overload
member Contains : value:string -> bool + 3 overloads
member CopyTo : sourceIndex:int * destination:char[] * destinationIndex:int * count:int -> unit
member EndsWith : value:string -> bool + 3 overloads
member Equals : obj:obj -> bool + 2 overloads
member GetEnumerator : unit -> CharEnumerator
member GetHashCode : unit -> int + 1 overload
...
--------------------
String(value: char []) : String
String(value: nativeptr<char>) : String
String(value: nativeptr<sbyte>) : String
String(value: ReadOnlySpan<char>) : String
String(c: char, count: int) : String
String(value: char [], startIndex: int, length: int) : String
String(value: nativeptr<char>, startIndex: int, length: int) : String
String(value: nativeptr<sbyte>, startIndex: int, length: int) : String
String(value: nativeptr<sbyte>, startIndex: int, length: int, enc: Text.Encoding) : String
val concat : sep:string -> strings:seq<string> -> string
namespace NAudio
namespace NAudio.Midi
val device : MidiOut
Multiple items
type MidiOut =
new : deviceNo:int -> MidiOut
member Close : unit -> unit
member Dispose : unit -> unit
member Reset : unit -> unit
member Send : message:int -> unit
member SendBuffer : byteBuffer:byte[] -> unit
member SendDriverMessage : message:int * param1:int * param2:int -> unit
member Volume : int with get, set
static member DeviceInfo : midiOutDeviceNumber:int -> MidiOutCapabilities
static member NumberOfDevices : int
--------------------
MidiOut(deviceNo: int) : MidiOut
MidiOut.DeviceInfo(midiOutDeviceNumber: int) : MidiOutCapabilities
val midi : m:MidiMessage -> unit
val m : MidiMessage
Multiple items
type MidiMessage =
new : rawData:int -> MidiMessage + 1 overload
member RawData : int
static member ChangeControl : controller:int * value:int * channel:int -> MidiMessage
static member ChangePatch : patch:int * channel:int -> MidiMessage
static member StartNote : note:int * volume:int * channel:int -> MidiMessage
static member StopNote : note:int * volume:int * channel:int -> MidiMessage
--------------------
MidiMessage(rawData: int) : MidiMessage
MidiMessage(status: int, data1: int, data2: int) : MidiMessage
MidiOut.Send(message: int) : unit
property MidiMessage.RawData: int
val startNote : note:int -> volume:int -> unit
val volume : int
MidiMessage.StartNote(note: int, volume: int, channel: int) : MidiMessage
val stopNote : note:int -> volume:int -> unit
MidiMessage.StopNote(note: int, volume: int, channel: int) : MidiMessage
val sleep : n:'a -> 'b
val n : 'a
namespace System.Threading
type Direction =
| Dn of int
| Up of int
union case Direction.Dn: int -> Direction
union case Direction.Up: int -> Direction
val play : tempo:int -> arpegio:int -> chord:('a * Note) list * strum:Direction -> unit
val tempo : int
val arpegio : int
val chord : ('a * Note) list
val strum : Direction
val strings : ('a * Note) list
val length : int
val iter : action:('T -> unit) -> list:'T list -> unit
val n : Note
val arpegioLength : int
val length : list:'T list -> int
val strum : strm:'a list -> chord:'b -> ('b * 'a) list
val strm : 'a list
val chord : 'b
val repeatedChord : 'b list
val zip : list1:'T1 list -> list2:'T2 list -> ('T1 * 'T2) list
val luckyChords : (int * Note) list list
val luckyStrum : Direction list
val getLucky : ((int * Note) list * Direction) list
val collect : mapping:('T -> 'U list) -> list:'T list -> 'U list
val replicate : count:int -> initial:'T -> 'T list
val concat : lists:seq<'T list> -> 'T listWhy Your eCig Devices Leak During Altitude Changes:
So you decided to take a short trip that required a plane ride and felt like bringing your ecig with you on the plane for some stealth vaping during the flight. But midflight you can suddenly smell the delicious Halawa Guava that you loaded your tank with. You check your front shirt pocket to find that your tank leaked all over you. You were sure you screwed the tank on correctly and made sure the seals were tight. So why did this happen?
Why Did My Tank Leak |
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If you are at all familiar with Fox’s “The Simpsons” you can probably imagine Homer Simpson loving this beer pancake recipe for the simple fact it contains beer. In fact, he might just adapt his typical Do-Re-Mi Beer Song (the one based on the tune in The Sound Of Music and danced by this Belgium Flash Mob) to something like the one below:
DOUGH-RAY-ME BEER PANCAKES
Dough, the batter I make with beer.
Ray, my friend who pours the beer.
Me, the man who mixes flour with beer,
Fa, la, la, la, la, beer.
So, my pancakes need more beer.
La, I guess I’ll drink another beer.
Tea, forget it, why not beer?
That will bring me back to
Dough, Tea, La, So, Fa, Me, Ray, D’oh, beer!
Whether you like old Homer or not, you may enjoy singing and dancing along as you cook up your pancakes. One thing for certain: It’s bound to entertain the kids! Hopefully, you’ll also be surprised at how good these pancakes taste—with or without the bacon bits, they make a delicious variation to the normal fare.
Let’s Gather The Ingredients
2 cups Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
2 cups Pacifico (or about 1-12 ounce bottle of your favorite beer)
4 Tablespoons butter
2 Tablespoons brown sugar
1 Teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup bacon bits (optional)
Maple Syrup or other topping.
Preparation
These pancakes go together fast, so start by preheating your pan or griddle. While a griddle may work best if you have lots of pancakes to make, a good non-stick pan will do in a pinch. Today, I used a flat bottomed frying pan on the stove and set my burner on medium heat.
Grab a large mixing bowl and add the eggs and the beer.
Melt your butter in the microwave and add it to the mix. You can substitute cooking oil, if you prefer.
Add the sugar, salt and flour next. I used whole wheat pastry flour as I like whole grains, but any flour should do. I usually make my batter a little soupy as I prefer thinner pancakes to thick ones. You can adjust this to your preference by adding more beer or more flour to go thinner or thicker. Start with a 1 to 1 beer to flour ratio and adjust as needed. Combine well with a whisk to get out any lumps.
Measure out and sprinkle the baking powder over the top. Again, combine until well mixed.
If you want to use a little oil in the pan to help keep the pancakes from sticking, it works well to use a spray on oil like Pam Olive Oil Spray.
You can add bacon bits to your pancakes or not. I often buy the big bag from Costco and love the flavor of bacon—I cooked my pancakes with and without for today’s recipe. If you are adding bacon bits, toss pre-cooked bits into the pan and pour your batter directly over the top. Otherwise, just add the batter to the pan.
If you have a bottle of maple syrup on hand, pour it in a microwave-safe cup or dish and heat it up while the pancakes are cooking.
When the pancakes start to bubble and the bubbles no longer fill in, the pancakes should be ready to flip. You can also lift a corner to check if you’re unsure. Flip and cook to brown both sides.
These pancakes go great with maple syrup, butter, brown sugar, whip cream, berries, cinnamon or all of the above. And don’t forget the beer!
Enjoy!
If you enjoyed this recipe you may want to read:
Incredible Buckwheat, Buttermilk and Walnut Pancakes
Instant Presto Candy Bacon
Or for more recipe ideas visit our new Recipe page by clicking here.Campus Partners Planning Expansion of South Campus Gateway
Photo via South Campus Gateway.
Campus Partners plans to solicit proposals this fall for a seven-acre mixed-use development just south of their South Campus Gateway project. The land to be developed would include the Wendy’s at the corner of East 9th Avenue and North High Street and most of the block east of High between 8th and 9th avenues.
Erin Prosser of Campus Partners said that the plan is to rezone the parcels this summer; a mixed-use building that closely matches the scale and architectural style of the existing Gateway buildings is envisioned for the High Street frontage, while the rest of the block would be residential.
A three-story apartment building just south of the Wendy’s site – a Community Housing Network (CHN) property that houses the formerly-homeless – is likely to be demolished to make way for the new development. Prosser said that Campus Partners has been working with CHN to identify another site that would meet their needs.
After the zoning is secured, Campus Partners plans to issue a request for proposals in the fall, with the goal of selecting a private developer or team of developers to oversee the project.
Campus Partners – in the news of late with the recent purchase of two carryouts on North 4th Street – also owns a number of properties on the west side of High Street, but those buildings would not be included in the request for proposals.
For ongoing discussion on the South Campus Gateway Expansion, CLICK HERE to visit our Messageboard.
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About the Author Brent Warren is a staff reporter for Columbus Underground covering urban development, transportation, city planning, neighborhoods, and other related topics. He grew up in Grandview Heights and has a Master's Degree in City and Regional Planning from OSU.
Tags:× Protestors block Pridefest parade, call for community to ‘rise up’
DENVER — Protestors on Sunday halted the Pride Parade, one of Denver Pridefest’s main events, to call attention to the death of Jessie Hernandez, a 17-year-old who was killed in January.
About 50 protestors blocked East Colfax Avenue just after 10 a.m. and brought the parade to a stop while holding signs and shouting their message.
“On this day, we gather to celebrate your pride in gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer love while we celebrate these same things,” the protestors shouted in unison. “We are grabbing the mic for just a few minutes while we reflect on and honor the lives that have been taken.”
Hernandez was shot and killed on Jan. 26 by Denver police when she allegedly drove at them in a stolen vehicle. A police investigation determined the officer-involved shooting was justified and no charges were filed as of June 5.
“Rise up for Jessie Hernandez, queer Latina teen murdered by Denver police,” the signs read.
Protestors listed the names of several others and called on supporters of gay rights to also support “black and brown and trans and queer people of color.”
“LGBTQ people, demand an end to police brutality and an end to the discrimination and sexual harassment in our community,” protestors said.
Protestors also said they wanted to raise awareness to the issue that LGBTQ people of color allegedly face higher rates of murder, unemployment, detention and homelessness.
The protest dispersed after approximately 10 minutes. Police did not interrupt or interfere with the protest. No arrests were reported.
Denver Pridefest is one of the largest pride celebrations in the United States with an attendance of 365,000 last year, celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.As the dust settles on Russian interference in the United States election, journalists are confronting an aspect that has received less scrutiny than the hacking itself but poses its own thorny questions: Moscow’s ability to steer Western media coverage by doling out hacked documents.
Reporters have always relied on sources who provide critical information for self-interested reasons. The duty, tricky but familiar, is to publicize information that serves the public interest without falling prey to the source’s agenda.
But in this case, the source was Russia’s military intelligence agency, the G.R.U. — operating through shadowy fronts who worked to mask that fact — and its agenda was to undermine the American presidential election.
By releasing documents that would tarnish Hillary Clinton and other American political figures, but whose news value compelled coverage, Moscow exploited the very openness that is the basis of a free press. Its tactics have evolved with each such operation, some of which are still unfolding.Key Manchester United boardroom figures have now turned against David Moyes, as the prospect of the manager getting sacked has been properly raised for the first time, club sources have told ESPN FC.
• Jolly: Tim Howard backs Moyes
• Sheedy critical of Moyes approach
• Mitten: Fan patience running out
• Vidic: Slump worse than feared
• Poll: Should United fire Moyes?
The Glazer family owners are now more open to the idea of a change of manager, although they presently remain behind Moyes, but the next week could prove decisive, sources said. Over that time, United must overturn a 2-0 deficit in the Champions League against Olympiakos, before facing an awkward trip to West Ham United and then a potentially daunting second derby of the season against Manchester City.
David Moyes' job hangs in the balance after revelations that United's owners, the Glazers, are now open to the idea of a change of manager.
While qualification for the quarterfinals of the Champions League would be seen as a huge positive and possibly change the entire dynamic of his job, an elimination followed by poor performances in the two games after that could well bring the pressure to breaking point. The Glazers are said to have become very "nervous" about the nature of recent performances, let alone the results, with a nadir coming in the 3-0 home defeat to Liverpool. Some United officials now openly maintain that a managerial change is needed.
Old Trafford sources also state it has been noted that Sir Alex Ferguson is no longer so vocally backing Moyes at boardroom level, although the former manager is not said to have turned against his replacement. It is also believed Moyes retains the backing of Sir Bobby Charlton.
Doubt, however, has increased at virtually every level of the club. Despite the poverty of recent performances, sources state that one of the most influential factors now has been financial concerns. A number of recently signed-up sponsors and commercial partners have reportedly let it be known to the club that they are less than enthused with now being linked to failure, especially since they specifically came on board because of the reputation for extreme success.
This is said to have most unnerved the hierarchy, and long-term damage to United as a "brand" could be the clinching point in any decision. While the club have long planned for a season out of the Champions League -- and that was known to be one initial reason behind the previously unwavering support for Moyes -- any extra negative effect on commercial revenue would be viewed with utmost seriousness.
Sources also state Louis van Gaal would be interested in a potential summer move to Old Trafford, and that the Dutch coach is a little less intent on the Tottenham Hotspur job than he was a few weeks ago. Spurs had felt that Van Gaal's appointment after the World Cup was virtually certain, but it is now more open-ended.Hold onto your hat because I have the mortgage financing hoedown of all hoedowns to tell you about.
Last weekend I attended NAMB National (National Association of Mortgage Professionals) the mortgage broker’s annual Las Vegas conference.
Mortgage brokers work similarly to the way insurance brokers work. Mortgage brokers shop to provide a menu of the best mortgage pricing and programs to meet the needs of their clientele, the purchase and refinance mortgage shopping public.
Wholesale mortgage lenders cater to mortgage brokers as the funding sources. They can be depositories such as banks and credit unions, non-bank lenders and even private investors.
Wholesale lenders come to these conferences in force so that mortgage brokers can learn more. Some of their products were crushingly good. Others had me gushing. And, even others had me blushing. Talk about feeling like a kid in a candy store.
Here are the top five new loan programs that I found from wholesale lenders:
1) Put 10 percent down on an owner-occupied property. Qualify using 24 months of your personal bank statements as your income for self-employed borrowers. Go down to a 620 middle credit score. Nice!
2) Put 25 percent down and get a home loan where you don’t put any income down on the application. This is named a no-income home loan. Holy Toledo!
3) Using the lowest middle FICO score of all borrowers is so old school. Instead, average the borrowers’ middle FICO scores and use that average score to price out your conventional Freddie Mac rates.
Example: Borrower number one has a 740 FICO and borrower number two has a 630 score. The average score is 685. This is hugely better pricing than using the lowest middle score of 630, maybe0.25 percent or more difference in rate. Or, even the difference between approval and denial.
4) Been out of the work force for awhile? Or a long, long while –like 10 years or more? Don’t fret. You earned yourself a well-priced conventional loan.
As long as you’ve worked in a salary or hourly position for two years before you left the workforce, we can use your new income from your new hourly rate or salary job on your very first day back to work. You do not have to go back to the same line of work you were in. Oh my goodness!
5) Condo litigation or non-warrantable condo for Fannie Mae approval purposes? Don’t lose any more sleep over those issues. Lenders are lining up to sign you up.
Mortgage broker Jeff Lazerson can be reached at 949-334-2424 or jlazerson@mortgagegrader.com or Twitter: @mortgagegrader_.It is often just a single letter that makes the difference. On the outskirts of Donetsk, separatists have removed a diacritical mark from the sign announcing the city's name - thus transforming a Ukrainian word into a Russian one. Separatists love to have their picture taken here. For the past several months, street and city signs with Ukrainian names have been replaced with signs written in Russian throughout the country's east.
"It's another country now," says Igor Martynov, who was named mayor of Donetsk by the separatists. Ukrainian flags and crests will continue to be removed from the public sphere as well.
During negotiations in Minsk, it was agreed that the 2-3 million residents of the regions surrounding Donetsk and Luhansk would receive more autonomy but remain part of Ukraine. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande most recently reiterated those points during meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Paris this October.
Yet, exactly the opposite is taking place. Although guns have been silent since the beginning of September, the separation of the coal mining region Donbass from the rest of Ukraine, which was begun in the spring of 2014, is quietly continuing. Largely unnoticed by the world at large, facts are being created on the ground. This is happening without Russia having to formally take control of the region, or having to annex it like it did with the Crimean Peninsula.
The flag of self-determination flies in Donetsk
The ruble as official currency
The separatists first introduced the Russian ruble alongside the Ukrainian hryvna months ago. Then, on September 1, the ruble was declared the official currency of the Luhansk Oblast. The separatists justified the move with claims that Ukraine no longer sends money to the province. The resumption of retirement and salary payments was agreed to in Minsk; however, the implementation thereof is nowhere in sight.
There have also been changes in education. According to media reports, "humanitarian convoys," as Moscow calls them, brought some 500 tons of schoolbooks to the separatist provinces. Students in Donetsk and Luhansk now learn from Russian textbooks, which are different from Ukrainian textbooks, especially in subject areas such as history. Russian curricula are also being widely adopted.
Control of separatist troops
Further, separatist troops are apparently increasingly under Russian control. Since the beginning of the conflict, Ukraine and the West have accused Russia of supporting the separatists with weapons and fighters. Something Russia denies.
Nonetheless, within the framework of the Minsk Protocol, Russia has officially sent military advisers into the rogue provinces. They are charged with overseeing the ceasefire. To that end, the Russian and rebel Ukrainian militaries are operating a shared headquarters. "The Russians have placed observers in every battalion and every larger unit," explained Alexander Chodakowski, security chief of the self-proclaimed "Donetsk People's Republic," in mid-October. That is how Russia controls the troops.
Russian passports for Eastern Ukrainians in Rostov?
What many separatists desire most are Russian passports. Denis Pushilin, a separatist leader from Donetsk, does not rule out the possibility that residents of the "People's Republic" may soon be able to apply for Russian citizenship. Citing "well-informed interlocutors," the Russian government newspaper "Rossiyskaya Gazeta" reported on the issue by saying that Moscow has not yet given such instructions, but that could change in the future.
On Tuesday, a separatist-friendly online website reported that by the end of this year a government agency is to be installed in the southern Russian port city of Rostov-on-Don with the power to issue Russian passports to residents of the Eastern Ukrainian Donetsk and Luhansk provinces according to a "simplified process." The portal quoted a "high-ranking source" in the "Luhansk People's Republic" as saying that the Russian location was chosen so as not to create an outcry.
Experts: Putin doesn't want a frozen conflict
It certainly would not be a new approach. Moscow has acted similarly in other former Soviet republics once conflicts became frozen - in Georgia for instance, where Russian passports were also issued. Rebellious provinces such as Abkhazia and South Ossetia were later recognized as independent states.
Western observers like Winfried Schneider-Deters have come to the conclusion that the quiet rapprochement between Eastern Ukrainian separatists and Russia is in direct conflict with official Kremlin policy and the Minsk Protocol. The publisher and Ukraine expert believes that Moscow does not want to freeze the conflict. "Putin wants this entity within the Ukrainian state - with the intention of it being a permanent source of irritation," says the expert. If that cannot be successfully established, then Russia may initiate its "Plan B" for the Donbass: Irrevocable separation from Ukraine.
Have something to say? Add your comments below.Image copyright Getty Images
Encrypted information has been accessed during a data breach at password management service OneLogin.
It affects "all customers served by our US data centre" and perpetrators had "the ability to decrypt encrypted data", according to The Register.
Those affected have been advised to visit a registration-only support page, outlining the steps they need to take.
Security experts said the breach was "embarrassing" and showed every company was open to attack.
OneLogin is a single sign-on service, allowing users to access multiple apps and sites with just one password.
In 2013, the company had 700 business customers and passed 12 million licensed users.
Apps and sites integrated into the service include Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Office 365, Slack, Cisco Webex, Google Analytics and LinkedIn.
"We have since blocked this unauthorized access, reported the matter to law enforcement, and are working with an independent security firm to determine how the unauthorized access happened," chief information security officer Alvaro Hoyos said on the company's blog.
"We are actively working to determine how best to prevent such an incident from occurring in the future."
Users who log in to the site have been given a list of steps designed to minimise the risk to their data. These include:
forcing a password reset for all users
generating new security credentials and certificates for apps and sites
recycling secrets stored in OneLogin's secure notes
Some customers have criticised OneLogin for requiring users to log in to see the list.
Image copyright Twitter / Trevor Scott Mays
Image copyright Twitter / Erik Gomez
The company has not yet responded to a BBC request for comment.
In its email to customers, OneLogin told them that "because this is still an active investigation involving law enforcement, there are certain details we can't comment on at this time.
"We understand how frustrating this might be and thank you for your patience while we continue the investigation."
'Strong passwords'
"Companies need to understand the risks of using cloud-based systems," Professor Bill Buchanan of Edinburgh Napier University told the BBC.
"Increasingly they need to encrypt sensitive information before they put it within cloud systems, and watch that their encryption keys are not distributed to malicious agents.
"It is almost impossible to decrypt data that uses strong encryption, unless the encryption key has been generated from a simple password," he said.
IT security consultant Ben Schlabs told the BBC it was likely the compromised data included passwords protected using "hashing" - converting the data into fixed-length strings of characters or numbers.
"The security of data would then depend on the strength of the passwords, and of the password hashes," he said.
"I would happily store my properly encrypted password safe in any cloud service, because you don't know my password for that safe and I trust encryption."
The strongest encryption system "hasn't been broken yet, and there's no sign that it should be," he said.Many of the estimated 50 million lithium-ion laptop batteries discarded every year could provide electricity storage sufficient to light homes in poor countries, researchers at IBM say.
A street vendor in India uses a light powered by refurbished battery cells.
In work being aired this week at a conference in San Jose, researchers at IBM Research India in Bangalore found that at least 70 percent of all discarded batteries have enough life left to power an LED light at least four hours a day for a year.
While it’s possible to combine LED lights with solar panels and rechargeable batteries (see “Innovators Under 35: Evans Wadongo”), using discarded batteries could make the approach far cheaper.
“The most costly component in these systems is often the battery,” says Vikas Chandan, a research scientist at the lab’s Smarter Energy Group, who led the project. “In this case, the most expensive part of your storage solution is coming from trash.”
The IBM group, working with a hardware R&D firm called RadioStudio, tore open discarded laptop battery packaging and extracted individual storage units called cells, tested those individually to pick out the good ones, and recombined them to form refurbished battery packs. Then, after adding charging dongles as well as circuitry to prevent overheating, they gave them to five users in Bangalore who lived in slums or operated sidewalk carts.
Three months later, the users said the battery packs had worked well; the main request was for rat-resistant wires and brighter bulbs, says Mohit Jain, a research engineer with the group. A revised setup is now being tested.
Around 50 million laptop and desktop computers are discarded in the United States every year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Meanwhile, in India alone, about 400 million people lack grid-connected electricity.
IBM is not considering this as a business but says the technology could be offered free to poor countries.Seven-time Formula 1 world champion Michael Schumacher has suffered a head injury while skiing in Meribel, France.
The German, 44, who retired from F1 for a second time in 2012, was taken by helicopter to hospital in Moutiers before being moved to Grenoble.
Schumacher in numbers World championships: 7 Race wins: 91 Seasons in F1: 19 Points scored: 1,560 Points finishes: 220 Podiums: 155
Schumacher was skiing with his 14-year-old son and others in an off-piste area between two marked runs above Meribel when he fell on Sunday morning.
He is being examined in hospital, with his wife and two children also present.
Christophe Gernignon-Lecomte, director of the Meribel resort, said Schumacher "was a little shaken but conscious" after crashing.
Speaking to Radio Monte Carlo Sport, Gernignon-Lecomte added: "He was wearing a helmet and banged [his head] against a rock."
Schumacher was attended to by two ski patrollers who requested helicopter evacuation to the nearby valley town of Moutiers, before he was subsequently moved to a bigger facility at Grenoble.
Michael Schumacher was transferred to a hospital in Grenoble following his skiing accident
The German is receiving the attention of Professor Gerard Saillant, a close ally and friend of Schumacher and his former Ferrari team boss Jean Todt.
Saillant is an expert in brain and spine injury. He oversaw Schumacher's medical care when the German broke his leg in the 1999 British GP.
Schumacher's spokeswoman Sabine Kehm said in a statement: "We ask for understanding that we cannot give out continuous information about his health.
"He was wearing a helmet and was not alone. No-one else was involved in the fall."
Schumacher won seven world championships and secured 91 race victories during a 19-year career in Formula 1.
He won two titles with Benetton, in 1994 and 1995, before switching to Ferrari in 1996 and going on to win five straight titles from 2000.
The German retired in 2006, but returned in 2010 with Mercedes. After three seasons which yielded just one podium finish, he quit the sport at the end of 2012.A Likud lawmaker on Thursday proposed a bill that would raise the threshold for entry into the Knesset to seven percent, claiming it would stabilize parliament by filtering out smaller parties that complicate governing coalitions.
Israel’s plethora of parties competing in elections is “unheard-of in Western democracies,” MK Sharren Haskel told the Hebrew-language Maariv news site.
The proposal would require parties to win roughly eight of the Knesset’s 120 seats.
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Before the last elections in 2015, the threshold was raised to 3.5%, effectively preventing parties from entering the Knesset with fewer than four seats.
“In the elections for the 20th Knesset, dozens of parties ran,” Haskel said, speaking from Taiwan, where she was participating in a trade delegation of Israeli parliamentarians. “Only 10 of them crossed the threshold, and many votes were lost.”
The bill, she explained, would force smaller parties to band together with larger ones.
“In my opinion, that will greatly help the stability of Israeli democracy.”
Factions in the current Knesset that garnered less than 7% of the vote include the left-wing Meretz party (5 seats), the ultra-Orthodox parties of United Torah Judaism (6) and Shas (7), and Yisrael Beytenu (6), led by Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman.
While Meretz is in the opposition, United Torah Judaism and Shas are both coalition members.
The previous increase in the threshold forced three Arab parties — that individually would not have beaten the minimum — to unite and form the Joint (Arab) List. The alliance won 13 seats to become the third-largest part in the Knesset.
In a similar move, MK Tzipi Livni joined her Hatnua party to the larger Labor party, creating the Zionist Union, which secured 24 seats, making it the second-largest Knesset faction.
“I expect that in the end there will be just five parties in the Knesset,” Haskel envisioned. “Two big parties, a centrist party, an Arab party, and a right-wing religious party.”
The bill has not yet been presented to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for review, the report said.Rescuers were forced to abandon efforts to save almost 150 melon-headed whales, also known as electra dolphins, stranded on a beach in Japan on Friday, after frantically trying all day to help them.
As darkness fell, local officials in Hokota, about 60 miles northeast of Tokyo, said they had been able to save only three of the 149 animals that had beached and that the rescue effort had been called off.
The rest had either died or were dying, they said.
“It was becoming dark and too dangerous to continue the rescue work at this beach, where we could not bring heavy equipment,” said an unnamed Hokota city official.
“Many people volunteered to rescue them but the dolphins became very, very weak … Only three of them have been successfully returned to the sea, as far as we can confirm,” he added.
Locals and coast guard teams had battled through the day to save the animals, trying to stop their skin from drying out as they lay on the sand.
Others were carried in slings back toward the ocean.
Television footage showed several animals from the large pod had been badly cut, and many had deep gashes to their skin.
An Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalist at the scene said that some of the creatures were being pushed back onto the beach by the tide soon after being released, despite efforts to return them to the water.
The pod was stretched out along a roughly 6-mile-long stretch of beach in the Ibaraki area, where they were found by locals early Friday morning.
“They are alive. I feel sorry for them,” one man at the scene told public broadcaster NHK, as others ferried buckets of seawater to the stranded animals to pour over them.
Massive efforts were required to get the three that survived back into the water.
Rescuers wrapped them with blankets before putting them on a coastguard vessel. The animals were taken to waters about 6 miles from the shore and released, according to NHK.
Footage showed many of the less fortunate animals lying in shallow waters, too weak to swim, being pushed back and forth by the waves.
While the reason for the beaching was unclear, Tadasu Yamadao, a researcher at the National Museum of Nature and Science, said the dolphins might have lost their way.
“Sonar waves the dolphins emit might have been absorbed in the shoals, which could cause them to lose their sense of direction,” he told the daily newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun.
Melon-headed whales are relatively common in Japanese waters and can grow to be between six and nine feet long.
In 2011, about 50 melon-headed whales beached themselves in a similar area.
Friday's rescue effort stood in marked contrast to the global view of Japan and its relationship with sea life.
Despite international opprobrium, Japan hunts minke and pilot whales off its coast, and has for many years also pursued the mammals in the Antarctic Ocean using a scientific exemption to the international moratorium on whaling.
It has never made any secret of the fact that meat from the animals is consumed.
A United Nations court ruled last year that its hunt was a commercial activity masquerading as research and ordered it to be halted.
Tokyo, which insists whaling is a tradition and labels environmental campaigners as “cultural imperialists,” has vowed to restart a redesigned southern ocean whaling program, possibly later this year.
Coincidentally, four whaling vessels set out Friday to hunt up to 51 minke whales in the northwestern Pacific, in a separate hunt that was not covered by the U.N. court ruling.
Japan also defies international opinion with the annual slaughter of hundreds of dolphins in a bay near the southern whaling town of Taiji.
The killing was brought to worldwide attention with the Oscar-winning documentary “The Cove.”
Agence France-PresseNights spent staring at the ceiling as worries dance manically around the brain. Taking a deep breath before opening the gas bill. Sacrificing a hot meal so your children don’t need to. Living with personal debt can be draining and emotionally exhausting, and it is the everyday experience of all too many Britons. According to a new TUC report, 3.2m British households face problem debt, meaning they spend more than a quarter of their overall income repaying unsecured borrowings (ie, excluding mortgages). For 1.6m households in extreme debt, the picture is even bleaker: more than 40% of their income goes to creditors.
Wages growth is at a record low – unless you're a Commonwealth Bank CEO | Greg Jericho Read more
This is the lived experience of Britain’s working poor, those who keep the country ticking with their hard graft and are rewarded with poverty and insecurity. British workers have suffered the longest fall in wages since Queen Victoria sat on the throne. Between 2007 and 2015, real wages fell by an astonishing 10.4% - the worst fall in any advanced nation other than Greece. Growing personal debt is the price many British workers have paid for the disastrous economic failure of George Osborne and his colleagues – one of whom is now the nation’s prime minister.
What’s the cure? The government will undoubtedly point to a rising minimum wage, but tax and benefit changes are projected to leave many workers worse off regardless in the coming years. The introduction of a genuine living wage – rather than a minimum wage rebranded as something it is not – would help, and it is welcome that both Labour leadership candidates are committed to it. But the case must be made for workers coming together to secure improved wages: trade unionism, in other words.
Even during the boom years, wages were stagnating or even falling for millions of British workers. What were the consequences? Billions more pounds of public money spent on in-work benefits to compensate, for a start. But in the years leading up to the crash, many workers took on more personal debt to maintain their slipping living standards. That’s not good for the workers, and it’s not good for the economy, either. But this was at a time when many companies were reporting healthy profits. They just weren’t sharing the wealth with the workforce who created it in the first place. And why should they? With trade unionism so defeated by punitive laws and industrial decline, they faced little pressure to do so.
Britain’s working poor keep the country ticking with their hard graft and are rewarded with poverty and insecurity
In Nordic countries, it is the norm for workers to be unionised. Better living standards and more equality than we have in Britain are two of the byproducts. Jeremy Corbyn – near-certain to be re-elected Labour leader next month – has unveiled policies such as compulsory collective bargaining for companies with more than 250 workers. Such an approach would help lift the wages of workers, not only for their own good, but for the good of the British economy, too. But the positive case for trade unionism cannot just be left to politicians: it needs to be made by all of us. It needs to be put in a language that resonates with the millions of non-unionised workers, and particularly for younger people for whom the very notion of trade unionism seems culturally alien. Personal debt is a blight in modern Britain – and trade unionism is one of its cures.After the chairman of the MTA and the governor who appointed him spent much of the last week arguing that |
Str.charAt(enc1)+keyStr.charAt(enc2)+keyStr.charAt(enc3)+keyStr.charAt(enc4); chr1=chr2=chr3=enc1=enc2=enc3=enc4=""; } return out; }, decodeBase64: function(input) { var out=""; var chr1,chr2,chr3; var enc1,enc2,enc3,enc4; var i = 0; // remove all characters that are not A-Z, a-z, 0-9, +, /, or = input=input.replace(/[^A-Za-z0-9\+\/\=]/g, ""); do { enc1=keyStr.indexOf(input.charAt(i++)); enc2=keyStr.indexOf(input.charAt(i++)); enc3=keyStr.indexOf(input.charAt(i++)); enc4=keyStr.indexOf(input.charAt(i++)); chr1=(enc1 << 2) | (enc2 >> 4); chr2=((enc2 & 15) << 4) | (enc3 >> 2); chr3=((enc3 & 3) << 6) | enc4; out=out+String.fromCharCode(chr1); if (enc3!=64) out=out+String.fromCharCode(chr2); if (enc4!=64) out=out+String.fromCharCode(chr3); } while (i<input.length); return out; }, //}}} // // I/O functions //{{{ readFile: // read local BINARY file data function(filePath) { if(!window.Components) { return null; } try { netscape.security.PrivilegeManager.enablePrivilege("UniversalXPConnect"); } catch(e) { alert("access denied: "+filePath); return null; } var file = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/file/local;1"].createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsILocalFile); try { file.initWithPath(filePath); } catch(e) { alert("cannot read file - invalid path: "+filePath); return null; } if (!file.exists()) { alert("cannot read file - not found: "+filePath); return null; } var inputStream = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/network/file-input-stream;1"].createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsIFileInputStream); inputStream.init(file, 0x01, 00004, null); var bInputStream = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/binaryinputstream;1"].createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsIBinaryInputStream); bInputStream.setInputStream(inputStream); return(bInputStream.readBytes(inputStream.available())); }, //}}} //{{{ writeFile: function(filepath,data) { // TBD: decode base64 and write BINARY data to specified local path/filename return(false); }, //}}} //{{{ askForFilename: // for FF3 fixup function(target) { var msg=config.messages.selectFile; if (target && target.title) msg=target.title; // use target field tooltip (if any) as dialog prompt text // get local path for current document var path=getLocalPath(document.location.href); var p=path.lastIndexOf("/"); if (p==-1) p=path.lastIndexOf("\\"); // Unix or Windows if (p!=-1) path=path.substr(0,p+1); // remove filename, leave trailing slash var file="" var result=window.mozAskForFilename(msg,path,file,true); // FF3 FIXUP ONLY if (target && result.length) // set target field and trigger handling { target.value=result; target.onchange(); } return result; } }; //}}} //{{{ if (window.mozAskForFilename===undefined) { // also defined by CoreTweaks (for ticket #604) window.mozAskForFilename=function(msg,path,file,mustExist) { if(!window.Components) return false; try { netscape.security.PrivilegeManager.enablePrivilege('UniversalXPConnect'); var nsIFilePicker = window.Components.interfaces.nsIFilePicker; var picker = Components.classes['@mozilla.org/filepicker;1'].createInstance(nsIFilePicker); picker.init(window, msg, mustExist?nsIFilePicker.modeOpen:nsIFilePicker.modeSave); var thispath = Components.classes['@mozilla.org/file/local;1'].createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsILocalFile); thispath.initWithPath(path); picker.displayDirectory=thispath; picker.defaultExtension=''; picker.defaultString=file; picker.appendFilters(nsIFilePicker.filterAll|nsIFilePicker.filterText|nsIFilePicker.filterHTML); if (picker.show()!=nsIFilePicker.returnCancel) var result=picker.file.persistentDescriptor; } catch(ex) { displayMessage(ex.toString()); } return result; } } //}}}
/*** |Name|AttachFilePluginFormatters| |Source|http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#AttachFilePluginFormatters| |Version|4.0.1| |Author|Eric Shulman| |License|http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#LegalStatements| |~CoreVersion|2.1.3| |Type|plugin| |Description|run-time library for displaying attachment tiddlers| Runtime processing for //rendering// attachment tiddlers created by [[AttachFilePlugin]]. Attachment tiddlers are tagged with<<tag attachment>>and contain binary file content (e.g., jpg, gif, pdf, mp3, etc.) that has been stored directly as base64 text-encoded data or can be loaded from external files stored on a local filesystem or remote web server. Note: after creating new attachment tiddlers, you can remove [[AttachFilePlugin]], as long as you retain //this// tiddler (so that images can be rendered later on).!!!!!Formatters <<< This plugin extends the behavior of the following TiddlyWiki core "wikify()" formatters: * embedded images: {{{[img[tooltip|image]]}}} * linked embedded images: {{{[img[tooltip|image][link]]}}} * external/"pretty" links: {{{[[label|link]]}}} ''Please refer to AttachFilePlugin (source: http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#AttachFilePlugin) for additional information.'' <<<!!!!!Revisions <<< 2009.10.10 [4.0.1] in fileExists(), check for IE to avoid hanging Chrome during startup 2009.06.04 [4.0.0] changed attachment storage format to use //sections// instead of embedded substring markers. 2008.01.08 [*.*.*] plugin size reduction: documentation moved to...Info 2007.12.04 [*.*.*] update for TW2.3.0: replaced deprecated core functions, regexps, and macros 2007.10.29 [3.7.0] more code reduction: removed upload handling from AttachFilePlugin (saves ~7K!) 2007.10.28 [3.6.0] removed duplicate formatter code from AttachFilePlugin (saves ~10K!) and updated documentation accordingly. This plugin ([[AttachFilePluginFormatters]]) is now //''required''// in order to display attached images/binary files within tiddler content. 2006.05.20 [3.4.0] through 2007.03.01 [3.5.3] sync with AttachFilePlugin 2006.05.13 [3.2.0] created from AttachFilePlugin v3.2.0 <<<!!!!!Code ***/ // // version //{{{ version.extensions.AttachFilePluginFormatters= {major: 4, minor: 0, revision: 1, date: new Date(2009,10,10)}; //}}} //{{{ if (config.macros.attach==undefined) config.macros.attach= { }; //}}} //{{{ if (config.macros.attach.isAttachment==undefined) config.macros.attach.isAttachment=function (title) { var tiddler = store.getTiddler(title); if (tiddler==undefined || tiddler.tags==undefined) return false; return (tiddler.tags.indexOf("attachment")!=-1); } //}}} //{{{ // test for local file existence - returns true/false without visible error display if (config.macros.attach.fileExists==undefined) config.macros.attach.fileExists=function(f) { if(window.Components) { // MOZ try { netscape.security.PrivilegeManager.enablePrivilege("UniversalXPConnect"); } catch(e) { return false; } // security access denied var file = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/file/local;1"].createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsILocalFile); try { file.initWithPath(f); } catch(e) { return false; } // invalid directory return file.exists(); } else if (config.browser.isIE) { // IE var fso = new ActiveXObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject"); return fso.FileExists(f); } else return true; // other browsers: assume file exists } //}}} //{{{ if (config.macros.attach.getAttachment==undefined) config.macros.attach.getAttachment=function(title) { // extract embedded data, local and remote links (if any) var text=store.getTiddlerText(title,''); var embedded=store.getTiddlerText(title+'##data','').trim(); var locallink=store.getTiddlerText(title+'##file','').trim(); var remotelink=store.getTiddlerText(title+'##url','').trim(); // backward-compatibility for older attachments (pre 4.0.0) var startmarker="---BEGIN_DATA---
"; var endmarker="
---END_DATA---"; var pos=0; var endpos=0; if ((pos=text.indexOf(startmarker))!=-1 && (endpos=text.indexOf(endmarker))!=-1) embedded="data:"+(text.substring(pos+startmarker.length,endpos)).replace(/
/g,''); if ((pos=text.indexOf("/%LOCAL_LINK%/"))!=-1) locallink=text.substring(text.indexOf("|",pos)+1,text.indexOf("]]",pos)); if ((pos=text.indexOf("/%REMOTE_LINK%/"))!=-1) remotelink=text.substring(text.indexOf("|",pos)+1,text.indexOf("]]",pos)); // if there is a data: URI defined (not supported by IE) if (embedded.length &&!config.browser.isIE) return embedded; // document is being served remotely... use remote URL (if any) (avoids security alert) if (remotelink.length && document.location.protocol!="file:") return remotelink; // local link only... return link without checking file existence (avoids security alert) if (locallink.length &&!remotelink.length) return locallink; // local link, check for file exist... use local link if found if (locallink.length) { locallink=locallink.replace(/^\.[\/\\]/,''); // strip leading './' or '.\' (if any) if (this.fileExists(getLocalPath(locallink))) return locallink; // maybe local link is relative... add path from current document and try again var pathPrefix=document.location.href; // get current document path and trim off filename var slashpos=pathPrefix.lastIndexOf("/"); if (slashpos==-1) slashpos=pathPrefix.lastIndexOf("\\"); if (slashpos!=-1 && slashpos!=pathPrefix.length-1) pathPrefix=pathPrefix.substr(0,slashpos+1); if (this.fileExists(getLocalPath(pathPrefix+locallink))) return locallink; } // no embedded data, no local (or not found), fallback to remote URL (if any) if (remotelink.length) return remotelink; // attachment URL doesn't resolve, just return input as is return title; } //}}} //{{{ if (config.macros.attach.init_formatters==undefined) config.macros.attach.init_formatters=function() { if (this.initialized) return; // find the formatter for "image" and replace the handler for (var i=0; i<config.formatters.length && config.formatters[i].name!="image"; i++); if (i<config.formatters.length) config.formatters[i].handler=function(w) { this.lookaheadRegExp.lastIndex = w.matchStart; var lookaheadMatch = this.lookaheadRegExp.exec(w.source) if(lookaheadMatch && lookaheadMatch.index == w.matchStart) // Simple bracketted link { var e = w.output; if(lookaheadMatch[5]) { var link = lookaheadMatch[5]; // ELS ------------- var external=config.formatterHelpers.isExternalLink(link); if (external) { if (config.macros.attach.isAttachment(link)) { e = createExternalLink(w.output,link); e.href=config.macros.attach.getAttachment(link); e.title = config.macros.attach.linkTooltip + link; } else e = createExternalLink(w.output,link); } else e = createTiddlyLink(w.output,link,false,null,w.isStatic); // ELS ------------- addClass(e,"imageLink"); } var img = createTiddlyElement(e,"img"); if(lookaheadMatch[1]) img.align = "left"; else if(lookaheadMatch[2]) img.align = "right"; if(lookaheadMatch[3]) img.title = lookaheadMatch[3]; img.src = lookaheadMatch[4]; // ELS ------------- if (config.macros.attach.isAttachment(lookaheadMatch[4])) img.src=config.macros.attach.getAttachment(lookaheadMatch[4]); // ELS ------------- w.nextMatch = this.lookaheadRegExp.lastIndex; } } //}}} //{{{ // find the formatter for "prettyLink" and replace the handler for (var i=0; i<config.formatters.length && config.formatters[i].name!="prettyLink"; i++); if (i<config.formatters.length) { config.formatters[i].handler=function(w) { this.lookaheadRegExp.lastIndex = w.matchStart; var lookaheadMatch = this.lookaheadRegExp.exec(w.source); if(lookaheadMatch && lookaheadMatch.index == w.matchStart) { var e; var text = lookaheadMatch[1]; if(lookaheadMatch[3]) { // Pretty bracketted link var link = lookaheadMatch[3]; if (config.macros.attach.isAttachment(link)) { e = createExternalLink(w.output,link); e.href=config.macros.attach.getAttachment(link); e.title=config.macros.attach.linkTooltip+link; } else e = (!lookaheadMatch[2] && config.formatterHelpers.isExternalLink(link))? createExternalLink(w.output,link) : createTiddlyLink(w.output,link,false,null,w.isStatic); } else { e = createTiddlyLink(w.output,text,false,null,w.isStatic); } createTiddlyText(e,text); w.nextMatch = this.lookaheadRegExp.lastIndex; } } } // if "prettyLink" formatter found this.initialized=true; } //}}} //{{{ config.macros.attach.init_formatters(); // load time init //}}} //{{{ if (TiddlyWiki.prototype.coreGetRecursiveTiddlerText==undefined) { TiddlyWiki.prototype.coreGetRecursiveTiddlerText = TiddlyWiki.prototype.getRecursiveTiddlerText; TiddlyWiki.prototype.getRecursiveTiddlerText = function(title,defaultText,depth) { return config.macros.attach.isAttachment(title)? config.macros.attach.getAttachment(title):this.coreGetRecursiveTiddlerText.apply(this,arguments); } } //}}}
/*** |Name|AttachFilePluginInfo| |Source|http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#AttachFilePlugin| |Documentation|http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#AttachFilePluginInfo| |Version|4.0.0| |Author|Eric Shulman| |License|http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#LegalStatements| |~CoreVersion|2.1| |Type|plugin| |Description|Documentation for AttachFilePlugin| Store or link binary files (such as jpg, gif, pdf or even mp3) within your TiddlyWiki document and then use them as images or links from within your tiddler content.!!!!!Inline interface (live) >see [[AttachFile]] (shadow tiddler) ><<tiddler AttachFile>>!!!!!Syntax <<< ''To display the attach file control panel, simply view the [[AttachFile]] shadow tiddler that is automatically created by the plugin, and contains an instance of the inline control panel.''. Or, you can write: {{{ <<attach inline>> }}} in any tiddler to display the control panel embedded within that tiddler. Note: you can actually use any unique identifier in place of the "inline" keyword. Each unique id creates a separate instance of the controls. If the same ID is used in more than one tiddler, then the control panel is automatically moved to the most recently rendered location. Or, you can write: {{{ <<attach>> }}} (with no ID parameter) in SidebarOptions. This adds a command link that opens the controls as a floating panel, positioned directly to the left of the sidebar. <<<!!!!!Usage <<< Binary file content can be stored in three different locations: #embedded in the attachment tiddler (encoded as base64) #on your filesystem (a 'local link' path/filename) #on a web server (a'remote link' URL) The plugin creates an "attachment tiddler" for each file you attach. Regardless of where you store the binary content, your document can refer to the attachment tiddler rather than using a direct file or URL reference in your embedded image or external links, so that changing document locations will not require updating numerous tiddlers or copying files from one system to another. > Important note: As of version 3.6.0, in order to //render// images and other binary attachments created with this plugin, you must also install [[AttachFilePluginFormatters]], which extends the behavior of the TiddlyWiki core formatters for embedded images ({{{[img[tooltip|image]]}}}), linked embedded images ({{{[img[tooltip|image][link]]}}}), and external/"pretty" links ({{{[[label|link]]}}}), so that these formatter will process references to attachment tiddlers as if a normal file reference had been provided. | When you attach a file, a tiddler (tagged with<<tag attachment>>) is generated (using the source filename as the tiddler's title). The tiddler contains //''base64 text-encoded binary data''//, surrounded by {{{/%...%/}}} comment markers (so they are not visible when viewing the tiddler). The tiddler also includes summary details about the file: when it was attached, by whom, etc. and, if the attachment is an image file (jpg, gif, or png), the image is automatically displayed below the summary information. >Note: although you can edit an attachment tiddler, ''don't change any of the encoded content below the attachment header'', as it has been prepared for use in the rest of your document, and even changing a single character can make the attachment unusable. //If needed, you ''can'' edit the header information or even the MIME type declaration in the attachment data, but be very careful not to change any of the base64-encoded binary data.// Unfortunately, embedding just a few moderately-sized binary files using base64 text-encoding can dramatically increase the size of your document. To avoid this problem, you can create attachment tiddlers that define external local filesystem (file://) and/or remote web server (http://)'reference' links, without embedding the binary data directly in the tiddler (i.e., uncheck "embed data" in the 'control panel'). These links provide an alternative source for the binary data: if embedded data is not found (or you are running on Internet Explorer, which does not currently support using embedded data), then the plugin tries the local filesystem reference. If a local file is not found, then the remote reference (if any) is used. This "fallback" approach also lets you 'virtualize' the external links in your document, so that you can access very large binary content such as PDFs, MP3's, and even *video* files, by using just a'remote reference link' without embedding any data or downloading huge files to your hard disk. Of course, when you //do// download an attached file, the local copy will be used instead of accessing a remote server each time, thereby saving bandwidth and allowing you to 'go mobile' without having to edit any tiddlers to alter the link locations... <<<!!!!!Syntax / Examples <<< To embed attached files as images or link to them from other tiddlers, use the standard ~TiddlyWiki image syntax ({{{[img[tooltip|filename]]}}}), linked image syntax ({{{[img[tooltip|filename][tiddlername]]}}}), or "external link" syntax ({{{[[text|URL]]}}}), replacing the filename or URL that is normally entered with the title of an attachment tiddler. embedded image data: >{{{[img[Meow|AttachFileSample]]}}} >[img[Meow|AttachFileSample]] embedded image data with link to larger remote image: >{{{[img[click for larger view|AttachFileSample][AttachFileSample2]]}}} >[img[click for larger view|AttachFileSample][AttachFileSample2]] 'external' link to embedded image data: >{{{[[click to view attachment|AttachFileSample]]}}} >[[click to view attachment|AttachFileSample]] 'external' link to remote image: >{{{[[click to view attachment|AttachFileSample2]]}}} >[[click to view attachment|AttachFileSample2]] regular ~TiddlyWiki links to attachment tiddlers: >{{{[[AttachFileSample]]}}} [[AttachFileSample]] >{{{[[AttachFileSample2]]}}} [[AttachFileSample2]] <<<!!!!!Defining MIME types <<< When you select a source file, a ''[[MIME|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME]]'' file type is automatically suggested, based on filename extension. The AttachFileMIMETypes tiddler defines the list of MIME types that will be recognized by the plugin. Each MIME type definition consists of exactly two lines of text: the official MIME type designator (e.g., "text/plain", "image/gif", etc.), and a space-separated list of file extensions associated with that type. List entries are separated by "----" (horizontal rules). <<<!!!!!Known Limitations <<< Internet Explorer does not support the data: URI scheme, and cannot use the //embedded// data to render images or links. However, you can still use the local/remote link definitions to create file attachments that are stored externally. In addition, while it is relatively easy to read local //text// files, reading binary files is not directly supported by IE's FileSystemObject (FSO) methods, and other file I/O techniques are subject to security barriers or require additional MS proprietary technologies (like ASP or VB) that make implementation more difficult. As a result, you cannot //create// new attachment tiddlers using IE. <<<!!!!!Installation <<< Import (or copy/paste) the following tiddlers into your document: * [[AttachFilePlugin]] (tagged with <<tag systemConfig>>) * [[AttachFilePluginFormatters]] ("runtime distribution library") (tagged with <<tag systemConfig>>) * [[AttachFileSample]] and [[AttachFileSample2]] //(tagged with <<tag attachment>>)// * [[AttachFileMIMETypes]] //(defines binary file types)// > Important note: As of version 3.6.0, in order to //render// images and other binary attachments created with this plugin, you must also install [[AttachFilePluginFormatters]], which extends the behavior of the TiddlyWiki core formatters for embedded images ({{{[img[tooltip|image]]}}}), linked embedded images ({{{[img[tooltip|image][link]]}}}), and external/"pretty" links ({{{[[label|link]]}}}), so that these formatter will process references to attachment tiddlers as if a normal file reference had been provided. | <<<!!!!!Revisions <<< 2009.06.04 4.0.0 changed attachment storage format to use //sections// instead of embedded substring markers. 2008.07.21 3.9.0 Fixup for FireFox 3: use HTML with separate text+button control instead of type='file' control 2008.05.12 3.8.1 automatically add 'attach' task to backstage (moved from BackstageTweaks) 2008.04.09 3.8.0 in onChangeSource(), if source matches current document folder, use relative reference for local link. Also, disable 'embed' when using IE (which //still// doesn't support data: URI) 2008.04.07 3.7.3 fixed typo in HTML for 'local file link' so that clicking in input field doesn't erase current path/file (if any) 2008.04.07 3.7.2 auto-create AttachFile shadow tiddler for inline interface 2008.01.08 [*.*.*] plugin size reduction: documentation moved to...Info 2007.12.04 [*.*.*] update for TW2.3.0: replaced deprecated core functions, regexps, and macros 2007.12.03 3.7.1 in createAttachmentTiddler(), added optional "noshow" flag to suppress display of newly created tiddlers. 2007.10.29 3.7.0 code reduction: removed support for built-in upload to server... on-line hosting of binary attachments is left to the document author, who can upload/host files using 3rd-party web-based services (e.g. www.flickr.com, ) or stand-alone applications (e.g., FTP). 2007.10.28 3.6.0 code reduction: removed duplicate definition of image and prettyLink formatters. Rendering of attachment tiddlers now //requires// installation of AttachFilePluginFormatters 2007.03.01 3.5.3 use apply() to invoke hijacked function 2007.02.25 3.5.2 in hijack of "prettyLink", fix version check for TW2.2 compatibility (prevent incorrect use of fallback handler) 2007.01.09 3.5.1 onClickAttach() refactored to create separate createAttachmentTiddler() API for use with FileDropPluginHandlers 2006.11.30 3.5.0 in getAttachment(), for local references, add check for file existence and fallback to remote URL if local file not found. Added fileExists() to encapsulate FF vs. IE local file test function (IE FSO object code is TBD). 2006.11.29 3.4.8 in hijack for PrettyLink,'simple bracketed link' opens tiddler instead of external link to attachment 2006.11.29 3.4.7 in readFile(), added try..catch around initWithPath() to handle invalid/non-existent paths better. 2006.11.09 3.4.6 REAL FIX for TWv2.1.3: incorporate new TW2.1.3 core "prettyLink" formatter regexp handling logic and check for version < 2.1.3 with fallback to old plugin code. Also, cleanup table layout in HTML (added "border:0" directly to table elements to override stylesheet) 2006.11.08 3.4.5 TEMPORARY FIX for TWv2.1.3: disable hijack of wikiLink formatter due to changes in core wikiLink regexp definition. //Links to attachments are broken, but you can still use {{{[img[TiddlerName]]}}} to render attachments as images, as well as {{{background:url('[[TiddlerName]]')}}} in CSS declarations for background images.// 2006.09.10 3.4.4 update formatters for 2.1 compatibility (use this.lookaheadRegExp instead of temp variable) 2006.07.24 3.4.3 in prettyLink formatter, added check for isShadowTiddler() to fix problem where shadow links became external links. 2006.07.13 3.4.2 in getAttachment(), fixed stripping of newlines so data: used in CSS will work 2006.05.21 3.4.1 in getAttachment(), fixed substring() to extract data: URI (was losing last character, which broken rendering of SOME images) 2006.05.20 3.4.0 hijack core getRecursiveTiddlerText() to support rendering attachments in stylesheets (e.g. {{{url([[AttachFileSample]])}}}) 2006.05.20 3.3.6 add "description" feature to easily include notes in attachment tiddler (you can always edit to add them later... but...) 2006.05.19 3.3.5 add "attach as" feature to change default name for attachment tiddlers. Also, new optional param to specify tiddler name (disables editing) 2006.05.16 3.3.0 completed XMLHttpRequest handling for GET or POST to configurable server scripts 2006.05.13 3.2.0 added interface for upload feature. Major rewrite of code for clean object definitions. Major improvements in UI interaction and validation. 2006.05.09 3.1.1 add wikifer support for using attachments in links from "linked image" syntax: {{{[img[tip|attachment1][attachment2]]}}} 2006.05.09 3.1.0 lots of code changes: new options for attachments that use embedded data and/or links to external files (local or remote) 2006.05.03 3.0.2 added {{{/%...%/}}} comments around attachment data to hide it when viewing attachment tiddler. 2006.02.05 3.0.1 wrapped wikifier hijacks in initAttachmentFormatters() function to eliminate globals and avoid FireFox 1.5.0.1 crash bug when referencing globals 2005.12.27 3.0.0 Update for TW2.0. Automatically add 'excludeMissing' tag to attachments 2005.12.16 2.2.0 Dynamically create/remove attachPanel as needed to ensure only one instance of interface elements exists, even if there are multiple instances of macro embedding. 2005.11.20 2.1.0 added wikifier handler extensions for "image" and "prettyLink" to render tiddler attachments 2005.11.09 2.0.0 begin port from old ELS Design adaptation based on ~TW1.2.33 2005.07.20 1.0.0 Initial release (as adaptation) <<<
AutoPlayer is a tool designed to keep your place when watching a TV series without having to update playlists or remember where you left off. Written primarily for watching anime, it is designed to replicate the similar functionality on cloud services like Netflix and Crunchyroll. To use it, make sure your video file names follow this format: ["""NameOfSeries"""]_ep["""UnpaddedNumber"""]. After that, you can put a link or copy of the script in the video directory, or pass it as an argument at runtime. After the script starts, it will wait 5 seconds, then start playing either the first episode, or the next one you haven't watched. You can click the Select Episode to choose another one or reset the settings and exit. After the player is done or is closed, a message will appear that will play the next episode unless the Go Back or Quit button is pressed within 5 seconds. Should that button be pressed, you can exit (which saves your place) or you can go back (if you didn't intent to close the player or want to resume later). This script requires Zenity and mpv. {{{ #!/bin/bash if [[ -d "$1" ]] then cd "$1" else cd "`dirname "$0"`" fi ls | grep _ep > /dev/null if [[ "$?"!= "0" ]] then echo "No video files found in Title_ep# format." exit 1 fi title=`ls | grep _ep | awk 'BEGIN { FS = "_" } ; { print $1 }' | head -n 1` max=`ls -v | grep _ep | awk 'BEGIN { FS = "_" } ; { print $2 }' | sed's/ep//g' | awk 'BEGIN { FS = "." } ; { print $1 }' | tail -n 1` if [[! -e ".current" ]] then echo "1" >.current fi current=`cat.current` for i in {1..100}; do echo $i; sleep 0.05; done | zenity --progress --auto-close --text "About to play episode $current." --title="$title" --cancel-label="Select Episode" if [[ $?!= 0 ]]; then current=$(zenity --scale --title="$title" --text "Select Episode" --min-value=1 --max-value=$max --value=$current --step 1 --cancel-label="Default and Quit") fi if [[ $?!= 0 ]]; then echo "1" >.current exit fi skip=0 while true do if [[ "$skip" == "0" ]] then mpv --fs "${title}_ep${current}."* current=$((current+1)) fi skip=0 if [[ $current!= $((max+1)) ]]; then for i in {1..100}; do echo $i; sleep 0.05; done | zenity --progress --auto-close --text "About to play episode $current..." --title="$title" --cancel-label="Go Back or Quit" else break fi if [[ $?!= 0 ]]; then zenity --question --title="$title" --text "Go back one episode or quit?" --cancel-label="Quit" --ok-label="Go Back" if [[ "$?" == "0" ]] then current=$((current-1)) skip=1 else break fi fi done if [[ $current == $((max+1)) ]]; then current=1 fi echo "$current" >.current }}}
@@While this worked as of 2015-08-12, I am not maintaining this setup anymore. Use at your own risk.@@ This project auto-starts XFCE daemons and other software: Why these scripts? * You like awesome WM, but want features that a basic DE would have. * Allows you to use the XFCE desktop. * Uses XFCE GTK theme and icon theme (looks better). * Auto mounts drives. * Starts network manager and other daemons. * Does not break XFCE itself (you can switch between both). Note: This fix starts all of the XFCE parts manually, since I could not find a way to make awesome the default WM in XFCE itself. Copy {{{/etc/xdg/awesome/rc.lua}}} to {{{.config/awesome/rc.lua}}}. Add {{{awful.util.spawn_with_shell("~/autostart.sh")}}} to your {{{.config/awesome/rc.lua}}}. Save this as autostart.sh in your home folder: {{{ #!/bin/bash ps -A | grep xfdesktop; if [ $? = 0 ]; then exit; fi export GTK_PATH="$GTK_PATH:/usr/lib/gtk-2.0" Thunar --daemon & xfdesktop & xfce4-settings-helper & xfsettingsd & xfce4-power-manager & /usr/lib/policykit-1-gnome/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1 & system-config-printer-applet & kerneloops-applet & update-notifier & xfce4-power-manager & wicd-gtk & xscreensaver -no-splash & }}} Run {{{chmod +x autostart.sh}}}. Add any other programs you want auto started to this file, like: {{{ xfce4-clipman & skype & xfce4-volumed & }}} You can now use the awesome setting in your login screen and still have basic XFCE functions but use awesome. Selecting XFCE will still load XFCE like it always has. <html><img border="0" src="http://i.imgur.com/6Zb6j.png" alt="Pulpit rock" width="600" height="300" /></HTML> Adds a shutdown, suspend, restart, and lock button to awesome: Why? * You don't need to log out, then shut down to shut off your computer. * Allows you to lock your computer without a hotkey. * Allows you to suspend. Run {{{sudo visudo}}}. Add these lines, replacing {{{<name>}}} with your username: {{{ <name> ALL = NOPASSWD: /opt/shutdown/restart.sh <name> ALL = NOPASSWD: /opt/shutdown/suspend.sh <name> ALL = NOPASSWD: /opt/shutdown/shutdown.sh }}} Save these files in {{{/opt/shutdown/}}}: {{{restart.sh}}}: {{{ zenity --question --text="Do you want to restart your computer?" --title="Restart?" && reboot }}} {{{suspend.sh}}}: {{{ zenity --question --text="Do you want to suspend your computer?" --title="Suspend?" && pm-suspend }}} {{{shutdown.sh}}}: {{{ zenity --question --text="Do you want to shutdown your computer?" --title="Shutdown?" && halt }}} Run: {{{sudo chmod +x /opt/shutdown/restart.sh}}} {{{sudo chmod +x /opt/shutdown/suspend.sh}}} {{{sudo chmod +x /opt/shutdown/shutdown.sh}}} Change this: {{{ mymainmenu = awful.menu({ items = { { "awesome", myawesomemenu, beautiful.awesome_icon }, { "Debian", debian.menu.Debian_menu.Debian }, { "open terminal", terminal } } }) }}} to this: {{{ mymainmenu = awful.menu({ items = { { "awesome", myawesomemenu, beautiful.awesome_icon }, { "Debian", debian.menu.Debian_menu.Debian }, { "open terminal", terminal }, {"Restart",'sudo /opt/shutdown/restart.sh'}, {"Shutdown",'sudo /opt/shutdown/shutdown.sh'}, {"Suspend",'sudo /opt/shutdown/suspend.sh'}, {"Lock", 'xscreensaver-command -lock'} } }) }}} in your {{{.config/awesome/rc.lua}}}. After restarting Awesome, you will see this: [img[http://i.imgur.com/2IMns.png]]
This page contains the three generations of backup scripts I have used for my laptop. My reasoning for sharing these is that they were annoying to develop and completely automate the backup process. While customizing one of these scripts to your needs might take a while, it is significantly easier than redeveloping the scripts from scratch. The first, most recent script uses a deduplicating archiver called Borg, which is like Attic. It is extremely fast, deduplicates data, and support perpetual incremental backups and allows deletion of individual backups, as it doesn't depend on a backup chain. The second script uses Rsnapshot and |
Update, Friday, 3:30 pm Eastern: the full transcript of Mark Phillips' report from Friday's CBS This Morning can be read at MRC.org]Non-profits take on lots of different forms, and so, too, can the way you help them raise money.
That’s the idea behind social impact startup ProBueno, which has so far raised $340,000 to offer more ways for people to support their favorite non-profits.
Founded by a bunch of MIT alums, ProBueno allows users to trade their skills for cash, which is in turn donated to any of the 1.2 million non-profits in ProBueno’s system (among them, online learning non-profit Khan Academy). For example, say you’re really good at making mice dioramas. You could offer a custom mice diorama to anyone who gives $20 to, say, the ASPCA. It’s not exactly a donation, but to the charity in question, the money’s all the same.
Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., ProBueno is supported by cash from Habib Haddad (the CEO of Wamda Capital Fund) and the BeryTech Fund.
Guitar guy: ShutterstockThere are calls for company algorithms to be opened up to Government inspections
Experts have called on the Government to audit the algorithms used by technology and financial companies to avoid chaos.
Professor Edward Tsang, director of the Centre for Computational Finance and Economic Agents at the University of Essex, said that algorithms should at least be "test-driven" by regulators to prevent "trillions" of pounds being lost and the global economy being wiped out.
At their most basic, algorithms are a set of rules that computers follow to make decisions. But they can be extremely complex and opaque, even to their creators.
Automated financial trading algorithms have led to rapid falls in stock markets - most notably in 2010 when a trillion dollars was wiped off indexes - and in the value of sterling following the EU referendum when the pound fell by 6% in a matter of minutes.
Companies such as Google and Facebook also use complex algorithms to organise the world's information.
Their systems use thousands of data points applied to billions of posts and web pages, but this has recently led to controversies over fake news.
The Tom Cheshire Code: How algorithms work
The European Council is planning to introduce rules to force companies to open up their algorithms for inspection.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called for greater transparency, and has said: "Algorithms, when they are not transparent, can lead to a distortion of our perception, they can shrink our expanse of information."
Prof Tsang is developing an early warning system to spot future flash crashes.
He told Sky News: "I think there will be more flash crashes. I think that will become the norm.
"If we don't insist that they reveal their algorithms, we could still test drive them just like we do for cars. Before you allow them to go on the road.
"When they go wrong - like the recent flash crash - they are losing millions, billions trillions of dollars. They could wipe out the economy."
Algorithms have applications in every field.
Since July 2008, the NHS has worked with computer scientists at the University of Glasgow to develop a kidney matching scheme.
One patient, Claire Heathcote, urgently needed a new kidney. Her sister-in-law was willing to donate but wasn't a match.
The algorithm was able to search potential combinations across the whole of the UK and come up with a complicated kidney swapping scheme involving several people.
Ms Heathcote told Sky News: "It just changes people's lives. It's incredible."
This kidney-swapping algorithm is transparency. It's a model that those lobbying for algorithmic accountability hope will be adopted elsewhere.Goal.com reviews the early kick-offs in this evening's Europa League play-off round...
Follow Goal.com on. Get the latest football news direct... Check out Goal.com'spage; be part of the best football fan community in the world!
PSG made the perfect start to their European campaign in the third minute when a Ceara cross was poorly dealt with, allowingto fire home. Schalke targetdoubled the lead on the hour mark when he fired past Maccabi 'keeper Liran Strauber.Bayer were even faster out of the blocks than PSG.took advantage of a poor punch by visiting goalkeeper Vitaliy Postranskyi to give his side the lead in the first minute.then scored a vital second goal five minutes from time, heading home from a corner. Returning herothen scored his first goal in his second spell at the Bay Arena with a penalty in stoppage time.A late goal two minutes from the end from strikergives Christian Gross' side a handy cushion ahead of next week's second leg. The game will likely be remembered more for the five minute delay towards the end of the first-half when a number of fans invaded the pitch and had to be restrained.Feyenoord deservedly came out top in the battle of the Benelux. Elimane Coulibaly wasted an excellent first-half chance for de Buffalo's when he hit the side netting with team-mate Randall Azofeifa better positioned. The much sought afterdecided the first leg when he fired home from a poorly defended corner.Flickr/max.pfandl Anonymous is front and center these days: The amorphous hacktivist group has been publishing internal data of U.S. banks while prominent members are prosecuted on charges of stealing information and sharing links to stolen credit card information.
Yet thorough insight into the decentralized collective is hard to find.
Information activist Asher Wolf provides a unique perspective in an interview with a prominent American Anon who has more than 200,000 Twitter followers via @AnonyOps and is living in exile by choice.
The hacker left the country for fear of being harshly prosecuted by the government for the radical advocacy of movements such as WikiLeaks and Occupy.
"I think the idea was planted when I saw others leaving," @AnonyOps told Wolf. "Glenn Greenwald left... There's a brain drain of political dissidents — America's punishment for screwing with civil liberties.
"With the NSA building massive domestic spying programs, I can't blame anyone for wanting to leave: America — land of the surveilled, home of the logged."
The coder — who sees his Twitter success as "hacking public dialog" — left his home, family, and friends because he began to think the government would "fake my involvement in something or try to entrap me, or hit me with a bull--- conspiracy charge."
He likened his situation to Internet hero Aaron Swartz, the RSS co-developer and Reddit cofounder who committed suicide amid an ambitious prosecution after he downloaded millions of academic papers from the nonprofit online database J-STOR.
"I left for some of the same reasons Aaron Swartz 'left,'" @AnonyOps told Wolf. "But exile was my choice of escape instead. I don't have suicide in me and I didn't want to end up in a jail cell."
Swartz's girlfriend believes that the death of the 26-year-old — who was facing a maximum of $4 million in fines and more than 50 years in prison — "was caused by exhaustion, by fear, and by uncertainty... by a persecution and a prosecution that had already wound on for 2 years... and had already drained all of his financial resources."
Barrett Brown, the journalist and Anon arrested for threatening an FBI officer and sharing a link to stolen credit card information taken from Stratfor, faces up to 100 years in prison.
"From my perspective, it's time to either leave or hide," @AnonyOps said.
Check out the entire interview >Tight ends don’t typically have much say at the line of scrimmage, which is why Chiefs quarterback Alex Smith gets a kick out of Travis Kelce, who has made a habit of barking route changes at him in practice. Much of that is a credit to Kelce’s confidence as he enters what ought to be a breakout season. Much more of it is a credit to a staple of Kansas City’s offensive scheme under Andy Reid: The Y-ISO Trips package.
With the influx of incoming tight ends from collegiate spread offenses, Y-ISO has become increasingly en vogue over the last five years. The formation consists of three wide receivers on one side of the formation and a tight end on the other side, whether he’s a yard away from the offensive tackle with his hand in the dirt or split out to the sideline. The isolation creates numerous coverage mismatches across the field and it can help quarterbacks identify coverage during pre-snap. In Kansas City, it has emboldened Travis Kelce.
“Defenses treat that formation a certain way; they have different rules for it,” Smith told The MMQB. “So sometimes you can declare as soon as you break the huddle. [Travis] thinks just like I do. So he knows right away, right when we break huddle, as he’s getting up at the line he’ll be calling for things. I love when he calls ’em.”
In the late 1970s and 80s, Don Coryell was one of the first NFL coaches to treat the Y position like the centerpiece it would become. He began splitting Kellen Winslow out like a receiver, liberating him from a three-point stance. Since then, coaches across the league have experimented with ways to confound defensive coordinators with tight end alignment. Y-ISO is nothing new—Joe Gibbs is widely credited with innovating the formation in the 80s during his first run in Washington—but its popularity is spiking rapidly.
During the 2011 regular season, the formation was used on 1,569 snaps across the NFL, according to Pro Football Focus. With each team running somewhere north of 1,000 offensive snaps per season, Y-ISO made up 5% of the average offense. Last season, in 2015, Y-ISO was used 11% of the time, league-wide.
Season Snaps in Y-ISO (league-wide) 2011 1,569 2012 1,573 2013 2,342 2014 3,329 2015 3,503
“It’s hard to pinpoint who exactly innovated it here in the last five years, but most teams that have a tight end with some athletic ability will do it,” says Greg Cosell, executive producer of ESPN’s NFL Matchup produced by NFL Films. “It’s a big part of the NFL now.”
The origin story is elusive, but the appeal is readily apparent from a quarterback’s perspective.
“If a team played man, your tight end is gonna get a safety or a linebacker on him and all the corners are gonna go over there and match up on the receivers,” Smith explains. “The tight end has to be talented enough to win that. That has to be a match up you want, depending on the team you’re playing. There’s probably not many of those match-ups that we don’t look at as favorable with Kelce. He’s that kind of player.”
• HOW ALEX SMITH AND THE CHIEFS TURNED A SEASON AROUND: Kansas City was 1-5 when coach Andy Reid and offensive coordinator Doug Pederson decided to put a little more trust in their quarterback’s football mind.
The teams that do it best are those with the sort of pass-catching tight ends who run precise routes and create size/speed mismatches on a regular basis, so you can probably guess which teams use the formation most frequently. The leading Y-ISO users in 2015, in order of snaps:
Team Snaps in Y-ISO (2015) Chicago 215 Philadelphia 206 Seattle 188 San Diego 181 Kansas City 164
The departure of Bears coordinator Adam Gase for Miami and tight end Martellus Bennett to New England is expected to knock Chicago off this list and elevate both the Dolphins and Pats; Seattle thrived in the set even after losing Jimmy Graham to a season-ending knee injury, and figures to remain atop this list with his healthy return. Carolina, despite not making the Top 5, is viewed as an industry leader with Greg Olsen; Cincinnati was deadly in the red zone when using the formation with Tyler Eifert, and Cleveland found success doing the same with Gary Barnidge; and Kansas City figures to use Y-ISO even more heavily as Kelce hits his professional prime.
• FOOTBALL’S 15 BEST TIGHT ENDS: In an episode of The MMQB Podcast, Andy Benoit and Gary Gramling counted down the best 15 tight ends in football.
As Smith enters his 12th season in the NFL and fourth with the Chiefs, he and Kelce spent time in minicamp expanding their list of go-to route audibles for the ISO, this time without a traditional offensive coordinator (Brad Childress and Matt Nagy will serve as co-coordinators after Doug Pederson’s hiring in Philadelphia). Here’s how it works for the Chiefs and others.
* * *
Week 16: Browns at Chiefs
Having witnessed earlier in the game how the Browns will defend ISO when in man coverage (with a safety one-on-one with Kelce), Smith takes a look at the Browns defense on third-and-10 at the Browns 13 in the second quarter. He sees cornerback Tramon Williams giving Kelce about six yards of space. He’s thinking Cover 4.
Courtesy NFL Game Rewind
With Kelce running a post, Smith is reading the deep safety; Kelce should be able to wall off the cornerback and make the catch, provided the safety doesn’t jump the route. Using the big-bodied Kelce as the ISO in this scenario serves two purposes: simplifying the read for Smith and expanding the number of viable route options. When the ball is snapped, the safety hesitates, and Smith lets the ball go long before Kelce is open—so long, in fact, that’s it’s not until five steps later that Kelce snags the low and away fastball for a touchdown.
Courtesy NFL Game Rewind
* * *
NFC Divisional Playoffs: Seahawks at Panthers
Few use the Y-ISO better than Carolina and coordinator Mike Shula, who, like Reid, has had success running out of the formation as well. Here’s a pass play example against zone coverage, with Olsen against one of the better teams at defending the iso: Seattle. The Seahawks make little effort here to disguise the fact they are in Cover 3, with Sherman playing well off of Olsen on the right side as he is responsible for a deep third. The Panthers will send a running back out of the backfield to occupy the linebacker in the flat, and will send the inside receiver on the trips side down the middle of the field in an effort to occupy Sherman and free Olsen running a corner route.
Courtesy NFL Game Rewind
Sherman, perhaps the game’s best cornerback, correctly identifies the streaking slot receiver as the biggest threat and turns his back to Olsen, who reels in a Cam Newton touch pass uncontested for a 27-yard gain.
Courtesy NFL Game Rewind
There isn’t a man within 10 yards of Olsen when he makes the catch for a first down.
Courtesy NFL Game Rewind
Those were two zone coverage examples. The equation gets simpler when teams respond to the ISO with man.
* * *
Super Bowl 49: Patriots vs. Seahawks
Perhaps the most glaring example of this happened in the second quarter, when Rob Gronkowski split out wide and was followed by linebacker K.J. Wright. Seattle’s three corners were in man coverage on the trips side and safeties Earl Thomas and Kam Chancellor behind them. Wright had more or less survived in man coverage against Gronkowski when the tight end was flanked by receivers, but all alone on the outside, he was burnt toast. Touchdown Pats.
Courtesy NFL Game Rewind
* * *
The teams that truly thrive in the Y-ISO and use it consistently not only pass out of the set but run effectively as well. “Anytime you have a formation that you’re not doing multiple things out of, you know, it’s not going to take very long for defensive coordinators to figure it out,” Smith says. “The reason that we’re able to live in that formation is that we run the ball so well out of it.”
The Chiefs will run both inside and outside zone running plays to the tight end side of the formation as evidenced here.
Week 8: Lions at Chiefs
On second-and-5 in the second quarter, Smith hands off to Charcandrick West while facing a weakside blitz.
Courtesy NFL Game Rewind
The play-side linebacker is duped by a slot receiver running a dummy screen route.
Courtesy NFL Game Rewind
The tight end is able to seal off the edge rusher, freeing the right tackle to take on a defensive back.
Courtesy NFL Game Rewind
Despite having eight players in the box, the Lions give up 15 yards before the safety finally arrives to make the tackle.
Courtesy NFL Game Rewind
Week 17: Raiders at Chiefs
The Chiefs will also pull a guard to the ISO side and run an inside power play that often yields cutback lanes, but the matchup they really want comes with outside zone runs.
Courtesy NFL Game Rewind
If the tackle or fullback can reach the edge rusher and negate him, you have Travis Kelce kicking out a cornerback and nothing but a safety between the runner and pay dirt. In this case, Charles Woodson was able to make the stop after a 15-yard gain.
Courtesy NFL Game Rewind
The Y ISO isn’t a cure-all for what ails stagnant offenses, but it can be an outlet for a talented tight end to showcase his all-around skills and a big asset for quarterbacks. If Travis Kelce and the next generation of game-changing tight ends have their way, you’ll be seeing a lot more of it.
Question or comment? Email us at talkback@themmqb.com.The House Republicans' attempt to promote their Snapchat-based coverage of Tuesday's State of the Union address has backfired hilariously.
In a blog post announcing what they're calling #SnapOfTheUnion, the GOP incorporated a gif of HitFix writer Louis Virtel snapping his fingers during an appearance on "Jeopardy!" in May 2015.
Giphy
The problem? Virtel, who is openly gay, is not a Republican and has no interest in his image being used to support the GOP.
The writer fired off a series of tweets that made his opposition clear.
Dear @GOP: The reason people liked my snap was because it defied regressive, homophobic, scary-ass losers like you. https://t.co/N1zddPOeZR — Louis Virtel (@louisvirtel) January 12, 2016
Hey, GOP! Your candidates are horrifying garbage who've done nothing for LGBT rights. Don't use my image. https://t.co/N1zddPOeZR — Louis Virtel (@louisvirtel) January 12, 2016
@GOP I think every day about closeted gay kids who want to kill themselves because their parents are ignorant, fearful Republicans. — Louis Virtel (@louisvirtel) January 12, 2016
It was a particularly ironic gif choice given Virtel's one regret about his "Jeopardy!" appearance. In a HitFix blog post published shortly after the broadcast, Virtel wrote that he wished he'd been able to say that he was gay on the air. Still, he was happy he'd hinted at his sexuality through his mannerisms -- such as the aforementioned finger snap.
"As a kid growing up in the suburbs who venerated everything about 'Jeopardy!', I would've loved seeing an expressive gay contestant own his homosexuality as well as the buzzer," he wrote. "I'll never get that chance again, but I take some comfort in having exhibited my sexual orientation through a few glaring clues."
We'll venture a guess and say that wasn't quite the message the House Republicans intended to send to their Snapchat followers when they used Virtel's image.
Better luck next time, GOP!
Also on HuffPost:GREATER Western Sydney has met with Essendon to discuss what it might take to secure the Bombers' No.1 draft pick, ramping up negotiations as trade period nears.
The two clubs met on Friday with the Giants keen to get their hands on the first pick in the NAB AFL Draft, as speculation continues that it wants to secure highly rated defender Andy McGrath.
• Which draft picks is your club taking into Trade Period?
The athletic McGrath was Vic Metro co-captain and could bolster the Giants' defensive stocks as Heath Shaw enters his twilight years and Joel Patfull considers his future.
• Who's on the move? Nick Bowen tracks 2016's free agents
Securing the No.1 pick would enable the Giants to draft a player before using its draft points to secure academy prospects Will Setterfield and Harry Perryman, although the Giants remain hopeful rather than optimistic of gaining pole position.
AFL.com.au understands the Bombers are attracted to the prospect of turning their No.1 into two high draft picks to potentially replicate their draft strategy of the past two years and bring more talented youngsters into the club.
In the 2015 draft the Bombers chose Darcy Parish at pick No.5 and Aaron Francis at pick No.6, and in 2014 they added Kyle Langford at pick No.17 and Jayden Laverde at No.20.
The Giants hold picks 7, 15 and 16 but remain hopeful of gaining pick No.5 for Caleb Marchbank after he decided to join Carlton.
The Blues are unlikely to handover pick No.5 for Marchbank, but may be prepared to entertain doing so if they can also get hold of one of the Giants' other first-round picks or another player such as James Stewart or Jarrod Pickett.
The Bombers hold pick one and 19 but having three picks inside the first 19 selections rather than two would be considered a good option given the even nature of this year's draft.
The Giants have made three No.1 selections, with its 2013 pick Tom Boyd playing in a premiership with the Western Bulldogs on Saturday, two years after being traded from the club.
Gold Coast could also be interested in getting their hands on the No.1 pick to recruit a player before it uses draft points to obtain academy graduate Jack Bowes.
Want more draft news?
• The draft pool: Cal Twomey analyses this year's best prospects
• NAB AFL Under-18s: 2016 results, news and video highlights
• NAB AFL Draft Hub: Get to know your club's future starsCHICAGO (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy would be more of the same failed Republican approach, Barack Obama’s campaign said on Thursday, as aides stepped up their attacks after losses in this week’s Democratic presidential nominating race.
Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Clinton fields a question during a meeting with retired military leaders and senior officials, to discuss current foreign policy and national security challenges, in Washington, March 6, 2008. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Clinton, who revived her struggling campaign with victories on Tuesday in closely watched contests in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island, has been hammering away at Obama on national security, painting him as too inexperienced to handle a world crisis.
Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee and a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, has used a similar line of criticism against Obama.
Obama aides seized on the simultaneous attacks to accuse the New York senator of choosing to “align herself with Sen. McCain.”
“I guess Sen. Clinton believes that the way to beat Sen. McCain in a debate is to talk like he talks, act like he acts, and vote like he votes on national security issue,” Obama adviser Greg Craig told reporters on a conference call. “We believe that Democrats in the past have lost national security debates to the Republicans for these reasons.”
The defeats for Obama in the hard-fought large states of Ohio and Texas on Tuesday snapped an earlier winning streak. In their aftermath, the Illinois senator expressed frustration with what he said was a “very negative” campaign Clinton had run and he vowed to hit back harder against her criticisms.
Many political analysts think a television commercial that Clinton launched focusing on national security had succeeded in raising doubts about Obama.
The ad featured sleeping children and a phone ringing at the White House as a narrator ominously warns: “It’s 3 a.m., and your children are safe and asleep. But there is a phone in the White House and its ringing. Something is happening in the world.”
The narrator then asks whether the person answering the White House phone is “tested” enough to keep America safe.
On the conference call, Craig said Clinton had “aligned herself” with McCain on some specific issues, such as putting too much trust in Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and supporting a legislative amendment aimed at stepping up pressure on Iran.
But the Clinton campaign shot back that such comments distorted the New York senator’s record.
“Distorting Hillary’s record won’t address the doubts voters have about Senator Obama’s readiness to be commander-in-chief,” said Clinton campaign spokesman Phil Singer.
Clinton held a meeting in Washington on Thursday with top military leaders and experts, and said their support showed confidence in her ability to make important national security decisions, including those in which “lives are on the line.”
The Obama campaign has derided Clinton’s characterization of herself as steeped in foreign policy experience based on her years as first lady and her travels and work as a senator.
Obama adviser Susan Rice said the ability to handle that 3 a.m. crisis phone call is not something that can be acquired “merely by being married to a commander-in-chief.”A monk seal rests near a green sea turtle on the northwest Pacific island of French Frigate Shoals. (Credit: Mark Sullivan/NOAA)
On a picture-perfect Sunday in November, in the vacation paradise of Kauai, a killer crept up on a monk seal pup, a 5-month-old female, and bashed her repeatedly over the head. The next day, people gasped in horror. A reward was offered. But the outrage couldn’t obscure a basic truth: this has been happening to Hawaiian monk seals for years.
A study released Thursday by the nonprofit Marine Conservation Institute said the monk seals’ dwindling population of 1,100 could be cut in half over the next 60 years if their decline continues, and claimed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration isn’t putting enough effort into protecting the only species of seals that lives solely in the United States. Because the seals are critically endangered, NOAA is trying to help rebuild their population.
A female seal pup lies on a beach with traces of blood from a fatal head wound (Credit: Jamie Thornton/NOAA)
“It’s an endangered species that the U.S. is entirely responsible for,” said Michael Gravitz, director of policy and legislation for the institute. “If it expires on our watch, it’s a sad statement about our ability to manage and conserve it.”
For starters, Gravitz said, the budget allocated for the seals’ protection, $4 million, isn’t getting the job done, and it should be increased to $7 million so that the agency can make the troubled species a priority, improve coordination with state agencies seeking to help seals, educate fisherman about the Hawaiian monk seal’s value to the ecosystem and widely promote the federal recovery program so that more people can get on board.
NOAA’s lead scientist for monk seal research, Charles Littnan, agreed with much of the report, but said it fails to give the agency’s recovery program proper credit. “Over the 30 years since NOAA started working with monk seals, we know that 32 percent of the animals that exist today were saved directly by our recovery effort or are the descendants of an animal that was saved,” Littnan said. “That’s a statement few recovery efforts on the planet can make.”
When NOAA began its work, the monk seal population throughout the Hawaiian islands was declining at a yearly rate of 8 percent. Now the decline is about 3 percent, Littnan said, contradicting the MCI report’s estimate of 4 percent. “They’re using numbers from years ago. We have the most up to date science.”
Hawaiian monk seals have an ancient tie to Hawaii. Scientists believe they originated from seals in the Caribbean, but were stranded after Central America formed into a land bridge some 3 million years ago. Today their critically endangered population has fallen to a group of about 200 living in Kauai and another group of 900 living in a chain of islands in the far northwest in the Pacific Ocean near Midway.
With so few seals left, Gravitz said, a violent act of nature, such as a hurricane, or a wasting disease such as one currently decimating sea stars in the north Pacific, could end them. Overall, the population is decreasing at a rate of 4 percent each year. Gravitz said NOAA’s outpost in Hawaii isn’t requesting enough federal funds to adequately do its job.
Rachel Sprague, NOAA’s monk seal coordinator for the Pacific Island region, said the program can always use more money to fund efforts such as outreach and awareness that help fishermen understand that seals don’t compete for their catch and shouldn’t be killed. “But we’ve had a lot of successes,” she said, “and we have a standing offer to address community groups and talk monk seals.”
Experts at NOAA and MCI, organizations that have worked together in the past, agree that the population decline is odd because of where it’s happening. In Kauai and nearby beaches where seals encounter humans most, it’s growing slightly. But in the remote northwest islands, a nature reserve where fishing is forbidden and humans are rare, their numbers are falling.
Far out in the Pacific, sharks are an issue. Their population has grown since former president George W. Bush declared the area a reserve in 2006, and they somehow learned how to glide to the shore on waves and snap seal pups into their jaws, said William Chandler, a conservation adviser at MCI who authored the report, “Enhancing the Future of the Hawaiian Monk Seal.”
When the area teemed with seals before the 1900s, they could survive a natural plague of big and fast predators. With their diminished numbers, it could be lights out.
Birds await the death of a seal stranded by a sea wall on Tern Island. (Credit: Meg Duhr-Schultz/US Fish and Wildlife Service)
Here’s what else is happening in the northwest, 1,000 miles from Kauai. Seal pups are starving. To get food, they swim into the Pacific, dive deep, turn over rocks and try to forage what’s under them. But they’re followed by bigger sharks and fish, and those animals snatch the food before the seals can eat it. Adults can put up a fight, but the pups go hungry and some die.
On the populated mainland, seals have managed to breed faster than anonymous human killers and their fishing nets can claim them. The baby seal killed days after Thanksgiving on a beach in Anahola was the fifth to die since 2011, according to local news reports. She was the progeny of a seal named Rocky, and both were victims of a dog attack in July in which a second pup was killed.
A $5,000 reward offer hasn’t led to the capture of whoever committed the November attack.
The demise of Hawaiian monk seals is a familiar story of hunting and whaling. “They became a remnant population in the Hawaiian islands, and now they’re shrinking still,” Chandler said. A similar group of seals — Mediterranean monk seals in Greece, Turkey, Libya and Tunisia — are in even deeper trouble, with only 500 left.
“That’s why we’re so concerned that we take care of the ones in the U.S.,” Chandler said. “We think the seal can recover if NOAA and its partners just double down.”
“This is no time to let down our guard,” Littnan said of NOAA. “Can we do more? Of course. And we will.”Can a Survivor move on?
I was asked not long ago if we Survivors ever come to the place in our recovery where we can put the abuse behind us and get on with our lives. I have been asked this question in many forms from my abusers, from friends, and from other family members. The questions left me quite defensive because it was implied I was doing something wrong by bringing up the past and dwelling on it. It was also implied that I was getting worse, or was stuck. But this time, I felt the question was out of genuine concern, and I realized that people who are not familiar with the recovery process don’t understand it, and we can use this opportunity to educate them.
If you have a Survivor in your life, you may have wondered or even asked a similar question. I would like to answer this question out of my own life experience and from what I’ve gleaned from the experiences of other Survivors who have touched my life. Most people have no idea what goes on behind the closed door of a therapist’s office between a client and therapist or in a support group setting. My hope is that you will have a better understanding of what abuse therapy is all about after reading the information.
One misconception some have is that we sit week after week in the therapist’s office and talk about our abuse and our abusers. At some point in the process, we usually do talk about incidents of abuse. For some it can take years to feel safe enough to confide their abuse to someone. Some of us went into the therapist’s office after having memories return or after realizing the significance of the abuse and disclosed fairly soon in the counselling sessions. For myself and other Survivors I know personally, talking about our abuse is very difficult, especially the first time. There is a lot of shame attached to each memory of abuse, and that has to be worked through. With each incident there may be feelings of “I asked for it. It was all my fault.” That may come from a Survivor who sat on her Daddy’s/Mummy’s lap and was fondled while doing so. He/she may have even told her he/she wanted it. These mixed messages lead to profound inner turmoil.
Some may only talk of the incident(s) one time, others may have a need to talk about it a lot until they’ve worked it through—that means they’ve remembered, put the guilt on the abuser and off themselves, and let the trapped anger, fear, and hurt out.
It was easier for me to understand when I realized it was, and still is, a grieving process. A person who became a quadriplegic after being hit by a drunk driver, or lost a loved one, would rarely be condemned for going through the stages of grief. Many people know that the grieving process takes a minimum of a year, usually longer. It seems very difficult, however, for Survivors as well as those who love them to allow that same freedom and time to go through the process.
Abuse recovery is recognizing our many losses. Survivors have lost their childhood, their innocence, and their sense of value. Many have lost the father or mother relationship so needed by children. If a Survivor chooses to confront an abuser, often, instead of working out the issues involved, admitting the abuse, and getting help, the Survivor is further victimized. What semblance of relationship there once was is gone. All of these things need to be worked through. Survivors often don’t have the skills or the tools to know how to work through these issues without help.
In my own therapy and in the six groups I have now been a part of over the last five years, both as participant and facilitator, most of the time is spent learning how to cope with the life we now live in a healthy fashion, learning how to take charge of our own lives, changing destructive behaviour patterns, learning to set boundaries, recovering from addictions and compulsive behaviour, learning how to live with our spouse, children, and friends, learning how to feel and express those feelings in a healthy, safe way instead of stuffing them or having them spill out everywhere, learning how to let go and move forward when our parents are no longer in our life, and learning how to deal with the day to day struggles that emotionally healthy people seem to do naturally. It took many years to get messed up inside, and it may take many years to undo all the damage and to heal.
But there is hope, and to answer the question, I would have to say we do get on with our life—in fact those of us in recovery are getting on with our lives everyday we hang in there. We may look pretty bad for a while, but so do people going through any other grieving process. The end result is worth it.
As Survivors come to the close of their recovery, they will be able to let you into their life in a closer, more intimate way. They’ll come to the place where they can let it go because they will have gone through the pain, felt the feelings (including anger and forgiveness), and finally will be able to come to an acceptance of the events of their past.
With that acceptance will possibly be a sense of “wellness”—the realization that, “I am a better person because of what happened. I am more sensitive to other people’s pain, I can help others, I’m more creative,” etc.
Trust the Survivor in your life to know when it’s time. If done prematurely, a Survivor can still suffer after-effects and symptoms as before. The time will come when there will be no more haunting memories to sort through, no more re-victimization going on. Tools will be ingrained to help through the difficult times. There will be a good support system in place and an ability to utilize that support. There will be an awareness of distorted thinking and the skills to combat it. The Survivor will be ready to face life boldly and confidently because he/she has faced the ugly demons of the past and won. It will come.
You can help, too. Give the Survivor time and space. Don’t worry about the different stages you see her or him in. Survivors can get stuck at times or reach a plateau, but I haven’t seen them stay stuck as long as they continue their recovery work and have the needed support. Plateaus can be an important part of the process to give time for reflection or changing focus. Also, you might experience this time as a relief.
It helps to remember that you don’t have to fix the Survivor. That will only frustrate you both if you try. Just be there. Let the Survivor guide you in what is needed. It may be just listening, holding, or encouraging. You can facilitate in the healing process by sharing in the pain and rejoicing in the victories.
Finally, you can use this opportunity to get in touch with your own issues as well. As the Survivor lets you in on the pain, struggles, and the victories, it may bring up things for you. Grow along with your loved one. When the Survivor is no longer in crises, let her or him help you with your struggles. This will help keep balance in the relationship and will also help in the Survivor’s own healing.
Being a part of a Survivors life can be a rewarding opportunity as you watch and participate in the miracle of healing in a life that has been damaged by childhood abuse.
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pi at the veteran's minimum of $2.1 million is "criminal," as ESPN's Zach Lowe put it. Travel back just one season to 2015-16, and Casspi was averaging a career-best 15.6 points per 36 minutes on 48.1 percent shooting (40.9 outside) while displaying a slew of coveted contemporary strengths.
"His sharpshooting habits made him a valuable offensive force, and he held his own defensively by constantly maintaining the right positions and rarely making mental mistakes," Bleacher Report's Adam Fromal wrote. "In many ways, he'd become one of the league's most underrated commodities."
Casspi's three-and-D skills should be enhanced in the Bay. Between the ball movement of the Warriors offense and the gravitational All-Stars around him, he'll gorge on open shots. And his ability to switch defensive assignments plays right in line with Golden State's style.
He might get the fewest minutes of these seven players, but he'll take the floor for the best team. His individual impact isn't great enough to climb into the top three, but the Dubs' relevance moved him up to the middle.
3. Indiana Pacers Find Proven Point Guard with Upside
Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images
Cory Joseph was more than a footnote in the Indiana Pacers' offseason. With 364 regular-season outings and another 71 postseason tussles under his belt, he's a proven commodity for a franchise that doesn't have nearly as many of those as it did in recent years.
But his trade from the Toronto Raptors wasn't exactly a headline-grabber, even in the Circle City. Not in an offseason when the Pacers traded Paul George to the Oklahoma City Thunder, Indiana University product Victor Oladipo returned to the Hoosier State and Indy pumped $41 million into Darren Collison and Bojan Bogdanovic.
Joseph, though, could be the most important non-Oladipo acquisition. The feisty floor general has long been a pest to opposing point guards, and last season, he set personal bests in points (9.3), assists (3.3) and rebounds (2.9) per game. He's been a playoff participant each of the last five seasons, averaging more than 22 minutes per contest during his past two trips with the Toronto Raptors.
His floor is solid as a relentless defender and transition attacker. And his ceiling might have more room to rise than people think. At 26 years old, he's less than a year older than Oladipo, and Joseph's three-ball—while still not where he'd like it—is trending the right way.
"Joseph in many ways fits within [Pacers president of basketball operations Kevin] Pritchard's desire to build a team of young, talented players who can develop, build chemistry and win together for sustained success in the future," Nate Taylor of the Indianapolis Star wrote. "The Pacers were intrigued by Joseph because they believe he has yet to reach his full potential."
The Pacers could be the worst team represented on our rankings, which highlights how many other boxes Joseph checks in order to claim the No. 3 spot. He doesn't have Evans' injury woes, Simmons' uncertainties, Sefolosha's age/decline or Casspi's compact role.
2. OKC Stretches Out Its Frontcourt
Layne Murdoch/Getty Images
Don't be fooled by last season's historic production from reigning NBA MVP Russell Westbrook. The Oklahoma City Thunder offense struggled to function because of one of the Association's worst cases of congestion.
The team as a whole couldn't shoot. It had the NBA's lowest conversion rate from three (32.7 percent) and made the fifth-fewest triples per game (8.4). And the Thunder were particularly putrid up front, plagued by bigs who either didn't launch threes (Steven Adams, Enes Kanter, Taj Gibson) or shouldn't have (Domantas Sabonis).
OKC is breathing much easier now, and that's not entirely due to the Paul George addition. Patrick Patterson, who came in on an economic three-year, $16.4 million deal in July, stands to modernize this group's frontcourt and flesh out what was the league's best one-man show, as Rob Mahoney of Sports Illustrated explained:
"Patterson is a rangy forward/small-ball center who can guard multiple positions, and he should slot nicely into the Thunder's frontcourt. Patterson will provide what the Thunder so desperately lacked last season: spacing. He can sit in the corner while Russell Westbrook and Paul George work offensively, launching threes when the defense is sucked in."
Patterson battled left knee pain last season and underwent arthroscopic surgery in early August, though OKC expects him back in time for training camp.
The 28-year-old might be a specialist—65.9 percent of his shots were threes in 2016-17—but his specialty addresses a glaring need (shot 37.2 percent from beyond the arc).
If he can stay healthy, he'll provide a boost to one of the Western Conference's most intriguing teams. He just won't make as much of a difference as our No. 1 choice, who also suits up for a superior squad.
1. Houston Rockets Modernize Defense
Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images
The Houston Rockets won 55 games last season without a winning formula.
Trust me, it's possible. The James Harden-led offense orchestrated by head coach Mike D'Antoni was as explosive as expected, but the defense was disastrous—at least as it pertained to the team's hopes of becoming elite. Houston's 109.0 defensive rating tied for the fourth-highest ever recorded by a 55-plus-game winner (a 173-team sample size) and the worst by such a club in more than 20 years.
The Rockets had to address their shortcomings this summer and did so in spectacular—yet understated—fashion. P.J. Tucker "headlined" the subtle, savvy pickups while arriving via a four-year, $31.9 million deal. Veteran's minimum money was all Houston needed to land another piece of defensive silly putty in Luc Mbah a Moute.
And just like that, the Rockets possessed a modern—maybe dominant at times—defense, as Bleacher Report's Dan Favale wrote:
"Adding Luc Mbah a Moute and P.J. Tucker helps unlock lineups oozing matchup nightmares. Either one of them can defend power forwards, and Trevor Ariza lets them switch every wing combination while stashing James Harden on more palatable assignments.
... Mbah a Moute is a sneaky post defender, and Tucker has the vinegary vim to tussle with certain bigs. Between the two of them, the Rockets can have the 4 and 5 on relative lock within baby Death Squad combinations."
Is it fair that the most underrated move is a combination of moves? Probably not, but we make the rules. Besides, the fact the Rockets made these signings in tandem was what made them special. One player alone wasn't going to cover Houston's defensive holes.
With Tucker, Mbah a Moute, Ariza and Chris Paul working together, the Rockets can ratchet up their defensive intensity to ludicrous levels. And with Harden, Eric Gordon and Ryan Anderson still around, Houston can lean just as much on the offensive end. Start intertwining these two groups, and the Western Conference's second seed becomes Space City's to lose.
Unless otherwise indicated, all stats from Basketball Reference or NBA.com.
Zach Buckley covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter: @ZachBuckleyNBA.MANLY have announced a new deal for powerful young prop Addin Fonua-Blake.
The 21-year-old, who was off contract at the end of the 2017 season, has extended his stay with the club until the end of 2018.
Fonua-Blake was handed a lifeline by the Sea Eagles ahead of the 2016 season after being axed by former club St George Illawarra following a domestic violence conviction.
The former Junior Kiwis representative made his NRL debut in round seven and has played 14 games to date. He was also selected in the New Zealand train-on squad for the Four Nations tournament but didn’t make the final cut.
Fonua-Blake’s re-signing comes two weeks after the club announced the acquisition of former Roosters playmaker Jackson Hastings.
Addin Fonua-Blake in action for the Sea Eagles. Source: Getty Images
Manly coach Trent Barrett said Fonua-Blake will be a key part of the Manly forward pack in the upcoming season.
“The contract extension is a good reward for Addin. He still has a lot of hard work to do, but we were happy to extend his deal,’’ Barrett said.
“Addin is a big skilful player who gives us plenty of muscle up front. He is doing really well and we are pleased to have him with us.”
Fonua-Blake said he was grateful for the opportunities he has received at the Sea Eagles.
“I am really enjoying playing at Manly. The extension gives me a chance to further develop my game by working with experienced forwards like Martin Taupau and Nate Myles,’’ Fonua-Blake said.
“My goal over this pre-season is to get fitter and stronger, so I can really hit the ground running in round one against Parramatta at Brookvale Oval. I want to be in the team for our first Sunday home game of the season.”
Download the new FOX SPORTS App to get the latest news and scores from your NRL team.PANAMA CITY, Fla. - Two college students have been charged with sexually attacking a woman on a crowded Florida beach filled with spring break revelers who apparently did nothing to stop it, authorities said.
Delonte' Martistee, 22, and Ryan Austin Calhoun, 23, were arrested Friday and charged with sexual battery by multiple perpetrators, according to the Bay County Sheriff's Office.
CBS affiliate WCTV in Tallahassee reports both men are students at Troy University in Alabama, and that Martistee was a former member of the Troy track team. Both men have been suspended from the school.
The attack, recorded on a cellphone video, happened sometime March 10-12 in Panama City, Bay County Sheriff Frank McKeithen said at a news conference. Authorities learned of the assault when police in Troy, Alabama, discovered the video while investigating a shooting.
McKeithen described the recording as the "most disgusting, sickening thing" he had ever seen. Several men can be seen surrounding an incapacitated woman on a beach chair.
"This is happening in broad daylight with hundreds of people seeing and hearing what is happening, and they are more concerned about spilling their beer than somebody being raped," he said. The sheriff said he expected investigators will make additional arrests.
The victim told police that she thought she had been drugged at the time, and she did not remember the incident well enough to report it.
"She knows something happened, but she doesn't know what happened," McKeithen said.
Martistee and Calhoun were being taken Friday to Panama City for a court hearing. It was unclear Saturday whether they had defense attorneys.Afghan women are weaving triditional dress during a vocational training course organised by Afghanistan General association of public servants in Kabul. (AP)
Afghan women tailors doing work during a vocational training course organised by Afghanistan General association of public servants in Kabul. (AP)
Women have been absent from more than 20 rounds of informal Afghan peace talks spanning more than a decade.
As efforts gather pace to renew peace talks with the Taleban, Afghan women still haunted by the insurgents' brutal rule say they are being left out of the process, and fear that an accommodation with the militants could lead to the loss of hard-won rights.
Ending a 15-year war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives is seen by many as a more urgent priority than preserving and expanding women's rights in a deeply conservative country. But rights advocates point to data showing that peace efforts are far more likely to succeed when women are involved.
Women have been absent from more than 20 rounds of informal Afghan peace talks spanning more than a decade, according to the New York-based Human Rights Watch. Women took part in two meetings with Taleban representatives last year in Oslo and Doha, but those were not sanctioned by Kabul.
There were no women in attendance at two rounds of talks held earlier this month by representatives of Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States and China, which are aimed at reviving negotiations with the Taleban that broke down last summer after a single meeting when Kabul announced the death of the Taleban's longtime leader.
The exclusion of women can be partly attributed to their limited representation in Afghanistan, where men hold virtually all top positions in government and the security forces.
But rights advocates also say President Ashraf Ghani, a Western-educated technocrat who has vowed to protect women's constitutional rights, has backtracked on promises to bring them into the process.
"The government has shown multiple times that it doesn't really take women's interests seriously enough," said Human Rights Watch researcher Ahmad Shuja. He said Afghanistan is obliged to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1325, passed in 2000, which calls for women's participation in peace negotiations. A UN study of that resolution published last year found that including women in peace negotiations makes it more likely that the process will succeed.
It said negotiations that included women were 20 per cent more likely to result in a deal that lasted at least two years, and that the longer the peace lasted, the greater the likelihood that it would continue to endure. It found that women broaden the debate, speed up the process and increase the involvement of different sectors of society. "We know that when women are placed at the center of security, justice, economic recovery and good governance, they will be more direct recipients of a range of peace dividends including job creation and public services. This means that the pay-offs of peace will be delivered more rapidly to communities," the report said.
Ghani's deputy spokesman, Zafar Hashemi, said the government "will continue to consult with women, just like we engage with representatives of all walks of life, as we move forward to end the conflict."
"The president has been explicit in his intention to preserve the rights and achievements of Afghan women; that is the guiding principle for Afghan officials who are engaged in the peace process," Hashemi said. That hasn't been enough to reassure Mahbouba Seraj. The director of the Organization of Research for Peace and Solidarity, which advocates for peace and rights, fears Ghani will keep women out of the process until the very end, after all the big questions have already been decided. "We have to walk this line very carefully because it is not the time for us to lose even the smallest, smallest amount of what we have achieved in all these years," said Seraj. - AP
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ERROR: Macro /ads/dfp-ad-article-new is missing!City in Amman Governorate, Jordan
Amman ( English: ; Arabic: عَمّان ʻammān pronounced [ʕamːaːn]) is the capital and most populous city of Jordan, and the country's economic, political and cultural centre.[5] Situated in north-central Jordan, Amman is the administrative centre of the Amman Governorate. The city has a population of 4,007,526 and a land area of 1,680 square kilometres (648.7 square miles).[6] Today, Amman is considered to be among the most modernized Arab cities.[7] It is a major tourist destination in the region, particularly among Arab and European tourists.[8]
The earliest evidence of settlement in Amman is in a Neolithic site known as 'Ain Ghazal, where some of the oldest human statues ever found dating to 7250 BC were uncovered. During the Iron Age, the city was known as Ammon, home to the Kingdom of the Ammonites. It was named Philadelphia during its Greek and Roman periods, and was finally called Amman during the Islamic period. Abandoned for much of the medieval and post-medieval period, modern Amman dates to the late 19th century when Circassian immigrants were settled there by the Ottoman Empire in 1867. The first municipal council was established in 1909.[9] Amman witnessed rapid growth after its designation as Jordan's capital in 1921, and after several successive waves of refugees: Palestinians in 1948 and 1967; Iraqis in 1990 and 2003; and Syrians since 2011. It was initially built on seven hills but now spans over 19 hills combining 27 districts,[9] which are administered by the Greater Amman Municipality headed by its mayor Yousef Shawarbeh.[10] Areas of Amman have gained their names from either the hills (Jabal) or the valleys (Wadi) they occupy, such as Jabal Lweibdeh and Wadi Abdoun.[9] East Amman is predominantly filled with historic sites that frequently host cultural activities, while West Amman is more modern and serves as the economic center of the city.[11]
Approximately two million visitors arrived in Amman in 2014, which made it the 93rd most visited city in the world and the 5th most visited Arab city.[12] Amman has a relatively fast growing economy,[13] and it is ranked Beta− on the global city index.[14] Moreover, it was named one of the Middle East and North Africa's best cities according to economic, labor, environmental, and socio-cultural factors.[15] The city is among the most popular locations in the Arab world for multinational corporations to set up their regional offices, alongside Doha and only behind Dubai. It is expected that in the next 10 years these three cities will capture the largest share of multinational corporation activity in the region.[16]
Etymology [ edit ]
Amman derives its name from the 13th century BC when the Ammonites named it "Rabbath Ammon", with the term Rabbath meaning the "Capital" or the "King's Quarters". Over time, the term "Rabbath" was no longer used and the city became known as "Ammon". The influence of new civilizations that conquered the city gradually changed its name to "Amman".[17] In the Hebrew Bible, it is referred to as "Rabbat ʿAmmon" (Biblical Hebrew: רבת עמון, Tiberian Hebrew Rabbaṯ ʿAmmôn). However, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the Macedonian ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom who reigned from 283 to 246 BC, renamed the city to "Philadelphia" (Ancient Greek: Φιλαδέλφεια; literally: "brotherly love") after occupying it. The name was given as an adulation to his own nickname, Philadelphus.[18]
History [ edit ]
Ancient period [ edit ]
Jabal Al-Qalaa
The neolithic site of 'Ain Ghazal was found in the outskirts of Amman. At its height, around 7000 BC, it had an area of 15 hectares (37 acres) and was inhabited by ca. 3000 people (four to five times the population of contemporary Jericho). At that time the site was a typical aceramic Neolithic village. Its houses were rectangular mud-bricked buildings that included a main square living room, whose walls were made up of lime plaster.[20] The site was discovered in 1974 as construction workers were working on a road crossing the area. By 1982, when the excavations started, around 600 meters (2,000 feet) of road ran through the site. Despite the damage brought by urban expansion, the remains of 'Ain Ghazal provided a wealth of information.[21]
'Ain Ghazal is well known for a set of small human statues found in 1983, when local archaeologists stumbled upon the edge of a large pit 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) containing them.[22] These statues are human figures made with white plaster, with painted clothes, hair, and in some cases ornamental tattoos. Thirty-two figures were found in two caches, fifteen of them full figures, fifteen busts, and two fragmentary heads. Three of the busts were two-headed, the significance of which is not clear.[21]
In the 13th century BC Amman was the capital of the Ammonites, and became known as "Rabbath Ammon". Ammon provided several natural resources to the region, including sandstone and limestone, along with a productive agricultural sector that made Ammon a vital location along the King's Highway, the ancient trade route connecting Egypt with Mesopotamia, Syria and Anatolia. As with the Edomites and Moabites, trade along this route gave the Ammonites considerable revenue.[23] Ammonites worshiped an ancient deity called Moloch. Excavations by archaeologists near Amman Civil Airport uncovered a temple, which included an altar containing many human bone fragments. The bones showed evidence of burning, which led to the assumption that the altar functioned as a pyre.[24]
Today, several Ammonite ruins across Amman exist, such as Qasr Al-Abd, Rujm Al-Malfouf and some parts of the Amman Citadel. The ruins of Rujm Al-Malfouf consist of a stone watchtower used to ensure protection of their capital and several store rooms to the east.[25][26] The city was later conquered by the Assyrian Empire, followed by the Persian Empire.
Classical period [ edit ]
Conquest of the Middle East and Central Asia by Alexander the Great firmly consolidated the influence of Hellenistic culture.[27] The Greeks founded new cities in the area of modern-day Jordan, including Umm Qays, Jerash and Amman. Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the Macedonian ruler of Egypt, who occupied and rebuilt the city, named it "Philadelphia" (Ancient Greek: Φιλαδέλφεια), evoking "brotherly love" in Greek. The name was given as an adulation to his own nickname, Philadelphus.[28]
One of the most original monuments in Jordan, and perhaps in the Hellenistic period in the Near East, is the village of Iraq Al-Amir in the valley of Wadi Al-Sir, southwest of Amman, which is home to Qasr Al-Abd (Castle of the Slave). Other nearby ruins include a village, an isolated house and a fountain, all of which are barely visible today due to the damage brought by a major earthquake that hit the region in the year 362.[29] Qasr Al-Abd is believed to have been built by Hyrcanus of Jerusalem, who was the head of the powerful Tobiad family. Shortly after he began the construction of that large building, in 170 BC upon returning from a military campaign in Egypt, Antiochus IV conquered Jerusalem, ransacked a temple where the treasure of Hyrcanus was kept and appeared determined to attack Hyrcanus. Upon hearing this, Hyrcanus committed suicide, leaving his palace in Philadelphia uncompleted.[30] The Tobiads fought the Arab Nabateans for twenty years until they lost the city to them. After losing Philadelphia, we no longer hear of the Tobiad family in written sources.[31]
The Romans conquered much of the Levant in 63 BC, inaugurating a period of Roman rule that lasted for four centuries. In the northern modern-day Jordan, the Greek cities of Philadelphia (Amman), Gerasa, Gedara, Pella and Arbila joined with other cities in Palestine and Syria; Scythopolis, Hippos, Capitolias, Canatha and Damascus to form the Decapolis League, a fabled confederation linked by bonds of economic and cultural interest.[32] Philadelphia became a point along a road stretching from Ailah to Damascus that was built by Emperor Trajan in 106 AD. This provided an economic boost for the city in a short period of time. During the late Byzantine era in the seventh century, several bishops and churches were based in the city.[33]
Roman rule in Jordan left several ruins across the country, some of which exist in Amman, such as the Temple of Hercules at the Amman Citadel, the Roman Theatre, the Odeon, and the Nymphaeum. The two theatres and the Nymphaeum fountain were built during the reign of Emperor Antoninus Pius around AD 161. The theatre was the larger venue of the two and had a capacity for 6,000 attendees. It was oriented north and built into the hillside, to protect the audience from the sun. To the northeast of the theatre was a small odeon. Built at roughly the same time as the theatre, the Odeon had 500 seats and is still in use today for music concerts. Archaeologists speculate that the structure was originally covered with a wooden roof to shield the audience from the weather. The Nymphaeum is situated southwest of the Odeon and served as Philadelphia's chief fountain. The Nymphaeum is believed to have contained a 600 square meters (6,500 sq ft) pool which was 3 meters (9.8 ft) deep and was continuously refilled with water.[34]
Islamic era [ edit ]
In the 630s, the Rashidun army conquered the region from the Byzantines, beginning the Islamic era in the Levant. Philadelphia was renamed "Amman" by the Muslims and became part of the district of Jund al-Urdunn. A large part of the population already spoke Arabic, which facilitated integration into the caliphate, as well as several conversions to Islam. Under the Umayyad caliphs who began their rule in 661 AD, numerous desert castles were established as a means to govern the desert area of modern-day Jordan, several of which are still well-preserved. Amman had already been functioning as an administrative centre. The Umayyads built a large palace on the Amman Citadel hill, known today as the Umayyad Palace. Amman was later destroyed by several earthquakes and natural disasters, including a particularly severe earthquake in 747. The Umayyads were overthrown by the Abbasids three years later.[32]
Amman's importance declined by the mid-8th century after damage caused by several earthquakes rendered it uninhabitable.[35] Excavations among the collapsed layer of the Umayyad Palace have revealed remains of kilns from the time of the Abbasids (750-969) and the Fatimids (969–1099).[36] In the late 9th century, Amman was noted as the "capital" of the Balqa by geographer al-Yaqubi.[37] Likewise, in 985, the Jerusalemite historian al-Muqaddasi described Amman as the capital of Balqa,[37] and that it was a town in the desert fringe of Syria surrounded by villages and cornfields and was a regional source of lambs, grain and honey.[38] Furthermore, al-Muqaddasi describes Amman as a "harbor of the desert" where Arab Bedouin would take refuge, and that its citadel, which overlooked the town, contained a small mosque.[39]
The occupation of the Citadel Hill by the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem is so far based only on interpretations of Crusader sources. William of Tyre writes in his Historia that in 1161 Philip of Milly received the castle of "Ahamant", which is seen to refer to Amman, as part of the Lordship of Oultrejordain.[40] In 1166 Philip joined the military order of the Knights Templar, passing on to them a significant part of his fief including the castle of Ahamant[41] or "Haman", as it is named in the deed of confirmation issued by King Amalric.[42] By 1170, Amman was in Ayyubid hands.[43] The remains of a watch tower on Citadel Hill, first attributed to the Crusaders, now are preferentially dated to the Ayyubid period, leaving it to further research to find the location of the Crusader castle.[42] During the Ayyubid period, the Damascene geographer al-Dimashqi wrote that Amman was part of the province of al-Karak, although "only ruins" remained of the town.[44]
During the Mamluk era (late 13th–early 16th centuries), the region of Amman was a part of Wilayat Balqa, the southernmost district of Mamlakat Dimashq (Damascus Province).[45] The capital of the district in the first half of the 14th century was the minor administrative post of Hisban, which had a considerably smaller garrison than the other administrative centers in Transjordan, namely Ajlun and al-Karak.[46] In 1321, the geographer Abu'l Fida, recorded that Amman was "a very ancient town" with fertile soil and surrounded by agricultural fields.[39] For unclear, though likely financial reasons, in 1356, the capital of Balqa was transferred from Hisban to Amman, which was considered a madina (city).[47] In 1357, Emir Sirghitmish bought Amman in its entirety, most likely to use revenues from the city to help fund the Madrasa of Sirghitmish, which he built in Cairo that same year.[47] After his purchase of the city, Sirghitmish transferred the courts, administrative bureaucracy, markets and most of the inhabitants of Hisban to Amman.[47] Moreover, he financed new building works in the city.[47]
Ottoman railway ten arches bridge, built in 1910 in Amman
Ownership of Amman following Sirghitmish's death in 1358 passed to successive generations of his descendants until 1395, when his descendants sold it to Emir Baydamur al-Khwarazmi, the na'ib as-saltana (viceroy) of Damascus.[47] Afterward, part of Amman's cultivable lands were sold to Emir Sudun al-Shaykhuni (died 1396), the na'ib as-saltana of Egypt.[48] The increasingly frequent division and sale of the city and lands of Amman to different owners signaled declining revenues coming from Amman, while at the same time, Hisban was restored as the major city of the Balqa in the 15th century.[49] From then until 1878, Amman was an abandoned site periodically used to shelter seasonal farmers who cultivated arable lands in its vicinity and by Bedouin tribes who used its pastures and water.[50][51]
The Ottoman Empire annexed the region of Amman in 1516, but for much of the Ottoman period, al-Salt functioned as the virtual political centre of Transjordan. Amman began to be resettled in 1878, when hundreds of Circassians arrived following their exodus from the Caucasus;[52] between 1872–1910, tens of thousands of Circassians had relocated to Ottoman Syria after being displaced by the Russian Empire during the events of the Russo-Circassian War.[53][self-published source][54] In 1879, English traveller Laurence Oliphant wrote of his visit to Amman in The Land of Gilead.[55]
Modern era [ edit ]
Amman in 1940
By 1878, the Ottoman authorities directed the Circassian immigrants who were mainly of peasant stock to settle in Amman, and distributed arable land among them.[56] The very first Circassian settlers lived near Amman's famous Roman theater, and incorporated its stones into the houses they built.[57] The British report from 1933 shows around 1,700 Circassians living in Amman.[58] Yet the community was far from insulated. They formed alliances both with local urban and nomadic communities and regional grain merchants to cement their status in the newly established city.[57] Amman's first municipal council was established in 1909, and Circassian Ismael Babouk was elected as its mayor.[59] The city's demographics changed dramatically after the Ottoman government's decision to construct the Hejaz Railway, which linked Damascus and Medina, and facilitated the annual Hajj pilgrimage and trade. Because of its location along the railway, Amman was transformed from a small village into a major commercial hub in the region.[60]
The First and Second Battle of Amman were part of the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I and the Arab Revolt, taking place in 1918. Amman had a strategic location along the Hejaz Railway; its capture by British forces and the Hashemite Arab army facilitated the British advance towards Damascus.[61] The second battle was won by the British, resulting in the establishment of the British Mandate.
Amman in 1985
In 1921, the Hashemite emir and later king, Abdullah I, designated Amman instead of al-Salt to be the capital of the newly created state, the Emirate of Transjordan, which became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1950. Its function as the capital of the country attracted immigrants from different Levantine areas, particularly from al-Salt, a nearby city that had been the largest urban settlement east of the Jordan River at the time. The early settlers who came from Palestine were overwhelmingly from Nablus, from which many of al-Salt's inhabitants had originated. They were joined by other immigrants from Damascus. Amman later attracted people from the southern part of the country, particularly Al Karak and Madaba. The city's population was around 10,000 in the 1930s.[62]
Jordan gained its independence in 1946 and Amman was designated the country's capital. Amman received many refugees during wartime events in nearby countries, beginning with the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. A second wave arrived after the Six-Day War in 1967. In 1970, Amman was a battlefield during the conflict between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Jordanian Army known as Black September. The Jordanian Army defeated the PLO in 1971, and the latter were expelled to Lebanon.[63]
Al Ashrafiya in 1997. A neighbourhood inin 1997.
The first wave of Iraqi and Kuwaiti refugees settled in the city after the 1991 Gulf War, with a second wave occurring in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Most recently a wave of Syrian refugees have arrived in the city during the ongoing Syrian Civil War which began in 2011. Amman was a principal destination for refugees for the security and prosperity it offered.[64]
Amman in 2013
On 9 November 2005, Al-Qaeda under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's leadership launched coordinated explosions in three hotel lobbies in Amman, resulting in 60 deaths and 115 injured. The bombings, which targeted civilians, caused widespread outrage among Jordanians.[65] Jordan's security as a whole was dramatically improved after the attack, and no major terrorist attacks have been reported since then.[66][67]
During the last ten years the city has experienced an economic, cultural and urban boom. The large growth in population has significantly increased the need for new accommodation, and new districts of the city were established at a quick pace. This strained Jordan's scarce water supply and exposed Amman to the dangers of quick expansion without careful municipal planning. Today, Amman is known as a both modern and ancient Arab city,[7] with major mega projects such as the Abdali Urban Regeneration Project and the Jordan Gate Towers. The city contains several high-end hotel franchises including the Four Seasons Hotel Amman, Sheraton Hotel Amman, Fairmont Amman, St. Regis Hotel Amman, Le Royal Hotel and others.
Geography [ edit ]
Amman is situated on the East Bank Plateau, an upland characterized by three major wadis which run through it.[68] Originally, the city had been built on seven hills.[69] Amman's terrain is typified by its mountains.[70] The most important areas in the city are named after the hills or mountains they lie on.[71] The area's elevation ranges from 700 to 1,100 m (2,300 to 3,600 ft).[72] Al-Salt and al-Zarqa are located to the northwest and northeast, respectively, Madaba is located to the west and al-Karak and Ma'an are to Amman's southwest and southeast, respectively. One of the only remaining springs in Amman now supplies the Zarqa River with water.[73]
Trees found in Amman include, Aleppo pine, Mediterranean cypress and Phoenecian juniper.[74]
Climate [ edit ]
Spring in an affluent neighbourhood in the city
Amman's position on the mountains near the Mediterranean climate zone places it under the semi-arid climate classification (Köppen climate: BSh). Summers are mildly hot and breezy; however, one or two heat waves may occur during summer. Spring is brief and warm, where highs reach 28 °C (82 °F). Spring usually starts between April and May, and lasts about a month. Winter usually starts around the end of November and continues from early to mid March. Temperatures are usually near or below 17 °C (63 °F), with snow occasionally falling once or twice a year. Rain averages about 300 mm (12 in) a year and periodic droughts are common, where most rain falls between October and April.[75] At least 120 days of heavy fog per year is usual.[76] Difference in elevation plays a major role in the different weather conditions experienced in the city: snow may accumulate in the western and northern parts of Amman (an average altitude of 1,000 m (3,300 ft) above sea level) while at the same time it could be raining at the city centre (elevation of 776 m (2,546 ft)).
Amman has extreme examples of microclimate, and almost every district exhibits its own weather.[77] It is known among locals that some boroughs such as the northern suburb of Abu Nser are among the coldest in the city, and can experience frost while other districts such as Marka experience much warmer temperatures.
The temperatures listed below are taken from the weather station at the centre of the city which is at an elevation of 767 m (2,516 ft) above sea level. At higher elevations, the temperatures will be lower during winter and higher during summer. For example, in areas such as al-Jubaiha, Sweileh, Khalda, and Abu Nser, which are at/higher than 1,000 |
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